Seeking to recast himself as a fiscal conservative, Obama is projected to propose a freeze on discretionary spending - NPR, NEA, “green” jobs, “disaster” relief, foreign aid?  Well, perhaps, but before awarding him the 2010 “Wastrel Recovery” prize, consider the various ways government burdens the economy.  Limiting spending and government growth requires a systemic approach.  Consider the rich array of political means: taxes, regulation, guarantees, entitlements, inflation, monetary misallocation, and “discretionary” spending.  Tax cuts have been a conservative nostrum for…

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Retailers have traditionally provided free shopping bags to their customers as a courtesy. Washington, DC’s city government – known for being less than courteous – is now requiring stores to charge customers five cents for each plastic bag they use at checkout.

The tax is environmentally motivated. Since the city is acting so urgently on shopping bags, that implies that they must be the most urgent environmental threat facing DC. If that’s the case, then DC must be a veritable ecological paradise,…

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The health care bills backed by the President require that individuals buy health insurance if it is not provided by their employer. Is that unconstitutional? It may well exceed Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and other constitutional provisions. But would the courts strike that down as unconstitutional? Probably not, if Obama gets to replace one of the five moderate or conservative justices on the Supreme Court with a more liberal appointee. This is just one of several potential constitutional…

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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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People buy less of something when it becomes more expensive. That’s what economists call the law of demand. It is one of the key drivers of every facet of human behavior. And it’s a simple concept. Easy to understand. Easy to apply.

Or maybe it only seems that way. 366 members of Congress just voted to attract tourists to the U.S. by taxing them $10 when they enter the country. Seriously.

The noise you hear may well be Adam Smith rolling over in…

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Today, Wall Street Journal reports that a Miami court has set meeting Friday between the IRS and UBS to look at where they are in settlement negotiations over the case of the IRS demanding that the Swiss bank turn over the names of more then 50,000 U.S. citizens alleged to be tax evaders.

As I have said in past posts on this issue (in which I have been admittedly hard on UBS-but with a purpose), and as UBS seems to now be reiterating, turning…

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Word has it that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade/energy tax bill is finally hitting the floor of the House, probably this Friday. CEI is decidedly in the “anti” camp. To that end, we released a statement this morning by Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on the legislation and its potential impacts:

Waxman-Markey is a 1,201-page economic suicide note. Those Members of the House who vote for it are voting for long-term economic decline and for turning the United States into a second-rate…

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A different take on possible effects of lawmakers’ rabble-rousing on TARP bonuses. Jeffrey Goldfarb at breakingviews.com says that driving out talented financial executives in the U.S. may be a boon for foreign-owned banks in the U.S. in getting new talent, but most especially for London and its global financial powerhouse, the City. Sarbanes-Oxley already caused financial institutions to flee New York for London. The 90 percent tax rate on TARP bonuses might provide a new impetus for savvy executives to relocate.

Still, with London house…

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Your LibertyWeek hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist welcome you back with a rousing discussion of the much-debated Stimulus to Nowhere and the website where you can evaluate it, StimulusWatch.org. We get an update from the billionaire’s club known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and then lament the lack of income tax integrity among President Obama’s cabinet nominees in Scandal Watch: Daschle Edition. Finally, you can put this Olympic News in your pipe and smoke it.

Listen here. Also, thanks…

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Thanks to CEI colleague Gary Howard for sending along The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons; I’d forgotten all about this capsule version of Hayek’s masterwork.

It’s worth a read when we live in a world plagued all at once not just by a financial crisis and bailout, but by what the Wall Street Journal calls tax-and-spend “Obamanomics” from one candidate and a sweeping, trillion-dollar-plus cap-and-trade energy program by another; an arrogant United Nations agenda to restructure the global economy around green…

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