Dan Mitchell - Page 4

Here’s some completely depressing news. CNBC is reporting that President Obama is putting American taxpayers on the chopping block to bail out Greece’s corrupt politicians. But, to show he doesn’t discriminate, he also encouraged the German Chancellor to rape her

I’ve been battling the Organization for Economic Cooperation for years, ever since the Paris-based bureaucracy unveiled its “harmful tax competition” project in the late 1990s. Controlled by Europe’s high-tax welfare states, the OECD wants to prop up the fiscal systems

One of the biggest threats against global prosperity is the anti-tax competition project of a Paris-based international bureaucracy known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, acting at the behest of the European welfare states that dominate

This new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity discusses a proposal to solve Medicare’s bankrupt finances by replacing an unsustainable entitlement with a “premium-support” system for private insurance, also known as vouchers. [youtube RMJE9jBroUU] This topic is very

All the talk of spending cuts in Washington is fictitious. Even the House Republican Study Committee budget allows spending to increase, on average, by 1.7 percent each year for the next decade. The Ryan budget, which critics deride for its

The Labor Department released its latest job numbers today and they remind me of Clint Eastwood’s 1966 classic, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” The good news is that the economy created 244,000 new jobs, the biggest gain in

As I have explained elsewhere, tax increases are a bad idea – unless you favor bigger government. And I’ve already added my two cents to the tax debate between Senator Coburn and Grover Norquist regarding the desirability of higher taxes.

Republicans are fighting about taxes. But they’re fighting with each other, not Democrats. I’ve already written about this topic once, but the issue has become more heated, and the stakes have become much larger. And this time I’m going to

There hasn’t been much good economic news in recent years, but one bright spot for the economy is that the United States is a haven for foreign investors and this has helped attract more than $10 trillion to American capital

Under current law, Social Security is supposed to be an “earned benefit,” where taxes are akin to insurance premiums that finance retirement benefits for workers. And because there is a cap on retirement benefits, this means there also is a

America is in fiscal peril in the short run because of a 10-year spending binge by Bush and Obama and in the long run because of a toxic combination of entitlement programs and demographics. Congressman Paul Ryan has introduced a

Since it is tax-filing season and we all want to honor our wonderful tax system, let’s go into the archives and show this video from last year about the onerous compliance costs of the internal revenue code. Narrated by Hiwa

By taking advantage of “must-pass” pieces of legislation, Republicans have three chances this year to restrain the burden of government. They didn’t do very well with the ‘CR fight” over appropriated spending for the rest of FY2011, which was their

President Obama didn’t offer a budget plan yesterday. The White House hasn’t released anything beyond a set of talking points. But that’s not terribly surprising since his speech was really the opening salvo of his 2012 reelection fight. And it’s

Responding to widespread criticism of his AWOL status on the budget fight, President Obama today unveiled a fiscal plan. It already is being criticized for its class warfare approach to tax policy, but the most disturbing feature may be a

If you are an average American, today is a great day. According to the Tax Foundation, you have finally worked long enough and earned enough money to satisfy the annual tax demands of federal, state, and local governments. This means

I’m not a big fan of the IRS, but usually I blame politicians for America’s corrupt, unfair, and punitive tax system. Sometimes, though, the tax bureaucrats run amok and earn their reputation as America’s most despised bureaucracy. Here’s an example.

There were reports about 10 days ago that the crowd in Washington reached a budget deal, for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, with $33 billion of cuts. That number was disappointingly low. I wrote at the time that

Just days after the introduction of a very good plan by the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, leaders from the Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives have introduced an even better plan. In a previous post, I

Washington is filled with groups that piously express their devotion to balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility, so it is rather revealing that some of these groups have less-than-friendly responses to Congressman Ryan’s budget plan. The Committee for a Responsible Federal

Forget all this talk about giant “spending cuts” of $6.2 trillion in Congressman Ryan’s budget plan. That’s music to my ears, but it’s also based on Washington’s bizarre budget math – i.e., the screwy system where politicians can increase spending

This Thursday, April 7, Senator Corker of Tennessee will be the opening speaker at the Cato Institute’s conference on “The Economic Impact of Government Spending” (an event that is free and open to the public, so register here if you

The Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, will be unveiling his FY2012 budget tomorrow. Not all the details are public information, but what we do know is very encouraging. Ryan’s plan is a broad reform

A new study from the Adam Smith Institute in the United Kingdom provides overwhelming evidence that class-warfare tax policy is grossly misguided and self-destructive. The authors examine the likely impact of the 10-percentage point increase in the top income tax

London was just hit by heavy riots as part of a protest against the “deep” and “savage” budget cuts of the Cameron government. This is not the first time the U.K. has endured riots. The welfare lobby, bureaucrats, and other

According to news reports, Democrats and Republicans are unlikely to reach any sort of budget agreement before April 8, when a short-term spending bill for the current fiscal year expires. Barring some new development, this could mean a shutdown of

A previous post of mine at International Liberty addressed the issue of whether Republicans were right to trim the IRS’s budget. The following case study of IRS thuggery should convince everyone that the answer is a resounding yes. First, some

I posted yesterday at International Liberty about the stunning political incompetence of Republican Senators, who reportedly are willing to give Obama an increase in the debt limit in exchange for a vote (yes, just a vote) on a balanced budget

Among advocates of limited government, there is growing unease about the fiscal fight in Washington. This is not because anything bad has happened. Indeed, Democrats thus far have been acquiescing – at least on a temporary basis – to conservative

To put it mildly, the Federal Reserve has a dismal track record. It bears significant responsibility for almost every major economic upheaval of the past 100 years, including the Great Depression, the 1970s stagflation, and the recent financial crisis. Perhaps

There’s an interesting debate in the blogosphere about whether President George W. Bush was a conservative (here’s a good summary of the discussion, along with lots of links, though I especially like this analysis since it cites my work.). I’ve

There’s a significant debate now taking place in Washington – largely behind closed doors, but sometimes covered by the media – on whether fiscal conservatives should maintain a rigid no-tax-increase position. One side of the debate features Grover Norquist of

In the past 10 years, the burden of federal spending has skyrocketed, more than doubling from$1.86 trillion in 2001 to an estimated $3.82 trillion this year. President Bush deserves a lot of the blame thanks to the no-bureaucrat-left-behind bill that

One of my many frustrations of working in Washington is dealing with perpetual-motion-machine assertions. The classic example is Keynesian economics, which is based on the notion that you magically create additional economic activity by having the government spend money instead

Here’s a new mini-documentary from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by Natasha Montague of Americans for Tax Reform, that explains why the process of tax competition is a critical constraint on the propensity of governments to over-tax and

A large number of Democrats voted with Republicans in the House yesterday to pass a two-week spending bill that includes $4 billion in cuts compared to what Obama requested. This is a modest victory for the GOP since they can