Hatch-Lee Balanced Budget Amendment Is a Win for America

On Mar. 31, Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee introduced a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to make it a constitutional requirement for Washington, D.C., to end our deficit spending and culture of debt. And our national grassroots organization, Pass the Balanced Budget Amendment, is working with them to compel lawmakers to approve this change to [...]

Social Security, Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg, & Sen. Alan Simpson

It’s easy to laugh at former Sen. Alan Simpson’s bizarre malapropisms on Your World With Neil Cavuto. The Wyoming Republican appeard on the Fox News show earlier this week in his capacity as co-chairman of Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Early on in the segment (watch the whole interview [...]

Republicans Are Right to Cut the IRS Budget

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 of allowing the private sector to decide how it gets spent (in an especially bizarre [...]

Tax Competition Is a Powerful Mechanism to Restrain the Greed of the Political Class

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 over-spend.
The issue is very simple. When labor and capital have the ability to escape bad [...]

The Value-Added Tax Must Be Stopped-Unless We Want America to Become Greece

Sooner or later, there will be a giant battle in Washington over the value-added tax. The people who want bigger government (and the people who are willing to surrender to big government) understand that a new source of tax revenue is needed to turn the United States into a European-style social welfare state. But that’s [...]

Defunding Obama’s Union Led Regulatory Army

You might recall that with great fanfare and the slobberingly positive coverage by the Old Media, President Obama made Reagan-like and claimed that he thought it was time to get rid of the regulations strangling American business. Since that time he’s met with businesses and pretended to suddenly be a pro-business, pro-economic growth president. His [...]

Time to Get Rid of the Corporate Income Tax?

Here’s a video arguing for the abolition of the corporate income tax. The visuals are good and it touches on key issues such as competitiveness.

I do have one complaint about the video, though it is merely a sin of omission. There is not enough attention paid to the issue of double taxation. Yes, America’s corporate [...]

If Obama’s Allowed to Lie, I’m Allowed to Be Snarky

I didn’t watch President Obama’s interview with Bill O’Reilly a couple of days ago, and that’s probably a good thing since I probably would have suffered a stroke if I actually heard Obama state, “I didn’t raise taxes once.”
This was such an absurd display of mendacity that even the left-leaning PolitiFact people had no choice [...]

What Should Obama Say Tonight?

Sad to say, what I wrote last year at this time is hardly less apt today:  “The State of the Union Address is ordinarily a bore. It generally consists of a laundry list of proposals, and the list nearly always seems interminable. If Barack Obama has moxie, however, tonight could be different. His State of [...]

The IRS Run Amok

I’m not a big fan of the Internal Revenue Service, but I try not to demonize the bureaucrats because politicians actually deserve most of the blame for America’s complex, unfair, and corrupt tax system. The IRS generally is in the unenviable position of simply trying to enforce very bad laws.

But sometimes the IRS runs amok [...]

Is The American Dream Dead?

On Wednesday, The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal released the 17th edition of the Index of Economic Freedom which catalogues countries and ranks them based on their level of economic freedom.

Among the highlights of this year’s report:

Hong Kong maintained its position at the top of the rankings
While the global economic freedom score increased, the [...]

Reason.tv: David Stockman on TARP, the Fed, Ron Paul and Reagan

At the very start of the “Reagan revolution,” David Stockman exposed the myth that Ronald Reagan and the modern Republican Party are dedicated to small government.
In 1981, the 35-year-old Stockman gave up his Michigan seat in Congress to become Reagan’s budget director. A vocal critic of what he continues to call [...]

Five Things We Should Worry about in 2011

The mid-term elections were a rejection of President Obama’s big-government agenda, but those results don’t necessarily mean better policy. We should not forget, after all, that Democrats rammed through Obamacare even after losing the special election to replace Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts (much to my dismay, my prediction from last January was correct).

Similarly, GOP control [...]

