For the umpteenth time, a Washington Post columnist has a turgid piece urging the Republican Party to embrace big government. Normally this type of column is written by a graybeard establishmentarian like David Broder or E.J. Dionne, but Ruth Marcus has decided to play the I-wonder-if-my-enemies-are-so-stupid-that-they’ll-accept-my-suggestion-to-commit-suicide game. Marcus bases her argument on the fact that David […]

There certainly are logical reasons to think that Obama’s policies are dampening economic growth. Investors and entrepreneurs have little reason to produce and take risks, after all, when they know the burden of government is going to climb. Especially when you add uncertainty to the mix. Here’s a chart showing Federal Reserve data on the […]

There’s an encouraging new poll from Gallup which reveals that 72 percent of Americans say something negative when asked for a one-word description of the federal government. Here’s the “word cloud” showing the results. As you can see, this is very similar to the results for a similar poll on how people describe Congress. Not […]

The Economist has a fascinating webpage that allows you to look at all the world’s nations and compare them based on various measures of government debt (and for various years). The most economically relevant measure is public debt as a share of GDP, and you can see that the United States is not in great […]

Here’s a chart from Veronique de Rugy’s new article in The American. Amazing how the problem becomes obvious when you look at real numbers and don’t get trapped into using “baseline” math (as I explain in my latest video).

The new unemployment data has been released and it’s not a pretty picture. Literally and figuratively. This image is all we need to know about the success of President Obama’s big-government policies. The lower line is from a White House report in early 2009 and it shows the level of unemployment the Administration said we […]

In a previous post, I commented on a Wall Street Journal column by former Senator Phil Gramm, calling attention to evidence that the economy is under-performing compared to what happened after previous recessions. This is an important issue, particularly when you compare the economy’s tepid performance today with the strong recovery following the implementation of […]

Former Senator Phil Gramm had a column last week in the Wall Street Journal that deserves two blog posts. This first post highlights Gramm’s analysis showing that the U.S. has been very Keynesian compared to Europe, with numerous efforts to jump start the economy with deficit spending. But Senator Gramm hits the nail on the […]

Our fiscal policy goal should be smaller government, but here’s a video for folks who think that balancing the budget should be the main objective. The main message is that restraining the growth of government is the right way to get rid of red ink, so there is no conflict between advocates of limited government and […]

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) has released a new video listing the key reasons why excessive government spending undermines economic performance. Entitled “Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth,” the video uses macroeconomic and microeconomic analysis to explain why the Bush-Obama policies of bigger government hinder the economy’s long-run vitality.