Posts belonging to Category Tax and Budget Policy

Even Keynesian Accounting Can’t Find All That ‘Stimulus’

By Alan Reynolds

From January 2009 to the present, President Obama and his team have repeatedly made grandiose claims about the economic benefits of shoveling money at shovel-ready projects or green jobs.  “It is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility,” said the President.   He also claimed that lavish spending [...]

Peter Ferrara’s Too-Nice Attack on Phony Washington Budget Deals

By Daniel J. Mitchell

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation explains that Washington budget deals don’t work because politicians never follow through on promised spending cuts. This is a very relevant argument, since President Obama’s so-called Deficit Reduction Commission supposedly is considering a deal featuring $3 of spending cuts for every [...]

Are These Examples of Washington Corruption?

By Daniel J. Mitchell

The “appearance of impropriety” is often considered the Washington standard for corruption and misbehavior. With that in mind, alarm bells began ringing in my head when I read this Washington Times report about Jacob Lew, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. A snippet:
President Obama’s choice to be the government’s chief budget officer [...]

Obamacare Complexity vs Free Market Simplicity

By Daniel J. Mitchell

Free markets are characterized by voluntary exchange between buyers and sellers. Mapping that relationship is absurdly simply, as this image indicates.

Indeed, the only reason I even bothered to include that image was for purposes of comparison. Here is a new flowchart prepared for the Joint Economic Committee showing the healthcare system under Obamacare.

It’s worth noting, [...]

No, There Are NOT “Five Job Seekers for Every Job Opening”

By Alan Reynolds

The Washington Post published “5 Myths about unemployment” by Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.  The article is indeed full of myths, though not in the intended sense. 
“There are now roughly five unemployed people for every available job,” says Ms. Shierholz,  adding “there literally aren’t jobs for four of every five unemployed workers.” That [...]

How Big Were the Bush Tax Cuts?

By Chris Edwards

The debate on extending the Bush tax cuts has begun. Those opposed to extension argue that the cuts would greatly increase the federal deficit.
The first thing to note is that extending all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would lose the government about $216 billion a year in 2012 and rising amounts after that (see page 16). By contrast, [...]

How Big Were the Bush Tax Cuts?

By Chris Edwards

The debate on extending the Bush tax cuts has begun. Those opposed to extension argue that the cuts would greatly increase the federal deficit.
The first thing to note is that extending all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would lose the government about $216 billion a year in 2012 and rising amounts after that (see page 16). By contrast, [...]

Controversy? Or Confidence Game?

By Jim Harper

While Washington, D.C. and the newstalk-osphere are gripped by the story of forced-out USDA bureaucrat Shirley Sherrod, six appropriations subcommittees have advanced FY 2011 spending bills that will collectively spend over $4,000 per U.S. family. (They’ll get to the big ones later.)
Are you paying attention? What are you paying attention to?
There are important social [...]