America faces a fiscal crisis. The burden of federal spending has doubled during the Bush-Obama years, a $2 trillion increase in just 10 years. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Because of demographic changes and poorly designed entitlement programs, the federal budget is going to consume larger and larger shares of America’s […]

President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget today, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s no major initiative such as the so-called stimulus scheme or the government-run healthcare proposal. The bad news, though, is that government is far too big and Obama’s budget does nothing to address this […]

Chalk up another victory – at least on the rhetorical level – for the Tea Party. President Obama will release his fiscal year 2012 budget tomorrow and he’s apparently become a born-again fiscal conservative. Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post story. President Obama will respond to a Republican push for a drastic reduction […]

Proponents of higher taxes are fond of claiming that Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase was a big success because of budget surpluses that began in 1998. That’s certainly a plausible hypothesis, and I’m already on record arguing that Clinton’s economic record was much better than Bush’s performance. But this specific assertion it is not supported […]

I’m in Milan, at the office of the Institute Bruno Leoni, which overlooks the famous Castle Sforza and is almost within shouting distance of the remarkable cathedral. This evening, I’ll be talking about how Italy should balance its budget by limiting the size of government, and my message will be identical to the one I […]

I’m disappointed, but not surprised, to read in the Washington Post that President Obama has decided against any changes to restrain Social Security spending. He’ll still probably subject us to pious and insincere rhetoric about fighting red ink in tonight’s State-of-the-Union address, but it is very revealing that the President is rejecting even the recommendations […]

I’ve already poked fun at Herman Van Rompuy, the nondescript über-bureaucrat who has risen to the non-elected post of European Council President. I’ve mocked Rompuy’s attempts to compete with other European politicians, and I encourage everyone to have a good laugh at this video of Van Rompuy getting eviscerated by a British MEP. We now […]