By Daniel J. Mitchell
Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of …
New Congressional Budget Office Numbers Once Again Show that Modest Spending Restraint Would Eliminate Red Ink is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Daniel J. Mitchell
I don’t blame Democrats for wanting to seduce Republicans into a tax-increase trap. Indeed, I completely understand why some Democrats said their top political goal was getting the GOP to surrender the no-tax-hike position. I’m mystified, though, why some Republicans are willing to walk into such a trap. If you were playing chess against someone, [...]
Illinois Downgrade: More Evidence that Higher Taxes Make Fiscal Problems Worse is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Daniel J. Mitchell
In the past 20-plus years, I’ve seen all sorts of arguments for class-warfare taxation.These include: President Obama says he wants higher tax rates for fairness, even if the government doesn’t collect any revenue. Rich leftists say they want higher taxes because they can afford to pay, but then refuse when offered a chance to cough [...]
Soak-the-Rich Taxes Create Happier Nations According to Junk Science Study is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Daniel J. Mitchell
Austan Goolsbee, the former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, had a column in the Wall Street Journal that argues government spending isn’t too high. That’s obviously a silly assertion, as I explain here, here, and here, but I want to focus on what he wrote about tax revenues. Here’s the relevant passage [...]
Austan Goolsbee’s Budget Math Is Wrong – More than 100 Percent of Long-Term Fiscal Challenge Is Government Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Daniel J. Mitchell
My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously flawed candidate, and I hoped Iowa voters shared my concern. In a column for today’s [...]
Mitt Romney, the Value-Added Tax, and America’s European Future is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
By Daniel J. Mitchell
I’ve written before about whether California is the Greece of America, in part because of crazy policies such as overpaid bureaucrats and expensive forms of political correctness, And we all know that California has one of the nation’s greediest governments, imposing confiscatory tax rates on a shrinking pool of productive citizens. So it is hardly [...]
Will the Last Job Creator to Leave California Please Turn Off the Lights? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
House Republicans return to Washington today to vote on a two-month payroll tax extension. If news reports are correct, the bill is likely to fail, leaving in doubt how lawmakers will resolve their differences before the year draws to a close. These year-end squabbles are now routine business in the nation’s capital. At issue in this case is the short-term extension of the payroll tax rate through February. “I believe that two months is just kicking the can down the road. The American people are tired of that. Frankly, I’m tired … More
By Daniel J. Mitchell
To be blunt, I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But my animosity isn’t because OECD bureaucrats threatened to have me arrested and thrown in a Mexican jail. Instead, I don’t like the Paris-based bureaucracy because it pushes a statist agenda of bigger government. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity [...]
Why Are American Tax Dollars Subsidizing a Paris-Based Bureaucracy so It Can Help the AFL-CIO Push Obama’s Class-Warfare Agenda? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