If I Got to Write New Year’s Resolutions for the GOP…

Republicans did a terrible job last time they were in power. The created a new entitlement program for prescription drugs. They further centralized education with the no-bureaucrat-left-behind legislation. They undid the positive reforms of the 1990s with central-panning subsidies and controls for agriculture. And they became earmark junkies as part of their votes to massively [...]

It’s Time To Get Serious About Immigration, Education and Tax Reform.

We are headed for major trouble in these United States.  Realistically speaking, the knight on the proverbial white horse who will ride to our rescue is apt to speak Spanish or Vietnamese or, perhaps, Polish.  An infusion of young, Immigrant citizens (workers to be blunt) are what stands between America and a very bleak future, [...]

America’s Number One! America’s Number One!…Oops, Never Mind

Sometimes it’s not a good idea to be at the top of a list. And now that Japan has announced a five-percentage point reduction in its corporate tax rate, the United States will have the dubious honor of imposing the developed world’s highest corporate tax rate.

Here’s an excerpt from the report in the New York [...]

The Barack Obama Tax Reform Plan?

In my fiscal policy speeches, I sometimes try to get a laugh out of audiences by including a Powerpoint slide with this image. Leading up to this slide, I talk about the Armey/Forbes flat tax and explain that it would eliminate the corrupt internal revenue code and replace it with a simple 10-line postcard. But [...]

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Tax Deal

Compared to ideal policy, the deal announced last night between congressional Republicans and President Obama is terrible.
Compared to what I expected to happen, the deal announced last night is pretty good.

In other words, grading this package depends on your benchmark. This is why reaction has been all over the map, featuring dour assessments from people [...]

Words I Don’t Say Very Often: ‘I Applaud Senate Republicans’

Much to my surprise, Senate Republicans held firm yesterday and blocked President Obama’s soak-the-rich proposal to raise tax rates next year on investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.

I fully expected that GOPers would fold on this issue several months ago because Democrats were using the class-warfare argument that Republicans were holding the middle class hostage in [...]

Breaking – Power to the People! Repeal Amendment Gaining Strength

Yet another unanticipated fastball has been hurled directly at the radical left’s destructive agenda. It is called the Repeal Amendment. Proposed by distinguished Georgetown Constitutional Law Professor Randy Barnett, the Amendment would provide a vehicle whereby states could vote to repeal “Any provision of law or regulation of the United States…”

Close Tax Loopholes? Fine, but Use the Money to Lower Tax Rates

There’s been a lot of heated discussion about various preferences, deductions, credits, shelters, and other loopholes in the tax code. Some of this debate has revolved around whether it is legitimate to refer to these provisions as “tax expenditures” or “subsidies.”

My Cato colleague Michael Cannon vociferously argues that subsidies and expenditures only occur when the [...]

Reason.tv: Richard Epstein on Barack Obama, his former Chicago Law Colleague

As Epstein told Reason in a 1995 interview, “I took some pride in the fact that [Sen.] Joe Biden (D-Del.) held a copy of Takings up to a hapless Clarence Thomas back in 1991 and said that anyone who believes what’s in this book is certifiably unqualified to sit in on the Supreme Court. That’s [...]

Building a Conservative Majority Starts at Home

If conservatives intend to translate Tea Party enthusiasm into actual power they are certainly going to have begin to put like-minded folks into office and not just at the federal level. Every office from dogcatcher, to city offices, to county and state offices needs to be filled with Tea Party advocates. Conservatives cannot expect an [...]

Welcome to Congress

You’ve endured a long hard campaign season, weathered vicious attacks from your opponent, on Election Night, you triumphed, and now you will take your seat in the 112th Congress.  Now the real work begins.

While much of your time from now through your swearing in will be filled with thanking supporters, hiring staff, and retiring campaign [...]

Is the FAIR Tax a Political Liability?

In the past 15 years, I’ve debated in favor of a national sales tax, testified before Congress on the merits of a national sales tax, gone on TV to advocate for the national sales tax, and spoken with dozens of reporters to explain why the national sales tax is a good idea. Even though I [...]

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