Tom Purcell, After the wild stock market downs and ups last week, I crawled out from under my desk and began Googling plans for a backyard survival bunker. You see, not being an economist or expert about government debt and spending, I have trouble grasping what is going on in the world and when the… [Read More]
Tax Calculator: The federal debt
The federal government must make regular interest payments on the money it has borrowed to finance past deficits – that is, on the national debt held by the public. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the federal government’s net interest payments on that debt will total $229 billion in the 2015 fiscal year. Working… [Read More]
Illegal Immigrants Amnestied By Obama Eligible For Up To $9,182 In Cash Benefits Every Year
Conn Carroll, Illegal immigrants who are given work permits and Social Security Numbers through President Obama’s amnesty programs could get up to $9,182 in cash benefits from the federal government every year, according to a new later from the Congressional Research Service. Requested by an unnamed Senator, the CRS letter details the maximum Earned Income… [Read More]
Yes Obama’s Amnesties Do Increase Deficits
Conn Carroll, Yesterday I asked White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest to justify White House claims that President Obama’s immigration executive actions reduce federal deficits in light of a letter from the Congressional Budget Office showing that they increase on-budget deficits by $8.8 billion. Earnest then claimed that I was reading the letter wrong, and that the… [Read More]
National debt, deficit projected to skyrocket over next decade
Alexa Moutevelis Coombs, A new report published by the Congressional Budget Office predicts continued growth of the nation’s debt and deficit over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, the “Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025,” projects a brief slowdown in the national debt’s growth over the next 3 years, followed by… [Read More]
Low Deficits Don’t Prove That More Spending Is Needed
Kevin Glass, Over the last few years, the Republican Congress and Barack Obama have done a decent job of bringing down the immense deficits created by the recession and the President Obama’s own response to it. The federal deficit is now “only” $468 billion dollars for 2015. The deficit will continue to fall, mostly because… [Read More]
Amnesty Doesn’t Reduce The Deficit
Conn Carroll, President Obama wants Americans to believe that amnesty for illegal immigrants will reduce the deficit. His fiscal year 2016 budget claims, “We will also put our Nation on a more sustainable fiscal path by achieving $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, primarily from reforms in health programs, our tax code, and immigration. … The Congress can also… [Read More]
Michael Barone: Bad Policy, Bad Politics
Word comes that Barack Obama’s budget will, not surprisingly, call for ending the sequester spending limits now in effect. That’s not surprising. White House aides proposed the sequester, but Obama thought it wouldn’t go into effect because Republicans couldn’t accept its sharp limits on defense spending. But with voters recoiling against foreign military involvement, they… [Read More]
Using the Law to Stop the IRS
John Ransom, I was intrigued by an article posted by Dan Mitchell from Cato here over the weekend that in part said that how Republicans treat reform at the Joint Committee on Taxation (and the CBO) as a kind of an IQ test. As Mitchell notes “when JCT does revenue estimates, the bureaucrats grease the… [Read More]
Republicans weigh big changes at U.S. budget referee agency
When Republicans take full control of Congress on Jan. 6, they will face decisions on major changes at the Congressional Budget Office, including possibly naming a new head and changing the rules used to assess the cost of legislation. Conservative groups have been calling for the replacement of CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, who was appointed… [Read More]
Jonathan Gruber Should’ve Been Time’s Person of the Year
Jonah Goldberg, Jonathan Gruber should have been Time’s Person of the Year. The magazine gave it to the “Ebola Fighters” instead. Good for them; they’re doing God’s work. Still, Gruber would have been better. Time’s Person of the Year designation has lost a lot of its stature over recent years. Part of its decline can… [Read More]
Michael Reagan: The American Public Gets Smart
So Jonathan Gruber thinks the American people are stupid, does he? Gruber is a complete nobody to most Americans, but his face should be on a Most Wanted poster in every Post Office. He was one of the chief architects and cheerleaders for ObamaCare, aka the fraudulent Affordable Care Act that Republicans should be working… [Read More]
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