According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), measurements of the budget impact of federal credit do not adequately address the risks involved, and may, in some cases, dramatically understate the costs of those programs. Under the current system, federal accounting practices do not “fully incorporate the cost of market …
Members of Congress will vote Wednesday to freeze their salaries through 2013 and impose the same pay limitation on non-military federal workers. The vote in the U.S. House comes just two days after the Congressional Budget Office confirmed that federal workers are paid 16 percent more in total compensation — …
Medicare is in dire need of reform. This week’s chart illustrates why the entitlement program is the largest driver of long-term runaway deficits. With the country’s population aging and increasingly dependent on health care, Medicare’s cost to taxpayers is projected to rise from $522.8 billion in 2010 to $932 billion …
The accounting methodology used to measure the cost to taxpayers of federal loan guarantee programs such as the one that financed defunct solar company Solyndra may dramatically understate the programs’ financial risk to taxpayers. Simply put, the federal government ignores administrative costs and the risks of borrowers defaulting on their …
Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest statistics on income inequality. Economists, bloggers and others have been furiously debating their implications. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Pethokoukis has been bludgeoned by various left-wing bloggers for pointing out that the story of growth of income inequality is …
Lawmakers have recently paid lip service to cutting the corporate tax rate to help boost economic growth. Doing so would be good policy, but it’s important to know why. Information disseminated by both political parties, think tanks, government organizations, media outlets, and political pundits has confused the issue, leading many …
House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) is a man on a mission. He’s making the rounds on Capitol Hill to convince his colleagues, particularly those on the 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, that they should avoid cutting defense spending. McKeon has a point — and it’s one …
During the Republican debate Monday night in Tampa, Florida, Governor Rick Perry (R–TX) said that President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus created zero jobs. CNN “fact-checked” this statement and determined it was false. To review, in 2009 just before the stimulus was enacted, the unemployment rate stood at 7.5 percent. Today—two years …
