New Budget from Republican Study Committee Reduces Burden of Government to...
A couple of weeks ago, I offered some guarded praise for Paul Ryan’s budget, pointing out that it satisfies the most important requirement of fiscal policy by restraining spending – to an average of...
View ArticleBurden of Government Spending Will Be $2 Trillion Higher in 2023 According to...
If you include all the appendices, there are thousands of pages in the President’s new budget. But the first thing I do every year is find the table showing how fast the burden of government spending...
View ArticleBalanced Budget Requirements Don’t Work as Well as Spending Limits
When I first came to Washington back in the 1980s, there was near-universal support and enthusiasm for a balanced budget amendment among advocates of limited government. The support is still there, I’m...
View ArticleIt’s Time for 2016 Candidates to Unveil Plans to Restrain Spending
I’m pleasantly surprised by the tax plans proposed by Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump. In varying ways, all these candidate have put forth relatively detailed proposals that address...
View ArticleEven the OECD Now Admits Spending Caps Are the only Effective Way of...
I’m not a big fan of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That international bureaucracy is controlled by high-tax nations that want to export bad policy to the rest...
View ArticleA Big Fiscal Victory: Constitutional Spending Caps for Brazil!
The good thing about being a libertarian (above and beyond respecting the rights and liberties of other people) is that you can always say “I told you so” when government intervention leads to bad...
View ArticleThe (Spending) Nightmare Before Christmas
Yesterday’s column about “the tax nightmare before Christmas” was based on my fear that politicians will try to impose a value-added tax at some point in the not-too-distant future. Today’s column is...
View ArticleSpending and Tax Limits in (the Country of) Georgia
I wrote two days ago about how the country of Georgia has achieved impressive economic performance thanks to major reforms to reduce the size and scope of government. Indeed, Georgia jumped from #56 to...
View ArticleIn One Chart, Everything You Need to Know about America’s Long-Run Fiscal...
I wrote yesterday about the continuing success of Switzerland’s spending cap. Before voters changed the Swiss constitution, overall expenditures were growing by an average of 4.6 percent annually. Ever...
View ArticleTrump’s Greek-Style Budget Deal
I point out in this interview that the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) was the only big victory for taxpayers this century. It imposed spending caps on discretionary spending and led to a sequester in...
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Everything You Need to Know about Fixing the Budget Mess in Washington
The 21st century has been bad news for proponents of limited government. Bush was a big spender, Obama was a big spender, Trump was a big spender, and now Biden also wants to buy votes with other...
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Bigger Government Will Reduce Living Standards According to New CBO Research
I’ve been warning that the United States should not copy Europe’s fiscal policy, largely because living standards are significantly lower in nations with large welfare states. That’s true if you look...
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Understanding Keynesian Economics
While speaking last week at the Acton Institute in Michigan, I responded to a question about the perpetual motion machine of Keynesian economics. For purposes of today’s column, let’s try to understand...
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