Tax hikes were the focal point of the contentious, failed supercommittee negotiations designed to reduce the national debt by at least $1.2 trillion. Democrats wanted massive tax hikes. Republicans flirted with a tax reform deal lowering rates and closing loopholes. But the fact that tax hikes were at the center …
With the failure of the super committee to recommend at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, Congress’s latest attempt at budget control has collapsed. There will be many analyses of why the process did not work, but it’s worth stepping back to recall what generated the need for this extraordinary …
The congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, called the Supercommittee, announced today that it has failed to meet its statutory duty to recommend deficit reduction to Congress. But the overspending problem is still here. Congress does not get to quit on the American people or stall for more time. …
On October 25, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published an analysis of changes in the distribution of household income between 1979 and 2007. CBO argues that the 62 percent gain in average household income over this 28-year period mostly went to households in the top 20 percent of the income …
In 1969, as President Nixon’s Domestic Policy Council sought ways to spend the forthcoming “peace dividend”—savings projected from the wind-down of the Vietnam War—council members ran into an inconvenient fact: The fiscal windfall did not exist; any post-war “savings” were already committed to a range of new spending, including some …
Where can Congress’ “super committee” find its $1.2-trillion target in savings? The answer is hidden in plain sight. The money could come from Obamacare, to avoid implementing its huge expenses. Repealing the health care law would solve the super committee’s dilemma, yielding more than enough savings to fulfill their mission. …
What’s a supercommittee to do? Total national debt just hit a new record at $15 trillion, an increase of approximately $700 billion since the Supercommittee’s August inception. Hard as its members try, they just do not seem to be able to deliver the required $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction measures. …
