Last week, The Heritage Foundation co-hosted the launch of the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), a new tool giving insight into the effect that various drivers of entrepreneurship have on economic development in countries around the world. Two crucial findings from the 2012 GEDI emerged at the conference: The drivers of productive entrepreneurship have deteriorated globally.… In almost all countries high-growth entrepreneurship has suffered the most. Ambassador Terry Miller, director of Heritage’s Center for International Trade and Economics, also highlighted a key finding from the forthcoming 2012 Index …
Yesterday, President Obama insisted that a coalition of Senate Republican legislators is playing partisan politics yet again. He told Americans that he knows exactly what small businesses need in order to start productively hiring, and that’s the Small Jobs Act, which is currently before the Senate. The business community does not need President Obama to lecture to them about partisan politics, and they certainly do not need him to do the same about legislation that replaces the private sector with agencies of the federal government to “promote” entrepreneurship, exporting, and …
In an attempt to solve the nation’s current economic woes, legislators remain fixated on a single solution: federal stimulus spending. This is the wrong solution, regardless of the sweet rhetoric used by some Washington lawmakers, and is no economic stimulus. Two days ago the Senate passed (62 to 36) another round of stimulus (this time dubbed a “jobs bill”) which, among other items, extends unemployment benefits for up to one additional year. Unemployment benefits will now extend to two years under federal law which begs the question: Are these benefits …
While legislators finalize yet another round of stimulus spending, they should self-impose a time-out to assess the ineffectiveness of the last two years of government-directed stimulus. After two years of repeated government stimulus programs, the economy remains either in recession or in very slow recovery and yet the federal government continues to tinker with new ‘stimulus’ programs financed with bloated deficit spending. Recent NBER research focusing on the 2008 tax rebate stimulus reveals that there was only a modest per dollar stimulus effect. Indeed, households that found themselves short of …
Despite efforts by Senator Baucus (D-MT) and Senator Grassley (R-IA) to draft a broad and bi-partisan federal legislation as part of another round of federal “stimulus” Senator Reid (D-NV) has now derailed the endeavor. After eliminating most of the tax cuts in the bi-partisan effort put forward by Senators Baucus and Grassley, one of the few “tax cuts” Senator Reid has retained is the payroll tax holiday plan. What is the Payroll Tax Holiday? Sec. 101 of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act outlines a suspension during 2010 …
As President Obama continues campaigning for yet another round of stimulus it appears now that even democrats are beginning to question the soundness of this strategy. This new focus includes a $5,000 tax credit—among other items— for any business that hires a new worker—effective the year the legislation is passed. Of course, the intended effect of this new policy may win some political points for the President and legislators, yet this effect does not override the fact that this maneuver is simply bad economic policy. Creating a tax credit for …
Facing the stark reality of double-digit unemployment and the failure of his first $862 billion economic stimulus, President Barack Obama unveiled his second stimulus plan last month including a mix of subsidies and government-subsidized loans targeted solely at small business. Obama’s Second stimulus will be funded in part by roughly $33 billion from the TARP, that will be then redirected to community banks through the Federal Small Business Administration (SBA). While the aim of promoting job growth through the “acceleration” of small business creation and expansion is laudable, businesses do …
One of the key issues the White House, House, and Senate will be negotiating behind closed doors, is how to pay for President Obama’s $2.5 trillion plan. Reconciling the differences between these two bills will remain a difficult task for legislators particularly as they rely on a different mix of revenue-generators. The following two lists include key revenue-generating mechanisms in both the House and Senate bills as reported by Tax Notes. House-passed Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962): – $460.5 billion over 10 years from a 5.4 percent …
While millions of Americans are more than ready to put 2009 behind them, they should know that Congress failed to reauthorize dozens of tax breaks for individuals and businesses before the Members scurried home for the Holidays. These “expiring provisions” affect every American in one way or another as individuals or businesses. By allowing them to lapse, Congress has enacted tax increases at time when these taxpayers can least afford it. The House has passed legislation (H.R. 4213) that would have extended 63 current tax provisions, but the Senate failed …
As US legislators continue to advance the largest expansion of government control over health care in the US, many Americans may need some comic relief. Although such massive consolidation of federal control over health care is by no means a laughing matter, the following 2-minute clip from a popular BBC Documentary Series “Yes, Minister” illustrates the ridiculousness of the efforts.
