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Republican Sellout Watch
Grousing about the GOP’s timidity in the battle against big government will probably become an ongoing theme over the next few months, and let’s start with two items that don’t bode well for fiscal...
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Even Studies from the European Central Bank Show Spending Restraint Is Key to...
I’m not a big fan of central banks, and I definitely don’t like multilateral bureaucracies, so I almost feel guilty about publicizing two recent studies published by the European Central Bank. But when...
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I’m Shocked, Shocked, that Obama Wasn’t Telling the Truth about the Cost of...
This won’t surprise anyone with a pulse, but Obama, Reid, Pelosi, et al, were disingenuous about the costs of Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office has released revised numbers and government-run...
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Yet Another Scheme to Fleece (and Monitor) Americans: A Tax on “Miles Driven”
I commented yesterday about the silly idea, being promoted by a few politicians, to impose a tax on toilet paper. That post mostly was an opportunity to have some fun mocking greedy government because...
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Two More Excellent Political Cartoons
I praised Michael Ramirez a few days ago for his clever political cartoons, so it’s time to “spread the wealth” and draw attention to a couple of superb cartoons by Chuck Asay (I think his hometown...
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Debunking the Left’s Tax Burden Deception
I testified earlier today before the Joint Economic Committee about budget process reform. As part of the Q&A session after the testimony, one of the Democratic members made a big deal about the...
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New CBO Numbers Confirm – Once Again – that Modest Spending Restraint Can...
The Congressional Budget Office has just released the update to its Economic and Budget Outlook. There are several things from this new report that probably deserve commentary, including a new estimate...
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CBO’s Witch-Doctor Economics and Gypsy Forecasting
I’ve criticized the Congressional Budget Office for generating biased and inaccurate numbers. These are the clowns, after all, who say deficit spending stimulates the economy in the short run but they...
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Exposing Dishonest Washington Budget Math with John Stossel
About this time last year, with the White House about to release a new budget, the press was filled with stories about President Obama being a tough-minded budget cutter. Once the budget was released,...
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In the Entire World, Is there Anybody Who Is Suprised that Obamacare Is...
Washington is filled with people who exaggerate, prevaricate, dissemble, and obfuscate. And those are the people I like. The ones I don’t like are much worse. That’s why, during the Obamacare debate, I...
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Government Cost-Overruns, the English Version
Many of us know that Obamacare will be very expensive and that supporters, aided and abetted by the Congressional Budget Office, deliberately low-balled the cost estimates. I’ve also cited my Cato...
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For the Sake of Intellectual Integrity, Republicans Should Not Cite the CBO...
I’ve commented before how the fiscal fight in Europe is a no-win contest between advocates of Keynesian deficit spending (the so-called “growth” camp, if you can believe that) and proponents of higher...
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Another Victory for Good Fiscal Policy
Because I’ve been sharing good news recently – which definitely is not my normal style, I joked the other day I must be on coke, in love, or rolling in money. For example: The fiscal cliff was a...
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CBO’s Tax Expenditure Report Uses Wrong Benchmark, Overstates Loopholes
As a long-time advocate of tax reform, I’m not a fan of distortionary loopholes in the tax code. Ideally, we would junk the 74,000-page internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat...
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Crying about Obamacare, but also Laughing at Obamacare
I asked back in September whether all the bad news about Obamacare meant it was time to feel sorry for President Obama and other statists. Some people apparently didn’t realize I was being sarcastic,...
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Proper Staffing and Reform of JCT and CBO Is an IQ Test for the Republican Party
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) are congressional bureaucracies that wield tremendous power on Capitol Hill because of their role as fiscal scorekeepers and...
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Why Do some Advocates of Small Government Want to Keep a Democrat Appointee...
Since I’ve accused the Congressional Budget Office of “witch doctor economics and gypsy forecasting,” it’s obvious I’m not a big fan of the organization’s approach to fiscal analysis. I’ve even argued...
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Why “Dynamic Scoring” Is far more Accurate than “Static Scoring” when...
I’ve written several times about the importance of appointing sensible people to head the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). Heck, making reforms to these Capitol...
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Chairmen of House and Senate Budget Committees Propose Good Budgets,...
Earlier this year, President Obama proposed a budget that would impose new taxes and add a couple of trillion dollars to the burden of government spending over the next 10 years. The Republican...
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America’s Greek Fiscal Future
Last September, I wrote about some very disturbing 10-year projections that showed a rising burden of government spending. Those numbers were rather depressing, but a recently released long-term...
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