The Congressional Budget Office’s Questionable Analysis of Obamacare Repeal

Back in 2015, I basically applauded the Congressional Budget Office for its analysis of what would happen if Obamacare was repealed. The agency’s number crunchers didn’t get it exactly right, but they actually took important steps and produced numbers showing how the law was hurting taxpayers and the economy. Now we have a new set […]

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More Keynesian Primitivism from the Congressional Budget Office

I never watched That ’70s Show, but according to Wikipedia, the comedy program “addressed social issues of the 1970s.” Assuming that’s true, they need a sequel that addresses economic issues of the 1970s. And the star of the program could be the Congressional Budget Office, a Capitol Hill bureaucracy that apparently still believes – notwithstanding […]

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The Congressional Budget Office’s Semi-Decent Dynamic Scoring of Obamacare Repeal

I’m a long-time advocate of “dynamic scoring,” which means I want the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation to inform policy makers about how fiscal policy changes can impact overall economic performance and therefore generate “feedback” effects. I also think the traditional approach, known as “static scoring,” creates a bias for bigger government […]

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New Congressional Budget Office Numbers Once Again Show that Modest Spending Restraint Would Eliminate Red Ink

Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly. When CBO issued new numbers early last year, I repeated the exercise and […]

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Time to Shut Down the Congressional Budget Office?

One of the many disappointing things about Republicans is that they fail to correct problems when they get power. After the 1994  “Gingrich Revolution,” the GOP had complete control of Capitol Hill. This meant complete authority over the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation. Did Republicans use this power to fire the old staff […]

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Congressional Budget Office Says We Can Maximize Long-Run Economic Output with 100 Percent Tax Rates

I hope the title of this post is an exaggeration, but it’s certainly a logical conclusion based on what is written in the Congressional Budget Office’s updated Economic and Budget Outlook. The Capitol Hill bureaucracy basically has a deficit-über-alles view of fiscal policy. CBO’s long-run perspective, as shown by this excerpt, is that deficits reduce […]

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The Economic Consequences of Biden’s Budget

The good news is that there is very little risk that President’s new budget – which is very similar to his previous budgets – will be approved by Congress. The bad news is that his budget is filled with terrible policy. Big expansions in the burden of spending and big increases in tax rates. At […]

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The Two Most Important Things to Understand about Biden’s Budget

The fight over President Biden’s budget, the so-called Build Back Better plan, has revolved around very important issues. The adverse impact of expanding the welfare state, particularly the per-child handouts. The anti-growth effect of higher tax rates on work, entrepreneurship, saving, and investment. For today’s column, let’s zoom out and look at two charts that […]

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The Most Disturbing Takeaway from Biden’s Budget Plan

There are many things to dislike about President Biden’s budget plan to expand the burden of government. Class-warfare tax policy. Expanding welfare. Higher levels of red ink. There will be ample opportunity to write about these issues in the coming weeks. For today, however, let’s identify and highlight the biggest problem. Simply stated, Biden wants […]

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Everything You Need to Know about Fixing the Budget Mess in Washington

The 21st century has been bad news for proponents of limited government. Bush was a big spender, Obama was a big spender, Trump was a big spender, and now Biden also wants to buy votes with other people’s money. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is still a simple solution to […]

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Even after the Coronavirus Spending Spree, It’s Simple to Balance the Budget Without Tax Increases

There are two reasons why I generally don’t write much about government debt. First, red ink is not desirable, but it’s mostly just the symptom of the far more important problem of excessive government spending. Second, our friends on the left periodically try to push through big tax increases by hypocritically exploiting anxiety about red […]

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Washington’s Budget Outlook: Still Getting Worse, but Still Fixable

When the Congressional Budget Office released its Budget and Economic Outlook yesterday, almost everyone in Washington foolishly fixated on the estimate of $1 trillion-plus annual deficits. What’s far more important – and much more worrisome – is that the burden of government spending is projected to relentlessly increase, violating the Golden Rule of fiscal policy. […]

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New CBO Numbers Confirm that Modest Spending Restraint Is the Ideal Way of Balancing the Budget

The Congressional Budget Office just released it’s annual Budget and Economic Outlook, and that means I’m going to do something that I first did in 2010 and most recently did last year. I’m going to show that it’s actually rather simple to balance the budget with modest spending restraint. This statement shocks many people because […]

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In a Single Image, Everything You Need to Know about the New CBO Budget Numbers

The Congressional Budget Office just released its annual Economic and Budget Outlook, and almost everyone in Washington is agitated (or pretending to be agitated) about annual deficits exceeding $1 trillion starting in the 2020 fiscal year. All that red ink isn’t good news, but I’m much more concerned (and genuinely so) about this line from […]

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Everything You Need to Know about the Budget Deal in One Image

Ever since there was a deal to bust the budget caps back in February, I knew it was just a matter of time before Congress and the White House responded with an odious orgy of new spending. Some people told me I was being too pessimistic. After all, the President’s Office of Management and Budget […]

