by Dan Mitchell | Dec 6, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
In his latest Bloomberg column, Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute notes that research from places such as Harvard and the International Monetary Fund confirms that spending restraint is the way to successfully reduce red ink – and it’s also the way to...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 3, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this morning that the unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent last month. As you can see from the chart, the White House claimed that if we enacted the so-called stimulus, the unemployment rate today would be about 7 percent....
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 2, 2010 | Bailouts, Big Government, Blogs
The fiscal disintegration of Europe is bad news, though I confess to a bit of malicious glee every time I read about welfare states such as Greece, Ireland, and Portugal getting to the point where they no longer have the ability to borrow enough money to finance their...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 1, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
The Chairmen of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission have a new draft proposal that is filled, according to Reuters, with “sharp spending and benefit cuts.” That’s music to my ears, so I quickly flipped to the back of the report in hopes of finding hard numbers showing...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 22, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Taxation
There’s been a lot of heated discussion about various preferences, deductions, credits, shelters, and other loopholes in the tax code. Some of this debate has revolved around whether it is legitimate to refer to these provisions as “tax expenditures” or “subsidies.”...
