Another Victory for Good Fiscal Policy

Because I’ve been sharing good news recently – which definitely is not my normal style, I joked the other day I must be on coke, in love, or rolling in money. For example:

• The fiscal cliff was a smaller loss than I expected.
• The sequester was a real victory.
• We have good evidence that the Tea Party has made a positive difference.
• The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected a permanent expansion of funds for the IMF.
• The burden of government fiscal policy has been reduced since the 2010 elections.

Well, the drugs, love, and money must still be in my system because I’m going to share some more good news. Our lords and masters in Washington have taken a small step in the direction of recognizing the Laffer Curve.

Here are some details from a Politico report.

Here’s one Republican victory that went virtually unnoticed in the slew of budget votes last week: The Senate told the Congressional Budget Office it should give more credit to the economic power of tax cuts. It won’t have the force of law, but it was a big symbolic win for conservatives — because it gave them badly needed moral support in an ongoing war to get Washington’s establishment number crunchers to take their economic ideas more seriously. The amendment endorsed a model called “dynamic scoring,” which assumes that tax cuts will pay for at least part of their cost by generating more economic activity. The measure by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) called on CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation to include “macroeconomic feedback scoring” in all future estimates of tax legislation. …Portman eked out a narrow 51-48 victory in the final series of budget votes that started around 3 a.m. on Saturday.

Just in case you missed it, this modest victory for common sense took place in the Senate. You know, the place controlled by Harry Reid of Cowboy Poetry fame.

To be sure, it’s not quite time to pop open the champagne.

The vote was a symbolic victory for the think tanks and lawmakers on the right who have been fighting for years to force CBO and JCT to officially endorse the idea that people spend more and invest more when they owe the government less. …Conservatives’ ideas, including revenue-generating tax cuts and a more market-oriented health care system, can only work if tax policy changes people’s behavior — and that’s just not how CBO views the world.

I’ve been very critical of both CBO and JCT, so I’m one of the people in “think tanks” the article is talking about.

P.S. Chuck Asay has a good cartoon mocking the CBO.

P.P.S. I’ll repeat, for the umpteenth time, that we want to recognize the insights of the Laffer Curve in order to facilitate lower tax rates, not because we want to maximize revenue for the government.

P.P.P.S. Dynamic scoring is a double-edged sword. If the statists control everything, they’ll use the process to justify more spending using discredited Keynesian economics.

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Some Much-Needed Humor about the Bunny and the Politician

Time for some well-intentioned humor targeting our political masters.

These are the men and women who spend their time screwing us and wasting our money.

We already have some examples of what people in Montana, Louisiana, Nevada, and Wyoming think about big-spending politicians.

This little girl is more blunt.

And  here are a couple of good images capturing the relationship between politicians and taxpayers, and here is a somewhat off-color Little Johnny joke.

And let’s not forgot to include this joke by doctors about the crowd in Washington.

So with all that as warm-up material, here’s the latest political joke to reach my inbox.

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One morning a blind bunny was hopping down the bunny trail and tripped over a large snake and fell, ‘kerplop’, right on his twitchy little nose.

‘Oh please excuse me,’ said the bunny. ‘I didn’t mean to trip over you, but I’m blind and can’t see.’

‘That’s perfectly all right,’ replied the snake. ‘To be sure, it was my fault. I didn’t mean to trip you, but I’m blind too, and I didn’t see you coming. By the way, what kind of animal are you?’

‘Well, I really don’t know,’ said the bunny. ‘I’m blind, and I’ve never seen myself. Maybe you could examine me and find out.’

So the snake felt the bunny all over, and he said, ‘Well, you’re soft, and cuddly, and you have long silky ears, and a little fluffy tail and a dear twitchy little nose. You must be a bunny rabbit!’

The bunny said, ‘I can’t thank you enough. But by the way, what kind of animal are you?’

The snake replied that he didn’t know either, and the bunny agreed to examine him, and when the bunny was finished, the snake asked, ‘Well, what kind of an animal am I?’

The bunny had felt the snake all over, and he replied, ‘You’re cold, you’re slippery, and you haven’t got any balls…  You must be a POLITICIAN’.

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By the way, while I appreciate the spirit of this joke, I must protest on behalf of reptiles everywhere.

Adam and Harriet

My kids have had snakes for a dozen-plus years and they actually make very good, low-maintenance pets.

Here is my youngest, back in 2001, with his cuddly pet named Harriet. Sadly, Harriet went to the great snake cage in the sky a couple of years ago, but she was always a hit with the neighbors.

P.S. You can read some good Dave Barry satire about politicians here and here.

P.P.S. Here’s another good joke, but remember that we should be thankful that we don’t get all the government we pay for.

P.P.P.S. And if you want humor specifically targeting Obama, you’ll enjoy this Pope message, this Pennsylvania joke, this Reagan-Obama comparison, this Bush-Obama comparison, this sign, this video satire, and this bumper sticker.

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