What will the tax hikes of January 1, 2013, mean to real Americans? Let’s say you are a black woman who has a rewarding, though extremely challenging, career as a registered nurse. You’re nearing retirement—you’re 58, living in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area. After working hard for several decades, you …
This week, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have been trading secret offers on the fiscal cliff. Last night, they met for nearly an hour, and emerged with zipped lips about what progress—if any—they made on averting tax hikes across the board and automatic, deep budget cuts that …
Even as the country deals with the crisis of the “fiscal cliff,” there’s another crisis waiting in the wings. “The second act will occur early in 2013 when the federal government will exhaust its ability to issue debt legally,” writes Heritage’s J. D. Foster. As computer programmers would say, the …
The one glaring omission in President Obama’s fiscal cliff demands for higher rates on top earners is that he’s already raised their taxes. That’s right! When he signed Obamacare into law, he raised tax rates on families earning more than $250,000—his definition of rich. He has done so by including …
The fiscal cliff is getting closer by the day, and it’s not just Washington wonks who are noticing. Even baseball players are on fiscal cliff watch. Government Executive recently looked at the details of Major League Baseball star B.J. Upton’s newly signed five-year contract with the Atlanta Braves. There’s at …
Late Monday afternoon, the House Republican leadership lofted its latest offering to address the fiscal cliff. The kindest conservative response possible to this proposal is that it was “a dud.” It was much worse than a dud, however, as Heritage described in its initial response to the House proposal. Not …
With just a few weeks left in 2012, all eyes in Washington are on Capitol Hill and the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. As usual, Congress and the President are taking highly contentious issues down to the wire before cutting a deal—never a situation that ends well for taxpayers. Federal Reserve Chairman …
Even with the President’s desired tax hikes, publicly held debt would rise by $7.7 trillion in 10 years under the President’s budget. That’s right: Our federal debt would continue growing even if the President gets his way completely in the fiscal cliff negotiations. Until the debate focuses on reining in …
