Crises have a way of exposing who politicians think they really work for. The coronavirus epidemic in the United States is no different in providing examples of how politicians are pitching changes to the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 to gain favor among those they seek to provide aid in future elections,…
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Now that 2018 is over, how did your state’s governor do on their fiscal policy report card?

Poor fiscal health calls for reform and law enforcement.

Part 1 of 3 One of the most frustrating things in debate is when you decisively win the initial point of contention, only to have your opponent “move the goalpost” to a different claim. To be sure, this is a human failing, not unique to any particular political perspective. I’m sure I myself do…
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Many economists and other analysts have recognized that the recovery from the U.S. economy’s most recent contraction has been unusually weak—weaker, for example, than any other since World War II. But analysts have disagreed in characterizing the current recovery, which according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the semi-official arbiter of business-cycle chronology,…
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In the run-up to President Obama’s “State of the Union” address this evening, the nation’s monetary and fiscal policymakers seem, as often is true, to be working at cross-purposes. According to reports published in The Wall Street Journal yesterday (January 24, 2011), Chairman Ben Bernanke at long last has concluded that the Fed should…
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According to a report published on the front page of the December 6, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Congress is close to negotiating a compromise in which the so-called Bush tax cuts will remain in place temporarily (for two years) in return for an extension of yet unknown duration in federal benefits for the long-term…
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Consider the following commentary on the economic situation: Foolhardy procedures which are divorced from economic realities, or whose economic implications are not understood by their promoters, do not perforce become sanctified and wise merely by designating them as “action”; tilting at windmills does not draw water. [W]hen a recovery program, which, while it may…
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Fresh from his recent White House-sponsored jobs summit, President Obama is pushing a new economic stimulus plan intended to soften the pain of a 26-year-high unemployment rate that sees one in ten Americans out of work. Against all expectations, $200 billion of the money originally appropriated by Congress for bailing out financial institutions under…
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