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.
read more...I don’t want to give anyone indigestion, but The Hill is reporting that GOPers on Capitol Hill want to require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, which is one of the key provisions of Obamacare. Speaking to more than 100 students at American University, Cantor said, “What you will see us do is to push […]
read more...Here’s a passage from a speech by a well-known political figure, but it wasn’t Ronald Reagan, Ron Paul, or Milton Friedman. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief […]
read more...There’s been a lot of heated discussion about various preferences, deductions, credits, shelters, and other loopholes in the tax code. Some of this debate has revolved around whether it is legitimate to refer to these provisions as “tax expenditures” or “subsidies.”
read more...I haven’t commented much on earmarks, but an oped in today’s Washington Post was has goaded me into action. A former Reagan Administration appointee (the Gipper must be spinning in his grave), who now makes a living by selling our money to the highest bidder, made several ridiculous assertions…
read more...I’ve already commented on the proposal from the Chairmen of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission (including a very clever cartoon, if it’s okay to pat myself on the back). Now we have a similar proposal from the so-called Debt Reduction Task Force. Chaired by former Senator Pete Domenici and Clinton Administration Budget Director Alice Rivlin, the Task Force proposed […]
read more...I have a column in today’s New York Post, where I pull no punches as I comment on how the rest of the world is increasingly worried about Obama’s policies of easy money and deficit spending. I note that other nations often are guilty of the same mistakes, but that’s no excuse for America sinking to […]
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