Debt

December 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker

An Administration That Will Live In Infamy

Featured image There was a time when people assumed that if America’s future was under attack, it must come from a foreign source–like, say, Japan at Pearl Harbor. Those days are long gone. Now, our decline is no one’s fault but our own. We elect leaders who are ignorant of America’s history and contemptuous of its values. The currency in which this ignorance and contempt is expressed is government spending. I am »
December 8, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Obama postures as fiscal cliff looms

Featured image President Obama said in his radio address today that going over the so-called financial cliff “would be bad for families, it would be bad for businesses, and it would drag down our entire economy.” “Bad all around,” as Sam Spade would say. Most people understand this. The question is, how far will Obama go to avoid “the cliff.” On this question, Obama said that he will not sign a package »
December 2, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Simpson-Bowles?

Featured image Confess: you don’t remember what, exactly, the Simpson-Bowles “Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” Commission proposed. I didn’t remember, either, but with many conservatives, including Steve Hayward, suggesting that the House pass Simpson-Bowles as its proposal to avert the fiscal cliff, I thought it would be good to refresh both my memory, and yours. You can read the Commission’s report here; it isn’t particularly long. The Commission’s proposals are good on taxes »
November 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

The fiscal cliff, the debt cliff, and the political cliff

Featured image We’ve written, as has virtually every other commentator, about the “fiscal cliff.” But the term is probably a misnomer. It refers to the fact that, absent a budget deficit deal, taxes will rise on everyone who pays them and federal spending will be cut. The combined effect would be a small but discernible change in fiscal policy that might well slow the economy down or, given how slow the economy »
November 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

How to approach the fiscal cliff

Featured image James Capretta offers four guidelines for navigating fiscal cliff negotiations. On the whole, I think they are sensible suggestions and, at a minimum, worthy of consideration. First, “acknowledge the economic and policy risks of going over the cliff.” It’s possible that the looming tax increases and spending cuts wouldn’t send the U.S. economy into a recession. It’s also possible that massive cuts to the military budget wooudn’t produce adverse consequences »
November 17, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Off the Cliff

Featured image The real fiscal cliff is the nation’s $16 trillion debt, slated to rise to over $20 trillion if President Obama’s budget–for which not a single member of Congress voted–is the de facto blueprint for the next four years. Obama, as far as I can tell, has never once in his life taken responsibility for a problem, let alone solved one. So he doesn’t care about our impending financial collapse, except »
November 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker

The Permanent Campaign Hasn’t Ended

Featured image In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama criticized President Bush for being a partisan and running a permanent political campaign following his re-election in 2004: Maybe peace would have broken out with a different kind of White House, one less committed to waging a perpetual campaign–a White House that would see a 51-48 victory as a call to humility and compromise rather than an irrefutable mandate. The ironies are thick. »
November 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

A “balanced approach” to reducing the debt — I’m for it

Featured image President Obama ran for re-election advocating a “balanced approach” to dealing with our fiscal crisis. Now, our own John Hinderaker has proposed one — raise everyone’s taxes by letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire. You can’t get much more balanced than that. However, I don’t favor raising anyone’s taxes within the current tax code structure, and I don’t think, as a political matter, that Republicans should push for an across-the-board »