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Understanding Social Security Benefit Adequacy: Why Benefit Growth Should Be...
Many federal policy makers are aware that the Social Security program faces a substantial financing shortfall requiring correction. This would involve either increasing program taxes or slowing the...
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January's Employment News
Today we received the first jobs report of 2013, pending any future revisions. Every month, Matt McDonald at Hamilton Place Strategies produces a cheat sheet summarizing the key statistics and trends....
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Upping the Dosage Would Kill the Patient
As former Council of Economics Advisers (CEA) Chair Greg Mankiw has analogized, the Obama Administration’s policy response to the Great Recession is like medicine offered to a sick patient. The...
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2013 CBO Baseline Shows Areas Of Concern
The Congressional Budget Office released their 2013 outlook of the federal budget for the next decade, which projects that today's historically huge deficits will slowly shrink to merely being very...
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Ten Things the Latest CBO Report Tells Us about Federal Finances
Earlier this week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its updated outlook for the federal budget. Here are ten lessons it teaches us about the troubled state of federal finances.Federal debt...
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A Misleading Financial Outlook
In Saturday’s weekly radio address, President Obama repeated the assertion that the federal government is “more than halfway” to the required cumulative deficit reduction to stabilize debt ratios. He...
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Are We Underestimating the Social Security Shortfall?
Last month the New York Times printed an op-ed piece (“Social Security: It’s Worse than You Think”) by professors Gary King of Harvard and Samir Soneji of Dartmouth. Their piece asserted that the...
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The Incredible Lowering of the Medicare Drug Benefit Baseline
This week, President Obama took credit for the slowdown in health care cost inflation, proclaiming in his State of the Union address that “[a]lready, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the...
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Expanding Medicaid: The Conflicting Incentives Facing States
Recent decisions by individual states concerning the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s now-optional Medicaid expansion have been much in the news of late. Today the Mercatus Center is publishing my...
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What Obama’s Sequester Claims Says About the State of Public Administration
The sequester that began this month is likely to prove far more damaging to the credibility of the Obama Administration than the economy. The focus of Administration rhetoric has been maximizing public...
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New Fed Data: Economy Drowning in Federal Debt
Each quarter, the Federal Reserve publishes the “Flow of Funds” accounts, which provide a summary of the conditions of the consolidated balance sheet of the United States and its constituent parts:...
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Understanding the Ryan and Murray Budgets
Last week House Republicans, under the leadership of Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, unveiled their draft budget for the coming fiscal year. Senate Budget Committee Democrats also released their...
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The Rationale for the 'Flimflam' Offensive Against Chairman Ryan
There is nothing more frustrating to progressive commentators than seeing Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2014 Budget Proposal afforded the respect it is due by nonpartisan observers. That’s why New York Times...
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March Job Trends
Today's employment situation report is a dismal one, coming in far below expectations. Every month, Matt McDonald at Hamilton Place Strategies produces a cheat sheet summarizing the key statistics and...
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How Government Can Effectively Produce Better, Faster Cheaper Results
[This is the first in a multi-part series on streamlining government services]Partisan officials, policymakers and commentators remain transfixed by how much government should tax, spend and...
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The Obama Budget’s Long-Run Savings Delusion
Among the spurious contentions made by President Obama’s FY 2014 Budget submission, none is bigger that the claim that enactment of its policy proposals in full would completely erase the long-run U.S....
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Economists For Keeping The Charitable Deduction
The federal income tax code is saddled with inefficient exemptions, deductions and credits. Streamlining them is an important policy goal, and Senator Max Baucus and Congressman Dave Camp, the...
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The Role Of Leaders in Improving Bureaucratic Efficiency
[This is the second in a multi-part series on streamlining government services. See part 1 here.]For thirty years I have labored on behalf of a cause for which no significant natural constituency...
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Government Spending Enthusiasts’ Three Sleights of Hand
Those who believe more government spending is the antidote to the current economic malaise generally rely on one or more assumptions to defend their nonsensical position: (1) the future costs of...
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Principles For Regulatory Rationality
[This is the third in a multi-part series on streamlining government services. See part 1 here. See part 2 here.]The progressives and muckrakers undoubtedly had it right at the turn of the 20th...
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