The latest effort coming out of Capitol Hill to reduce the debt and avoid default is called the “Gang of Six Plan”, named after its three Democrats and three Republican authors. The plan includes $500 billion in immediate “budget savings”, reductions in marginal income tax rates, and the abolition of the alternative minimum tax….
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In his article in the Summer 2011 issue of The Independent Review, “The Dilemma of Bailouts,” economist Roy C. Smith (New York University) examines why despite its prohibition of taxpayer-funded bailouts, the Dodd-Frank Act has left the financial system exposed to meltdowns and promotes the shifting of risk from large �systemically important� financial firms…
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With the White House and the House of Representatives still at loggerheads over how to resolve the debt crisis, administration officials are turning up the heat, claiming that Washington has only two choices: increase the government�s borrowing capacity beyond the current $14.3 trillion limit or face a catastrophic U.S. Treasury default. If the latter…
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Yesterday, President Obama threatened that if the debt limit is not raised by the August 2 deadline, he can�t guarantee that Social Security checks will go out. However, for years Democrats have argued that Social Security is on strong fiscal footing, and reform is unnecessary. The argument is that over the years the government…
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HT: Tyler Watts
The St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve has come out with the findings of their groundbreaking research into the primary cause of the rise in the U.S. national debt. Is it too little revenue (i.e. tax collections?) Is it too much spending? The report’s authors Daniel L. Thornton and Kevin L. Kliesen summarize…
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Despite not having taken any action to pass an annual budget for the United States government of any kind for almost two and a quarter years, it appears that the current majority Democratic Party in the Senate may finally have developed a blueprint for the federal budget, one that even promises to reduce the…
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With the official unemployment rate having now risen to 9.2%, Patrick Buchanan notes in his new column, “An Establishment in Panic,” that another 7% are underemployed and economic growth is a very weak 1.8%. Obama’s predictable answer is higher taxes and to raise the federal debt ceiling so that even more spending and debt…
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Ron Paul has gone public with proposals for the Fed to destroy $1.6 trillion in government bonds that it is currently holding. As The New Republic’s Dean Baker reports, such a plan might be a way around the impass that has mounted on the Hill. Aside from the practicalities of politics, Paul’s plan is…
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This video, “Brother, Can You Spare a Trillion? Government Gone Wild!”, has now had over 2.7 million views on YouTube. It summarizes the gigantic threat that U.S. government debt poses for America, with annual interest payments alone this year totaling more that all federal spending for the combined costs of the departments of Commerce,…
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