This week, the House Republican conference met to discuss what their priority will be in connection with any vote to increase the debt ceiling. This is timely since the current suspension of the debt limit expires tomorrow. According to reports of the Republican House caucus meeting, “Members came away with …
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently released statistics on U.S. exports for January, but failed to mention of one of the biggest U.S. “exports”—federal Treasury securities. In 2012, the government financed its deficit spending by selling $382 billion in Treasury securities to foreign buyers. To put that in perspective, …
Do the risks from the Federal Reserve’s trillion-dollar annual stimulus program justify the rewards? That was the central question at Tuesday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing featuring Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Bernanke worked hard to defend the Fed’s quantitative easing policy, but he appears to oversell the rewards by a mile …
While President Obama is traveling across the nation campaigning against sequestration at the very last minute, the economy is working through a tax increase nearly twice the size of the sequestration cuts for fiscal year (FY) 2013. The President knew for more than a year that sequestration was looming and …
President Obama hinted toward at least one aspect of his second-term agenda during yesterday’s inaugural address: more transportation “investment.” No surprise there. Obama’s past budget requests, State of the Union speeches, and the American Jobs Act of 2011 plan have all been peppered with calls for increased federal spending on …
President Obama referred repeatedly to the debt ceiling debate in today’s press conference in a textbook example of Washington “spin,” or the art of selectively ignoring certain facts while portraying others in a particular light. “You don’t go out to dinner and then, you know, eat all you want and …
Budget policy in 2012 was characterized by deficit spending, major increases in the national debt, and a heated debate over the “fiscal cliff.” With just days left for President Obama and lawmakers in Congress to avert a major tax hike, sequestration, and other major policy changes, today we bring you …
