On Thursday, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment to the Senate budget that would have hiked defense spending and paid for it with a range of spending cuts elsewhere. The summary, via Reason’s Nick Gillespie: Amdt. 940 will increase, defense spending by nearly $190 billion over the next two years. This amendment continues to fulfill […]
In the last few days, I’ve seen a few people argue that the falling federal deficit, which is real and good news, should mean we can raise spending again. One argument is that spending would boost the economy in the short term — which makes no sense if, as the president claimed in his State […]
Wow! A widespread failure to consider the economics of health reform has led Republicans to push legislation to (unwittingly, may we suppose?) promote socialized medicine, and Democrats to oppose it! The new Republican-sponsored bill (“Save American Workers Act”) is about changing the “definition of full-time work” from 30+ hours to 40+ hours. But we are not really […]
What’s in a word? Sometimes, I think, quite a lot. The use of a single word can amount to a subtle lie. Reading French newspapers, I’m struck by how often the word “austerity” appears to discuss current economic policy in Europe, particularly in France. I am not concerned here with whether the policies that European […]
Everyone except President Barack Obama understands that the federal government has a spending problem. Yet Uncle Sam gives away more than $600 billion to states and localities every year. It’s time to turn off the spigot, implementing the Reagan vision of transferring program responsibilities and revenues sources away from Washington. The original governmental system for the newly […]