by Dan Mitchell | Nov 20, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
A couple of days ago, I wrote that Republicans should not be intimidated if the White House threatens a government shutdown. Simply stated, prior shutdowns have yielded meaningful policy victories without causing measurable political damage. This isn’t to say...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 18, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Notwithstanding the landslide rejection of Obama and his policies in the mid-term election, I don’t think this will produce big changes in policy over the next two years. Simply stated, the GOP does not have the votes to override presidential vetoes, so there’s no...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 16, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Laffer Curve, Taxation
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) are congressional bureaucracies that wield tremendous power on Capitol Hill because of their role as fiscal scorekeepers and referees. Unfortunately, these bureaucracies lean to the left. When...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 14, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Health Care
I’ve been fretting for a long time that poorly designed entitlement programs are going to turn America into a decrepit welfare state. Medicare obviously is a big part of the problem, but the fraud-riddled Medicaid program may be even worse. The program is a...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I’ve argued that we’ll get better government if we make it smaller. And Mark Steyn humorously observed, “our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it.” But can these assertions be quantified? I had an email...
