Outside the President’s general, grow-the-government, increase-the-debt, tax-the-rich budget themes lies a commonsense proposal to use a more accurate measure of inflation when calculating government benefit growth rates and changes in income tax brackets. The purpose of inflation-based adjustments is to account for changes in prices over time. But current inflation …
UPDATE: The official total tax increase in President Obama’s budget is now available in the Treasury Department’s “Green Book.” Treasury scores the total net tax increase from all President Obama’s tax polices at more than $1.1 trillion over 10 years. There was little doubt that President Obama would propose a …
Minimum Wage President Obama’s budget proposes raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour. This would hurt the very workers the President wants to help. When the price of something rises, people—both consumers and employers—purchase less of it. Americans responded to the higher cost of gas by driving less. Businesses …
When the President’s budget comes out Wednesday, it will complete the last piece of the budget puzzle, as the House and Senate have each duly passed a budget according to law. Never mind that the President’s budget is supposed to lead Washington budget discussions, rather than follow. The key question …
During last week’s vote-a-rama in the Senate, Senator Bernie Sanders (I–VT) intended to put Senators from both parties on the record for opposing the adoption of a more accurate and less inflationary measure of calculating cost of living adjustments (COLA) in Social Security: the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI). Chained …
Any budget agreement should include an improvement of the accuracy of Social Security’s annual cost-of-living allowance (COLA) payments. Press reports say this is now on the table. COLAs are designed to protect retirees against inflation eroding the value of their benefits, but the index used to calculate those payments is …
