President Barack Obama wants to extend the temporary payroll tax cut into 2012, and congressional Democrats and Republicans agree. They disagree over how to pay for it. Democrats propose raising taxes on the financially successful. This would discourage potential entrepreneurs from starting new enterprises—not the best idea when job creation …
For months now the so-called super committee has been meeting in secret, tasked with delivering a budget-cutting (er… make that deficit-cutting) plan. Many have doubted they could actually reach their minimum target of $1.2 trillion in cuts. Few, if any, details had leaked—until today, when we learned that the Democrats …
If the goal is producing $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in 10-year savings, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction must think big and produce recommendations with real substance. Nothing could be truer than dealing with the health care savings component. Typically, these negotiations are so focused on reaching the savings …
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D–CA) staff released a chart in May that attempted to illustrate how much past Presidents increased the national debt, it collided with a meticulous critique from Politifact that in turn led to a revised chart. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler weighed in as the …
Politico reported what many have feared about the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction in a story titled “Supercommittee operating in secret.” Members of this committee are not disclosing details of negotiations on legislation to the press or the American public. The supercommittee has become supersecret about most of what …
During his Rose Garden speech Monday, the President claimed that his new “debt reduction” plan would provide $2 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. A closer look at the administration’s own numbers, however, suggests the President, well, exaggerated. A realistic assessment—based mainly on table S-6 of the …
President Obama says he wants big corporations, including oil companies, to pay their “fair share” in taxes. His deficit reduction plan includes eliminating what he calls special loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas companies—despite the fact that they’re not specific to the oil and gas industry but the broader …
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Tuesday outlined what he believes are the major problems with the congressional “Super Committee” that will devise a deal to cut the federal budget in the coming months. Gingrich, speaking at the Heritage Foundation, broke the problems down into three categories: constitutional, …
A new report from Cornell economist Richard Burkhauser and his colleagues has once again called into question the claims of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and White House that Obamacare would have only a minimal impact on employers’ decisions to offer their employees health care. The report warns that Obamacare …
