A non-profit group that represents members of Texas’s public employee retirement system outlined a host of individuals and organizations that it considers “hostile threats” in a recent presentation. The presentation, which the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems (TEXPERS) posted online, goes on to describe methods of marginalizing those “threats” to …
Francois Hollande won election to the French presidency by promising that more government spending would lead to quick economic growth. He sharply criticized the “austerity”—i.e., sudden spending cuts—proposed by his opponent. A few months later, Hollande has come full circle. In addition to a tax increase that has wealthy French …
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) set out to make a convincing case that lower income tax rates do not strengthen the economy. It failed, but in so doing, it called into question the quality of CRS analysis and the institution’s credibility as non-partisan. The CRS is supposed to provide expert, …
The White House is attempting to use the U.S. military as a bargaining chip to force Congress to raise taxes—the looming “sequestration” budget cuts were never supposed to happen, because Congress was supposed to come to a budget agreement. Now the military faces deep, across-the-board cuts. The President has attempted …
The federal budget is reaching benchmarks of astronomical proportions. Hold your applause, though; the budget trends are increasingly headed in the wrong direction. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the deficit for fiscal year 2012 has surpassed the $1 trillion mark, and it anticipates the Treasury Department will …
In July, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report showing that, as many Americans suspect, there are places where government safety net programs are abused and ripe for reform. GAO focuses on two programs, unemployment insurance (UI) and disability insurance (DI), and the “double dippers” who collect payments from …
