by Dan Mitchell | Jun 27, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
The Congressional Budget Office just released its new long-run fiscal forecast. Most observers immediately looked at the estimates for deficits and debt. Those numbers are important, especially since America has an aging population, but they should be viewed as...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 7, 2019 | Blogs, Economics
The folks at USA Today invited me to opine on fiscal policy, specifically whether the 2017 tax cut was a mistake because of rising levels of red ink. Here’s some of what I wrote on the topic, including the all-important point that deficits and debt are best understood...
by Dan Mitchell | May 15, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Earlier this year, I reviewed new fiscal projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and showed that balancing the budget would be relatively easy if politicians simply limited spending so that it didn’t grow faster than inflation. Though I made sure to...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 23, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Society, Welfare and Entitlements
Every year, the Social Security Administration issues a “Trustees Report” that summarizes the program’s financing. So every year (see 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, etc) I cut through all the verbiage and focus the numbers that really matter. First, here’s the data...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 1, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Back in January, I wrote about the $42 trillion price tag of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. To pay for this massive expansion in the burden of government spending, some advocates have embraced “Modern Monetary Theory,” which basically assumes the Federal...
