Does 16 years sound too long to lay concrete on a Chicago runway? James Freeman gives readers the lowdown in the WSJ on government’s failure on “Shovel Ready Jobs.” Don’t Sell the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Short Democrats’ reckless $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill also includes a separate plan to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. […]
Biden Is Just Making America’s Unsustainable Spending Even Worse
At the Cato Institute, scholars Jeffrey Miron and Erin Partin explain that Joe Biden’s massive budget is adding to an already unsustainable course of spending set by America’s so-called “entitlements,” Social Security, and Medicare. They write (abridged): This article appeared on Real Clear Policy on May 25, 2021. Current concern about the U.S. fiscal outlook targets recent COVID-19 stimulus […]
How will the U.S. Repay $30 Trillion in Debt?
With Congress considering yet another stimulus bill with the price tag measured in trillions, Victor Davis Hanson offers a sobering reminder of what comes next. The deficit is expected to exceed $4 trillion soon and the national debt may climb to $30 trillion or nearly $100,000 for every American. How will the United States sustain […]
Is Nancy Pelosi Willing to Shut Down the Government for Foreign Aid?
The Trump administration is attempting to cut back $4 billion of foreign aid. Trump promised to cut foreign aid during his campaign for president, and it looks like he is now trying to keep that promise. The move by the administration to freeze, and possibly cancel the aid is angering those in Congress who want […]
Repeat After Me: There Are No Sacred Cows in the Federal Budget
My friend Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at Cato Institute, has politely disagreed with economist Martin Feldstein on the topic of federal budget cuts. Feldstein has called for cuts to entitlement programs, but said “Defense spending and nondefense discretionary outlays can’t be reduced below the unprecedented and dangerously low shares of GDP that the […]
America’s #1 Growth Industry? Government
Would you be surprised to read that our government today has more employees than America’s entire manufacturing sector? Stephen Moore, who wrote Government: America’s Number One Growth Industry 20 years ago, argues that is for this reason America has a $1 trillion deficit and $22 trillion debt. Institutions that lose money year after year after […]
A Federal Pay Raise – a Terrible Idea
Are Democrats making themselves less believable? Opposing President Trump’s wall between the border of the U.S. and Mexico for budgetary reasons while approving a pay raise for every federal bureaucrat, “only exacerbates the Pelosi/Schumer credibility problem,” explains James Freeman in the WSJ. Regardless of the wall debate, a federal pay raise is a terrible idea […]
The Case for Zero-Based Strategy
A consistent theme of those who seek to cut the federal budget is that the government should begin using “zero-based budgeting,” in other words, starting each new budget year from zero. How much should be spent on food stamps, or sugar subsidies, or the military? Who knows, make your argument. For reasons that should be […]
Gregg: No Deficit Hawks, or Even Pigeons Left in GOP Congress
Former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, known as a deficit hawk during his time in government, has written in The Hill this week that not only are there no deficit hawks left in Congress, there aren’t even any deficit pigeons. After the omnibus bill passed by the GOP congress, aided by better-known big spenders, […]
Donald Trump Needs a Populist Plan
Donald Trump’s deregulation, tax cuts, and energy expansion will likely increase federal revenue. That’s the good news. But in what Victor Davis Hanson calls the same old matrix (George W. Bush doubled the national debt and Barack Obama doubled it again) Donald Trump’s “various budget concessions and his own proposed increases in defense spending and infrastructure would likely bleed the […]