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Senate Healthcare Proposal is a Fiscal Fraud
The indispensable editorial page of the Wall Street Journal blasts the phony spending “cuts” that are supposed to offset some of the new spending in the Senate health care bill. Sadly, the...
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The Reagan Tax Cuts, Budget Forecasting, and Government Revenue
While perusing the Internet, I saw an article by Iwan Morgan, who is the author of The Age of Deficits: Presidents and unbalanced Budgets from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush. The author asserted in...
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The Joint Committee on Taxation’s Voodoo Economics
The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial this morning on the obscure – but critically important – issue of measuring what happens to tax revenue in response to changes in tax policy. This is...
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With Tax Increases Looming, CBO Does About-Face and Frets about Deficits and...
Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the Congressional Budget Office follows a predictable pattern of endorsing policies that result in bigger government. During the debate about the so-called...
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Congressional Budget Office Says We Can Maximize Long-Run Economic Output...
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...
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Higher Tax Rates on the Rich Will Backfire
I know I’ve beaten this drum several times before, but the Wall Street Journal today has a very good explanation of why class-warfare tax policy will backfire. The Journal’s editorial focuses on what...
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The Laffer Curve Strikes Again
In the private sector, no business owner would be dumb enough to assume that higher prices automatically translate into proportionately higher revenues. If McDonald’s boosted hamburger prices by 30...
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A Laffer Curve Tutorial
Greetings from frigid Minnesota. I’m in this misplaced part of the North Pole to testify before both the Senate and House Tax Committees today on issues related to the Laffer Curve. In other words, I...
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A Lesson on the Laffer Curve for Barack Obama
One of my frustrating missions in life is to educate policy makers on the Laffer Curve. This means teaching folks on the left that tax policy affects incentives to earn and report taxable income. As...
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Alan Blinder’s Accidental Case for the Flat Tax
Alan Blinder has a distinguished resume. He’s a professor at Princeton and he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was interested to see he authored an attack on the flat tax – and I...
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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...
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Progress on the Laffer Curve*
The title of this piece has an asterisk because, unfortunately, we’re not talking about progress on the Laffer Curve in the United States. Instead, we’re discussing today how lawmakers in other nations...
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Proper Staffing and Reform of JCT and CBO Is an IQ Test for the Republican Party
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) are congressional bureaucracies that wield tremendous power on Capitol Hill because of their role as fiscal scorekeepers and...
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Debunking the Debunking of Dynamic Scoring and the Laffer Curve
Many statists are worried that Republicans may install new leadership at the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and Congressional Budget Office (CBO). This is a big issue because these two score-keeping...
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The Left’s Position on the Laffer Curve and Dynamic Scoring: Being Exactly...
Since I’m a big advocate of the Laffer Curve, that means I favor dynamic scoring. This is the common-sense observation that you can’t figure out the effect of tax changes on revenue without first...
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Why “Dynamic Scoring” Is far more Accurate than “Static Scoring” when...
I’ve written several times about the importance of appointing sensible people to head the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). Heck, making reforms to these Capitol...
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The Congressional Budget Office’s Semi-Decent Dynamic Scoring of Obamacare...
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...
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