I have a piece in this morning’s New York Post, and I did not try to be polite. Commenting on the end-of-year orgy on Capitol Hill, I slam corrupt deal making that leads to ever-bigger government. Here’s part of what I say about the “omnibus” spending bill. The weeks since Election Day have provided nauseating […]
read more...I’ve already posted two other cartoons on this issue (here and here), but can’t resist posting another. As with much humor, this cartoon cleverly captures the underlying reality. In this case, the politicians want a value-added tax so we pay more to finance their excesses.
read more...There are plenty of reason to like and dislike the tax deal between President Obama and congressional leaders. On the plus side, we dodge a big tax increase for the next two years. We also replace a goofy and ineffective “make work pay” tax credit with a supply-side oriented reduction in the payroll tax rate […]
read more...I’ve written before about the upcoming breakdown of the European welfare state, and my fingers are crossed that American policy makers will learn the right lessons and restrain the size and scope of government before we suffer from the social chaos and disarray that is sweeping through nations as varied as Greece and the United […]
read more...I debated a couple of pro-tax increase folks on the Diane Rehm show Monday. If you have a spare 51 minutes and want to hear me spar with Alice Rivlin and David Walker on National Public Radio, you can listen to the discussion by clicking this link. Feedback actually is much appreciated. Let me know […]
read more...Maybe elections have consequences after all. Bolstered by the populist uprising against bloated and wasteful government, politicians in Washington actually defended the interests of taxpayers yesterday. Not just once, but twice. Our first bit of holiday cheer comes from the Washington Post, which reports that the House of Representatives (still controlled by Democrats) voted to […]
read more...In his latest Bloomberg column, Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute notes that research from places such as Harvard and the International Monetary Fund confirms that spending restraint is the way to successfully reduce red ink – and it’s also the way to improve economic performance. The antidote to fiscal crisis is fiscal consolidation… […]
read more...The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this morning that the unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent last month. As you can see from the chart, the White House claimed that if we enacted the so-called stimulus, the unemployment rate today would be about 7 percent. It’s never wise to over-interpret the meaning on a single […]
read more...The fiscal disintegration of Europe is bad news, though I confess to a bit of malicious glee every time I read about welfare states such as Greece, Ireland, and Portugal getting to the point where they no longer have the ability to borrow enough money to finance their bloated public sectors. This I-told-you-so attitude is […]
read more...The Chairmen of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission have a new draft proposal that is filled, according to Reuters, with “sharp spending and benefit cuts.”
That’s music to my ears, so I quickly flipped to the back of the report in hopes of finding hard numbers showing that the federal government will be smaller in future years.
Much to my chagrin, it turns out that the federal government will increase by about $1.5 trillion between 2010 and 2020 according to the Commission’s numbers.
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