by Ryan Young
November 17, 2009 @ 9:48 pm
Over at Investor’s Business Daily, Wayne Crews and I make the case against a Value Added Tax. Policy makers have been flirting with the idea as a way to reduce the $1,400,000,000,000 budget deficit.
We argue that a VAT is:
-Complex; it would require roughly doubling the size of the IRS.
-Untransparent; most VATs don’t show up on receipts the way sales taxes do. Taxpayers are clueless as to how much tax they actually pay.
-Vulnerable to special-interest tinkering; politically incorrect goods are routinely…
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by Hans Bader
November 15, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
The healthcare “reform” bill backed by Obama “would reduce senior care,” and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report healthcare experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The bill also “increases medical costs” through inflation, increasing health-care costs to 21.1 percent of GDP by 2019.
The House of Representatives recently passed the bill by a vote of 220 to 215.
According to the federal experts, the bill would likely either cost much more than projected, or result in some “hospitals and nursing homes” deciding to ”stop taking Medicare…
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by Hans Bader
October 26, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson explains in the “Public Plan Mirage” how the so-called “public option” contained in congressional health-care reform bills is just a gimmick: “It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.” Steve Chapman wrote earlier about the “‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam.”
In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year…
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by Ryan Young
October 17, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
President Bush’s $400 billion budget deficits were the largest in history. He deserved every bit of criticism he got for his big-spending ways.
Now comes news that the budget gap is up to $1.4 trillion. President Obama has broken Bush’s record by a trillion dollars. It took him less than a year.
A trillion.
Wow.
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by Hans Bader
October 08, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
Democrats are cheering a Congressional Budget Office decision to “score” the Senate Finance Committee’s version of ObamaCare as not increasing the federal budget deficit. But it pays for some of ObamaCare’s massive cost by expanding state Medicaid programs, shifting its cost to the states. That will radically increase state budget deficits. Moreover, this version of ObamaCare, while cheaper than the four other versions, still relies on mythical cost savings and massive cuts to Medicare that are likely to be canceled…
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by Hans Bader
August 08, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
The federal budget deficit has already risen by $880 billion to an unprecedented $1.3 trillion. Most of the increase is attributable to recent increases in federal spending, including Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which the Congressional Budget Office says will actually shrink the economy in “the long run,” and which ended welfare reform, destroyed thousands of jobs in the export sector, and substituted welfare for productive investments.
Ironically, Obama had campaigned on a promise, since broken, to make a “net spending cut” in…
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Your host Richard Morrison welcomes back returning guest co-hosts Michelle Minton and Jeremy Lott for Episode 54 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with ominous hints of new taxes, California state employees making strike threats and the possible antitrust implications of the Microhoo partnership. We continue with a double-dipping pay scandal, the suppression of dissent in Venezuela and some fully transparent Olympic News.
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by Fran Smith
July 27, 2009 @ 4:13 pm
Robert J. Samuelson has a hard-hitting column in today’s Washington Post on the non-reform elements of the health care reform package. He points out the inherent contradictions in the Administration’s claims that health care can both be expanded to cover the uninsured and reduce costs. As the Congressional Budget Office noted in its devastating assessment, the proposals don’t represent fundamental changes and won’t reduce future health spending.
Samuelson says that in the president’s advocacy for the Democrats’ health care proposal, Obama has demonstrated…
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CEI and the Pacific Research Institute recently co-hosted a Capitol Hill briefing on “California’s Meltdown” - the unprecedented combination of flawed economic, energy and environmental policies that have left the state with a massive budget deficit and facing even tougher times ahead.
Our keynote speaker was Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), a first term member of the House of Representatives but a 22-year veteran of the California state legislature. He was introduced by Director of Energy & Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell:
After his speech…
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by Hans Bader
May 27, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Mortgage lenders are getting even bigger taxpayer subsidies to write off mortgage loans for potentially delinquent borrowers, reports today’s Washington Examiner. “President Barack Obama last week created another subsidy for home lenders, boosting benefits to lenders under the ‘Hope for Homeowners’ program created last summer. Under the 2008 law, Washington guarantees loans if lenders gave favorable terms, including principal reduction. The amendment Obama signed last week heightens cash payments to lenders and loosens standards.”
It’s not just lenders who are getting federal…
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by Hans Bader
May 11, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
The White House predicts the budget deficit will top $1.8 trillion, four times 2008’s record. Obama has sought to blame the deficit on Bush.
But Obama is even more culpable. “Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, held the purse strings that led to the deficit.” And “then-Sen. Obama voted in favor of the 2009 budget.”
To be sure, Bush’s bailouts have also increased the deficit. But Obama supported them and wanted to make them even more expensive. As the Associated…
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On behalf of my distinguished colleague Iain Murray, who is busy speaking at a very important press conference this morning, let me present his prepared remarks on the impending stimulus bill:
Remarks of Iain Murray, Director of Projects and Analysis, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Good morning. Others have already told you what an unutterable waste of money this so-called stimulus package is. I just want to make two points. First, that the American people have been misled about the nature of the bill, and…
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