It appears that the government shutdown, which technically is a battle over annual appropriations legislation for so-called discretionary spending, is going to drag on for a while. The Obama Administration has shown zero willingness to negotiate, even though Republicans have made a series of offers to resolve the conflict. And the longer this fight lasts, […]

I haven’t written much about the budget fights over a government shutdown, Obamacare, the continuing resolution, and the debt limit for the simple reason that the battles are mostly about politics and strategy rather than policy. At the risk of oversimplifying, here’s what’s happening. On one side are those who want to use the debt […]

As we get closer to the debt limit, the big spenders in Washington are becoming increasingly hysterical about the supposed possibility of default if politicians lose the ability to borrow more money. I testified yesterday to the Joint Economic Committee on “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship” and I explained (reiterating points I made back […]

About two weeks ago, while making an important point about the Laffer Curve, here’s what I wrote about the fiscal disaster in Detroit. Detroit’s problems are the completely predictable result of excessive government. Just as statism explains the problems of Greece. And the problems of California. And the problems of Cyprus. And the problems of […]

I’m thinking of inventing a game, sort of a fiscal version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Only the way it will work is that there will be a map of the world and the winner will be the blindfolded person who puts their pin closest to a nation such as Australia or Switzerland […]

According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States has a terrible long-run fiscal outlook. Assuming we don’t implement genuine entitlement reform, the only countries in worse shape are the United Kingdom and Japan. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, meanwhile, also has a grim fiscal outlook for America. According to their numbers, […]

In my never-ending crusade to push for the right kind of austerity, I appeared on RT to pontificate on the merits of limited government. We got to cover a lot of material, so here’s some augmenting material. 1. The right kind of “austerity” is less government spending, which is why I’m very frustrated that the […]

For those who haven’t followed this issue, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an influential paper in 2010 arguing that government debt above 90 percent of GDP was associated with weaker economic performance. It turns out that the Rogoff and Reinhart made a mistake in their excel spreadsheet and this error was publicized in a […]

In an ideal world, Congress would not raise the debt limit. This would force – automatically and immediately – a balanced budget. More important, it would produce a meaningful reduction in the burden of government spending. And contrary to hyperbole from defenders of the status quo, it doesn’t mean default since the federal government collects […]

I’ve frequently commented on Europe’s fiscal mess and argued that excessive government spending is responsible for both the sovereign debt crisis and the economic stagnation that plagues the continent. But it does seem that things have calmed down, so the readers who have submitted questions about whether the fiscal crisis has ended obviously are paying […]