With the close of FY18 looming, federal spending is expected to skyrocket.

The proposed spending bill funds key programs at a hefty price tag.

With billions left to spend, cronyism will abound.

Not fully paying for themselves nor “exploding” the deficit.

The entire increase in this year’s deficit is due to spending hikes.

In another post, Randall Holcombe rightly notes the pressing need for tax reform. Holcombe argues that Trump’s proposed tax reform is “an improvement over the current system.” That may be true; time will tell. Yet, today my news feed reports nonchalantly that the Republican Congress passed a budget in excess of $4 trillion. That…
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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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Since late December 2008, the bank prime lending rate — the interest rate banks charge their best corporate customers — has remained steady at 3.25 percent. Meanwhile, during the same period, the excess reserves that commercial banks hold at the Fed have increased from $2 billion in August 2008 to $1,513 billion in May 2011. Ordinarily,…
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In their new study, “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled,” economists Timothy Conley (University of Western Ontario) and Bill Dupor (Ohio State University) present their empirical findings of the economic impact on employment of the 2009 Obama stimulus package of $787 billion, entitled the American Recovery…
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Independent Institute Research Fellow Emily Skarbek is interviewed here by Nick Gillespie of Reason TV regarding the Institute’s very timely and far-reaching Government Cost Calculator. The Calculator enables any American to clearly understand three aspects of federal government spending. First, the Calculator helps you determine how much a person will pay for various federal…
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