by Dan Mitchell | Jul 14, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Bureaucracy, Government Waste
In 2014, I was outraged that more than 80 percent of senior bureaucrats at the Veterans Administration were awarded bonuses, even though this is the bloated bureaucracy that caused the death of many veterans by putting them on secret waiting lists. This, I argued, was...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 16, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
As I’ve repeatedly explained, governments generally get in fiscal trouble because politicians can’t resist spending lots of money when the economy is buoyant and therefore generating lots of tax revenue. And this is why I’m a huge fan of spending caps. If outlays...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 31, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, States, Taxation
Even though it’s theoretically possible to design a desirable budget deal that includes a tax increase, I’m a big advocate of the no-tax-hike pledge for the simple reason that – in the real world – support for genuine spending restraint and real entitlement reform...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 25, 2016 | Blogs, Crime, Society
While I’m a big fan of federalism, this isn’t because I have a starry-eyed view of non-Washington politicians. Of course there is plenty of grotesque misbehavior by state and local governments. And it’s most troubling when it involves law enforcement and the legal...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 22, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs
Remember the cluster-you-know-what in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina? Corrupt and incompetent politicians in both the city and at the state level acted passively, assuming that Uncle Sam somehow should be responsible for dealing with the storm. And we’ve seen...
