Most everyone agrees the federal budget is out of control. Annual budget deficits that averaged $300 billion under President George W. Bush have risen to $1.4 trillion under President Obama. This is not merely a short-term effect of the recession. Continuing today’s spending and tax policies would likely produce annual deficits of nearly $2 trillion within a decade – and…

Conventional wisdom becomes dangerous when it contradicts analysis and evidence. On the federal budget, for example, we’re told that the rich are evading their fair share of the tax burden while the poor are seeing their spending slashed. These assumptions have consequences. The president’s deficit commission — which maintains that everything is on the table — left…

Taxpayers frantically filing their 1040s - as well as anyone following the spending and deficit debate in Washington - may be asking where exactly their tax dollars are going. Some believe most spending goes to welfare and foreign aid. Others believe defense and corporate welfare dominate the budget. In realty, Social Security and Medicare are the largest programs,…

Lawmakers seeking to rein in the spending spree that has produced staggering $1.4 trillion budget deficits are ignoring one of the ripest sources of potential savings: farm subsidies. Most congressional deficit reduction proposals have been silent on farm subsidies, and the House Agriculture Committee recently released a bipartisan letter pre-emptively warning…

Lawmakers seeking to rein in the spending spree that has produced a staggering $1.4 trillion budget deficit are ignoring one of the ripest sources of potential savings: farm subsidies. Most congressional deficit-reduction proposals have been silent on farm subsidies, and the House Agriculture Committee recently released a bipartisan letter pre-emptively warning…

The 2001/2003 tax cuts are blamed for past, present, and future budget deficits. The numbers tell a different story. When the tax cuts were enacted in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast a $5.6 trillion surplus between 2002 and 2011. Instead, Washington is set to run a cumulative $6.1 trillion deficit over that period. So what caused this…

In 2009, upon taking office, President Obama promised that his administration would confront difficult challenges and not “kick the can down the road.” In 2010, under pressure to honor this promise, he created a bipartisan deficit commission to address the unsustainable spending growth in programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “This can’t be one of those…

Federal spending has expanded by $726 billion over the past three years, and now exceeds $30,000 per household. Yet if history is any guide, lawmakers looking to rein in spending and deficits will hear the following four fallacious objections: Myth 1: Large Entitlements Cannot be Reformed. Stale conventional wisdom has long held that the…