by Dan Mitchell | Aug 23, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
It’s not a big day for normal people, but today is exciting for fiscal policy wonks because the Congressional Budget Office has released its new 10-year forecast of how much revenue Uncle Sam will collect based on current law and how much the burden of government...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 16, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Remember Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, the 1993 comedy classic about a weatherman who experiences the same day over and over again? Well, the same thing is happening in Japan. But instead of a person waking up and reliving the same day, we get politicians pursuing the...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 12, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
The Congressional Budget Office has just released the 2016 version of its Long-Term Budget Outlook. It’s filled with all sorts of interesting data if you’re a budget wonk (and a bit of sloppy analysis if you’re an economist). If you’re a normal person and don’t want...
by Dan Mitchell | May 25, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I wrote last year about why Puerto Rico got into fiscal trouble. Like Greece and so many other governments, it did the opposite of Mitchell’s Golden Rule. Instead of a multi-year period of spending restraint, it allowed the budget to expand faster than the private...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 24, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
As a general rule, I’m not overly concerned about debt, even when looking at government red ink. I don’t like deficit and debt, to be sure, but government borrowing should be seen as the symptom. The real problem is excessive government spending. This is one of the...