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 …
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) stirred controversy last year when it released a study claiming that tax rates do not influence economic growth. Predictably, those who favor higher taxes used the flimsy report to bolster their backward argument that raising tax rates, as Congress and President Obama did with the …
China’s 2012 official economic numbers are due out at the end of this week and I, among others, will gently suggest that they aren’t particularly accurate. Sometimes, however, it isn’t Beijing that can’t get basic economic facts right. Sometimes it’s us. A lot of foreigners believe China is contributing a …
The latest trade deficit figures are out, and like always, most reporters fail to accurately explain what these numbers mean. During the past 10 years, there has been a clear relationship between trade deficits and U.S. economic growth. Most news coverage got the relationship backwards. Consider the following reports: “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 …
You may be wondering whether anyone, after all, went over the fiscal cliff at the end of December. News reports about Congress’s last-second legislation certainly conveyed the impression that everyone stepped away from that fateful edge. However, if you are under the age of 35, that rushing sound you hear …
Philip Ewing, in an article on Politico Pro about the vice presidential debate, asserts that comments about defense spending by Representative Paul Ryan (R–WI) signal that Governor Mitt Romney could abandon his pledge to maintain the defense budget at 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Ewing is jumping to …
