Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation explains that Washington budget deals don’t work because politicians never follow through on promised spending cuts. This is a very relevant argument since Obama’s so-called Deficit Reduction Commission supposedly is considering a deal featuring $3 of spending cuts for every $1 […]

Professor Larry Kotlikoff has some very sobering analysis of America’s fiscal status. Instead of just looking at current deficits, he examines the “present value” of all future expenditures and revenues. Simply stated, America is in worse shape than Greece because of the long-term burden of entitlement programs. Kotlikoff’s conclusion that America is “one foot away […]

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which means a big tax increase in 2011. Tax rates for all brackets will increase, the double tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, the child credit will shrink, the death tax will be reinstated […]

The Washington Examiner explains that America’s Founders would be aghast to see how modern politicians have accumulated $trillions of debt. That may be true, but the editorial is nonetheless unsatisfactory because it’s quite likely that the founders would be even more horrified by the amount of spending. After all, the Constitution permitted debt, but Article […]

The Wall Street Journal ponders the mini-tax revolt among some Democrats, ranging from Kent Conrad in the Senate to Jerrold Nadler in the House, who are suddenly making arguments that it would be a bad idea to allow higher tax rates in 2011 (because the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts automatically expire). I’m not holding […]

Redistributionists hate the flat tax, and this sentiment is widely shared by other statists. These proponents of big government want the tax system to to punish success and generate loot that can be used to buy votes (though they don’t seem to understand that if they punish success too much, they won’t actually get any additional money […]

The Financial Times reports that the number of Americans giving up their citizenship to protect their families from America’s onerous worldwide tax system has jumped rapidly. Even relatively high-tax nations such as the United Kingdom are attractive compared to the class-warfare system that Obama is creating in the United States. I run into people like […]

Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent editorial on fiscal policy, and not just because they quote me. They understand that America’s fiscal problem is spending rather than deficits. They also realize that tax increases are completely misguided since the economy will be less vibrant and politicians will feel more leeway to spend money. The net […]

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 spender, but he is 100 percent correct in his […]

I like poking fun at French politicians for being hopeless statists, and I always assumed that French voters shared their collectivist sympathies. But according to new polling data reported by the Financial Times, there may be a Tea Party revolt brewing in France. Among major European nations, the French are most in favor of smaller government. […]