Federal deficit

Randall Forsyth of Barron’s documents a disturbing trend for deficit hawks. [T]he administration of President Donald Trump, the self-described “king of debt,” is running a budget deficit at an annual rate of $1 trillion, or nearly 5% of gross domestic product, in part because of a huge tax…

Amber Athey and Saagar Enjeti of the Daily Caller report on the Trump administration’s budget strategy. The White House will submit a fiscal year 2020 budget to Congress in coming weeks which seeks to force the Democratic party’s hand on accepting spending cuts. Acting Office and Management…

Noelle Callahan writes for TownHall.com about some of the most inexplicable research projects funded by American taxpayers. (They might remind you of Wake Forest’s “coked-up stimulus monkeys.”) And the winner of Senator Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) January 2019 Squeal Award is…the National Institutes of Health (NIH)! … … “The…

“Economic growth, while necessary, is insufficient to address many of the challenges of our 21st-century economy,” Abby McCloskey writes in National Affairs. She offers some policy suggestions to improve connections in community, make work pay, and reform entitlements to improve government finances. I don’t endorse all of them, but…

Although legislative gridlock is a top concern of the American public, Investor’s Business Daily argues that gridlock saves the American tax payer a lot of money. Among other things, rates of spending are checked, and other potentially costly programs are held at bay by the lack of consensus. However,…

While $5 billion amounts to a lot of money, Jay Cost of National Review Online explains why the fight over that level of funding for a southern border wall seems odd in the context of a much larger federal budget. This year, the United States government will have…

Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner probes a little-known piece of the federal government spending problem. Analysts often speak figuratively about “out of control” federal spending, but a House subcommittee hearing this week showed that most federal spending quite literally is out of control. As in, Congress doesn’t…

With Democrats set to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner reports on their plan to revive a discarded piece of past federal budgets. House Democrats are eager to revive the notorious earmark, which is any provision that allocates cash to…