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New Budget Deal Is a Victory for Washington over Taxpayers

The biggest victory for taxpayers during the Obama years was the Budget Control Act in 2011, which imposed sequester-enforced caps on discretionary spending. Indeed, that legislation was then followed by a sequester in early 2013, which was a stinging defeat for Obama (he tried to forestall the sequester with hysterical predictions of doom). But politicians […]

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Balancing the Budget Should Be Very Easy, Regardless of the GOP’s Tiny (and Temporary) Tax Cut

Since the House has passed a tax cut and the Senate has passed a tax cut, it’s quite likely that there will be a consensus deal that will be signed into law. Which makes me happy since any agreement presumably will include a lower corporate tax rate and the elimination of the deduction for state […]

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The Best Trump Budget Cuts, Part VI: Food Stamp Reform

I’m agnostic about President’s Trump’s budget. It has some good proposals to save money and control the burden of government spending, but after he got rolled by the big spenders earlier this year, I wonder if he’s serious about tackling wasteful government. Nonetheless, I’m the libertarian version of Sisyphus. Except instead of trying to roll […]

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New CBO Numbers Confirm Simple Task of Balancing the Budget with Modest Spending Restraint

It’s not a big day for normal people, but today is exciting for fiscal policy wonks because the Congressional Budget Office has released its new 10-year forecast of how much revenue Uncle Sam will collect based on current law and how much the burden of government spending will expand if policy is left on auto-pilot. […]

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Rewarding a Corrupt IRS with a Bigger Budget: Another “Own Goal” by the GOP

The good thing about being nonpartisan is that I can freely criticize (or even praise) policy makers without giving any thought to whether they have an R or D after their name. That doesn’t mean Republicans and Democrats are the same, at least with regards to rhetoric. The two big political parties in the United […]

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A Very Simple Plan to Balance the Budget by 2021

Earlier this month, Americans for Prosperity held a “Road to Reform” event in Las Vegas. I got to be the warm-up speaker and made two simple points. First, we made a lot of fiscal progress between 2009 and 2014 because various battles over debt limits, shutdowns, and sequestration actually did result in real spending discipline. […]

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A Fair – but Ultimately Misleading – Critique of GOP Budgets

Last week, I applauded the Chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees for proposing budgets that complied with my Golden Rule, which means the burden of government would grow slower than the private sector. But my praise was limited because neither budget is ideal from the perspective of libertarians and small-government conservatives. Even though […]

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Chairmen of House and Senate Budget Committees Propose Good Budgets, Particularly Compared to Obama’s Spendthrift Plan

Earlier this year, President Obama proposed a budget that would impose new taxes and add a couple of trillion dollars to the burden of government spending over the next 10 years. The Republican Chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees have now weighed in. You can read the details of the House proposal by […]

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Are Congressional Republicans Big-Spending Bushies or Fiscally-Responsible Reaganites?

I feel a bit schizophrenic when people ask me my opinion of Republicans on Capitol Hill. When I’m in a good mood (or being naively optimistic, some might argue), I applaud them for blocking Obama’s spending agenda. The fights over sequestration, debt limits, and government shutdowns have made a real difference. The burden of government […]

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Four Big Takeaways from Obama’s New Budget…and the Challenges for the GOP

The President today released his budget for fiscal year 2016, a document that also shows what will happen to taxes, spending, and red ink over the next 10 years if the White House’s budget is adopted. Here are the four things that deserve critical attention. 1. Obama proposes to have spending grow by an average […]

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Continued Spending Restraint Can Quickly Balance the Budget

Just like the swallows return each year to Capistrano, I eagerly await the Congressional Budget Office’s release of its annual Economic and Budget Outlook. But not just because I’m a fiscal wonk. I also like perusing this publication to find CBO’s “baseline” forecast for government revenue over the next 10 years. And once I have […]

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Assessing the New Ryan Budget

Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee, has unveiled the GOP’s latest budget plan. Is this proposal deserving of applause or criticism? The answer is yes and yes, with a bit of emphasis on the former. Let’s start with some depressing news. The Ryan budget has gotten weaker each year. Three […]

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New CBO Numbers Show a Remarkably Simple Path to a Balanced Budget

A just-released report from the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office is getting lots of attention because the bureaucrats are now admitting that Obamacare will impose much more damage to the economy than they previously predicted. Of course, many people knew from the start that Obamacare would be a disaster and that it would […]

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It’s Amazingly Simple to Balance the Budget

I’m testifying tomorrow to the Joint Economic Committee about “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship.” I won’t give away what I’m going to say (though you can probably figure out my views rather easily by reading this, this and this), but I do want to share a chart from my testimony. It shows that it […]

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Burden of Government Spending Will Be $2 Trillion Higher in 2023 According to Obama’s Budget

If you include all the appendices, there are thousands of pages in the President’s new budget. But the first thing I do every year is find the table showing how fast the burden of government spending will increase. That’s Table S-1 of the budget, and it shows that the President is proposing $41 trillion of […]

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