by Dan Mitchell | Jul 13, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
My former colleague at the Heritage Foundation, Brian Riedl, has a column in the Wall Street Journal today which discusses the degree to which President Bush’s policies can be blamed for current deficits. I think Brian is too easy on Bush’s terrible record as a big...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 11, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
Much of the economic debate in Washington revolves around the silly Keynesian notion that politicians can stimulate an economy by borrowing money from the private sector and using the funds to make government bigger. That didn’t work for Hoover and Roosevelt during...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 6, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs
I’ve been very dismissive of supposed European “austerity” initiatives, in part because the term seems to describe politicians who want tax-financed government spending rather than Keynesian-style deficit-financed government spending. But what really matters is...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 29, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
President Bush was a big spender, but President Obama is taking profligacy to the next level. In his first year in office, Obama pushed through a pork-filled “stimulus” that was supposed to increase jobs and prosperity (at least according to the discredited Keynesian...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 25, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
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”...
