By the time you read this post, it’s possible that the buffoons in Washington will have announced a deal on the fiscal cliff. Or perhaps we’ll have another month or more of fake drama. Regardless of when the deal is announced, I fear the final result will be some sort of victory for Obama, with […]

The politicians claim that they are negotiating about how best to reduce the deficit. That irks me because our fiscal problem is excessive government spending. Red ink is merely a symptom of that underlying problem. But that’s a rhetorical gripe. My bigger concern is that politicians are prevaricating. They’re really talking about higher taxes in […]

Earlier this year, I explained that tax revenues would soon climb above their long-run average of 18 percent of GDP, even if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were made permanent. In other words, the nation’s fiscal challenge is entirely the result of a rising burden of government spending. Even though the data on tax […]

If done well, an image can say a thousand words. The Heritage Foundation shows us what Obama has in mind when he talks about a “balanced” plan. This chart, while horrifying and visually powerful, actually understates the case against Obama. The President is not proposing to cut spending by $400 billion. He’s only proposing to […]

Washington frustrates me. The entire town is based on legalized corruption as an unworthy elite figure out new ways of accumulating unearned wealth by skimming money from the nation’s producers. But one thing that especially irks me is the way people focus on the trees and forget about the forest. Politicians and journalists are now […]

I appeared on CNBC yesterday to talk about the “fiscal cliff” and the potential impact on economic performance. You won’t be surprised to learn that I’m mostly concerned with how the issue gets resolved. Yes, there is some temporary uncertainty that is probably making markets skittish, but I’m much more worried about Obama bullying the […]

I took part today in a nine-person debate on the fiscal cliff for U.S. News & World Report. We were all asked, “Is Going Over the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Necessarily the Worst Outcome?” I said “no” because there are worse options, and I specifically explained that Obama’s class warfare agenda is even more destructive. Readers are […]

Augmented by some amusing cartoons, I’ve already warned that the hysteria about the fiscal cliff is basically a ploy by the politicians to extract more revenue to finance bigger government. Elaborating on this concern, I wrote a column for today’s New York Daily News. I started with a description of the three issues that are […]