Any story with the provocative title “Down and Out on $250,000 a Year,” like this week’s piece from The Fiscal Times, is bound to generate reaction. In my case, it’s a mix of sympathy and disdain toward the “down and out” – some shaped by my personal experiences, some by my observations of human behavior, …
President Obama’s hope for positive pay-offs from his deal with Republicans to temporarily extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits rests on questionable political and fiscal assumptions. Regarding his political assumptions, Obama says the polls show the American people support his position to not permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for Americans making more than $250,000 …
Continue reading “For Obama, a Deal of Questionable Assumptions”
You know the old story about Americans who, traveling in a non-English speaking country, try to get the local folk to understand them not by speaking in their native language but, instead, by speaking English louder? That‟s apparently how leading progressives approach the issues of taxes and spending, jobs and health care, housing and the …
Visiting family in New York for Thanksgiving, scanning the New York Daily News for a dish of local sports, I came upon the latest obsession of Big Apple scribes and fans – contract talks between the New York Yankees and their iconic shortstop, Derek Jeter, whose 10-year, $189 million contact ends this year. Tis often …
Some things are as predictable as winter snow in Buffalo, and one of them is a column on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page about the evils of taxation whenever important people in Washington start talking about raising taxes. In this case, the important people are the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, a task …
Continue reading “Silly and Selective Arguments Against Tax Hikes”
Question: What was the most telling development on the fiscal front over the last week? Was it: A: The plan from the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson; or B: The plan from the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Debt Reduction …
Policymaking is a zero-sum game. Officials weigh policy proposals not in a vacuum but against the status quo. Implicit in the question “should we do this?” is a second one: “how does it compare to doing nothing?” That’s what was wrong not only with this week’s efforts by the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission …