Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are the two main characters in what is being portrayed as a fight between American “stimulus” and European “austerity” at the G-20 summit meeting in Canada. My immediate instinct is to cheer for the Europeans. After all, “austerity” presumably means cutting back on wasteful government spending. Obama’s definition of “stimulus,” by […]

It’s rather symbolic of what’s wrong with Washington that a commission ostensibly created to promote deficit reduction is seeking a bigger budget, as noted in the Tax Notes story excerpted below. Rather than impose a bigger burden on taxpayers, though, I will generously suggest that they could easily fulfill their mandate by perusing Cato’s Downsizing […]

When even the New York Times is writing articles about the collapse of the European welfare state, you know that the political establishment is finally recognizing the writing on the wall. Recognizing a problem and solving a problem, however, are two different things. They need to use an axe on their budgets, but the examples […]

This video explains that unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs are America’s real red-ink challenge, and reveals that deficits and debt are symptoms of a larger problem: the excessive burden of government spending.

In the latest “Economics 101” video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), Kelly McDonough, a student at American University, explains that unfunded liabilities are America’s biggest red-ink problem, dwarfing the official national debt.

This chart, published in the New York Times and based on work by Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute, shows the states with the most serious debt problems. Maybe I don’t follow state issues closely enough, but I was surprised to find that Alaska had the most debt and that California was not very […]

A new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) discusses the exploding levels of deficits and debt being generated in Washington. In this CF&P Foundation video entitled, “Deficits are Bad, but the Real Problem is Spending,” Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute explains that huge deficits and skyrocketing debt are rightly causing worry, but these are merely symptoms of the real problem of excessive government spending.

Huge deficits and skyrocketing debt levels are creating considerable worry. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity video explains that that government borrowing is excessive – and will get worse in coming decades. But this mini-documentary explains that deficits and debt are merely the symptoms, and a rising burden of government spending is the real problem.

The proposals on Capitol Hill will make government more expensive and increase deficits. Government programs almost always cost more than the preliminary estimates, and projections for healthcare spending have been notoriously inaccurate. Moreover, tax increases will not collect as much revenue as politicians want because of “Laffer Curve” effects. Last but not least, the promised spending restraint is a farce. If congressional forecasts are modified to be more realistic, deficits and debt will climb by at least $600 billion – and perhaps more than $850 billion – over the next 10 years.