Some things are as predictable as winter snow in Buffalo, and one of them is a column on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page about the evils of taxation whenever important people in Washington start talking about raising taxes. In this case, the important people are the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, a task …
Continue reading “Silly and Selective Arguments Against Tax Hikes”
Question: What was the most telling development on the fiscal front over the last week? Was it: A: The plan from the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson; or B: The plan from the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Debt Reduction …
Policymaking is a zero-sum game. Officials weigh policy proposals not in a vacuum but against the status quo. Implicit in the question “should we do this?” is a second one: “how does it compare to doing nothing?” That’s what was wrong not only with this week’s efforts by the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission …
The nation’s elected leaders will soon begin their next round of debate over one of Washington’s more irrational and, indeed, dangerous processes – enacting legislation to raise the limit on federal debt. Let’s be clear: a vote to raise the debt limit is not a vote to change fiscal policy. It’s not a vote to …
Continue reading “One Man’s Debt Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor”
President Obama begins an important new phase of his tenure on Wednesday morning. After surveying the political damage of Election Day – which likely will bring a new Republican controlled House and a more closely divided Senate (even if Democrats retain control of it) – he will have to interpret the results and decide how …
Keith Overton, who runs the TradeWinds Resort in St. Pete Beach, FL, thinks he deserves a piece of the $20 billion oil spill fund that BP set up in the aftermath of last April’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. To be sure, the oil never reached St. Pete Beach. In fact, it didn’t come …
Can it be? Is there hope? Might we see cooperation between the parties on fiscal and other matters after November? What are we to make of the signals from Republicans in recent days that, presuming they retake control of the House (if not also the Senate), they want to work with President Obama rather than …
Continue reading “More GOP Signals of Post-Election Cooperation”