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 […]

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 […]

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… […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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.”

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…