On their respective blogs, economists Mike Konczal and Paul Krugman criticize the widely cited finding that a nation’s debt above 90 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) slows economic growth. They presume that the limitations of one study by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff mean that its warning can …
While President Obama keeps calling for more taxes, today’s figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show the tax hike he signed into law just last month will provide no lasting improvement in the federal government’s fiscal outlook. This is because spending continues to grow, driving deficits back toward the …
More than 41 percent of the U.S. population is “enrolled in at least one federal assistance program,” adding tens of billions of dollars to the national debt each year, according to new research by The Heritage Foundation’s Patrick Tyrrell and William W. Beach. That means that a startling number of …
Medicare is getting quite a bit of attention lately. And rightly so. Out-of-control entitlement spending contributes directly to long-term federal deficits, which will accelerate over the course of the next few decades, according to Heritage’s Federal Budget in Pictures and figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office. By 2030, Medicare …
President Obama’s budget proposes a sharp increase in entitlement spending and more outlays for domestic programs and interest on the national debt. Defense spending, meanwhile, takes a backseat to Obama’s other priorities. The long-term outlook: Obama would make defense the lowest budget priority among the major categories of spending in …
On Wednesday, the House Budget Committee convened a hearing to explore the fiscal consequences of Obamacare. Lawmakers heard from Richard Foster, Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); James Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center; and Dennis Smith, Secretary of the Wisconsin …
The new Congress has made spending reduction a priority. This week, Members are getting to work on that promise. Yesterday, by a vote of 245–189, the House passed legislation to fully repeal Obamacare. The new health law represents unsustainable new spending, including an expansion of Medicaid and the creation of …
Next week, the House of Representatives will vote on H.R. 2, a measure to repeal Obamacare in its entirety. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today released a report stating that repealing the health care law would increase the deficit by $145 billion between 2012 and 2019. This report is based …
As the new Congress settles in, the House of Representatives prepares to vote on January 12 on a measure to repeal Obamacare. Proponents of the health care law claim that repeal would increase the federal deficit and that a vote to kill Obamacare without offsetting the “cost” is hypocritical. This …
In light of the impending Obama Tax Hikes, Mercatus Center senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy created the chart to the right illustrating Hauser’s Law which Standford University professor Kurt Hauser recapped in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal: Over the past six decades, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP …
