In the last four years, the federal government has both cut government revenue and dramatically increased spending. It’s an unsettling combination, the precise long-term results of which will be debated by economists like myself until the cows come home. But at least one thing is already certain: The fiscal impact of all the federal COVID-19 […]
While some economic pundits go gaga about the $1.9 trillion stimulus package (which is, by the way, a mere .6 trillion more than the fortunes of the world’s billionaires increased over a year’s worth of pandemic-fired profit taking), let’s remember that all this largesse comes with a large price tag for our children, their children, […]
There are times when Americans are concerned with the national debt. Now is not one of them. US President Joe Biden has unveiled another significant spending proposal and there is the predictable blowback from Republicans on how it will be paid for. Biden announced on Wednesday that his $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan, if passed as proposed, will be […]
McConnell cites tax increases and national debt Surprise, surprise, Republicans are worried about the national debt again. Their strategy going into the mid-terms is going to be to rail against tax hikes and debt. It worked to swing the House in Obama’s first mid-term, we’ll have to wait and see if it works again. Wed […]
On March 15, Joe Biden signed into law the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted in favor of this legislation because only 9% of it had anything to do with the Wuhan China Virus. This, in light of the fact that a trillion dollars were not […]
I was cleaning my office the other day when I came across a rare piece of history. It was a page proof — a printout of an editorial page generally used for editing — dated Nov. 13, 2010, and it featured an editorial I wrote in support of the Simpson-Bowles plan to reduce the nation’s […]
One of the most startling intellectual and political transformations of my lifetime concerns deficit spending. Politicians used to thunder about the dangers of the deficit. Sometimes they even did something about it. But the federal deficit this year is projected to be $3.4 trillion — even higher than last year’s record-breaking $3.1 trillion — and […]
Once upon a time, not that long ago actually, the federal deficit and national debt mattered. In 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said, “We’re just taking out a credit card from the Bank of China, essentially. We’re borrowing that money. And we’ve added $4 trillion worth of debt since George Bush took office. Keep in mind, just […]
Forty years ago, as a second-term senator, Joe Biden voted for the tax cuts that allowed President Reagan to declare an end to big government. Later, in the 1990s, Biden supported a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and talked of the need to reduce the long-term costs of Social Security and Medicare. As president, […]
Late last week, the federal government of the United States issued its annual financial report. The report arrived, as it usually does, to deafening silence. Meanwhile, the American Rescue Plan of 2021 and related legislation under consideration have only amplified the disturbing trends evident in the results for fiscal year 2020. From 2015 to 2019, […]
