by Dan Mitchell | Jan 26, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Based on new 10-year fiscal estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, I wrote yesterday that balancing the budget actually is very simple with a modest bit of spending restraint. If lawmakers simply limit annual spending increases to 1 percent annually, the...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 26, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
The Congressional Budget Office, as part of The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027, has just released fiscal projections for the next 10 years. This happens twice every year. As part of this biannual exercise, I regularly (most recently here and here) dig...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 22, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I was sitting directly under a television in a Caribbean airport when Trump got inaugurated, so I inadvertently heard his speech. The bad news is that Trump didn’t say much about liberty or the Constitution. And, unlike Reagan, he certainly didn’t have much to say...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 21, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Because of what he’s said on entitlements, infrastructure, child care, and other issues, I’ve been skeptical about Donald Trump. But if recent headlines are true, I may develop a man crush. Here’s a story from The Hill. Donald Trump is ready to take an ax to...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 17, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
Mancur Olson (1932-1998) was a great economist who came up with a very useful analogy to help explain the behavior of many governments. He pointed out that a “roving bandit” has an incentive to maximize short-run plunder by stealing everything from victims (i.e. a 100...
