by Dan Mitchell | Dec 24, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Yesterday’s column about “the tax nightmare before Christmas” was based on my fear that politicians will try to impose a value-added tax at some point in the not-too-distant future. Today’s column is about the spending nightmare that is already happening. The bottom...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending
I’m not a big fan of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That international bureaucracy is controlled by high-tax nations that want to export bad policy to the rest of the world. As such, the OECD frequently advocates policies that...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 1, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
I’m pleasantly surprised by the tax plans proposed by Marco Rubio, Rand Paul,Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump. In varying ways, all these candidate have put forth relatively detailed proposals that address high tax rates, punitive double taxation, and distorting tax...
by Dan Mitchell | May 25, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
When I first came to Washington back in the 1980s, there was near-universal support and enthusiasm for a balanced budget amendment among advocates of limited government. The support is still there, I’m guessing, but the enthusiasm is not nearly as intense. There are...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 12, 2013 | Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
If you include all the appendices, there are thousands of pages in the President’s new budget. But the first thing I do every year is find the table showing how fast the burden of government spending will increase. That’s Table S-1 of the budget, and it shows that the...