The Reid Plan: Cut $24 billion Net Direct Spending for $2.7 Trillion
The Congressional Budget Office has a score out for the competing debt ceiling increase proposals on Capitol Hill. President Obama has a stated preference for his fellow Democrat, Senate Majority...
View ArticleThe Boehner Plan: Another Debt Commission Please!
The Congressional Budget Office has a score out for the plan from Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner. They estimate that his proposed cuts would knock $850 billion off the deficit over the...
View ArticleObama the Immoderate
There is still a slim chance that this summer's debt ceiling debate won't end with demagoguery's winning the day. That's an unusual development, yes, and something to be thankful for, however fleeting...
View ArticleUnmasking the Mortgage Interest Deduction
The deduction of mortgage interest from federal income taxes subsidizes homeownership, making it more affordable to become a homeowner. Or so we've been told. It is a highly popular tax break, yet one...
View ArticleThe Danger of Snap Judgments
When news came last Friday of a bombing in Oslo, Norway, followed by a shooting spree at a nearby youth camp, virtually everyone assumed this was the latest chapter in the bloody annals of Islamist...
View ArticleChina Enforces Property Rights...Sort Of
CBS recently reported (July 25, 2011) that the government of Kunming (urbanized area population of 3.2 million), the provincial capital of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, closed five fake Apple...
View ArticleNew Study: Unmasking the Mortgage Interest Deduction
Ditching homeowner subsidies would allow everyone's income tax rates to be lowered 8 percent in revenue neutral solutionThe mortgage interest deduction does not increase homeownership rates and amounts...
View ArticleWhat We Don't Know Can Hurt Us
"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so."That famous line, attributed to many authors but apparently said by humorist Henry...
View ArticleThe Perils of All-You-Can-Eat
Breathes there a Netflix user with a Blu-ray player so dead, who never to himself hath said,“There ain’t no way unlimited free downloads are going to last!”Netflix has announced that it is eliminating...
View ArticleStudy: Time to Eliminate the Mortgage Interest Deduction
The mortgage interest deduction does not increase homeownership rates and amounts to little more than a subsidy for wealthy homeowners, according to a new Reason Foundation study that recommends...
View ArticleThe Writing Is on the Wall
Is the bounce tail of a cursive capital Z the thin line that stands between civilization and anarchy? Two years ago, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors...
View ArticleFAA Shutdown And Our Air Traffic Control Funding System Are Absurd
The partial shutdown of the FAA came about because Congress failed to agree on extending the current law (and therefore the aviation excise taxes that fund most of FAA). This has been going on since...
View ArticleLocal Land-Use Regulation Adds 16 Percent to Cost of New Home
A study released earlier this month (July 5, 2011) by Paul Emrath at the National Association of Homebuilders (available at www.housingeconomics.com) estimates that local regulation adds significantly...
View ArticleFriday Privatization News Highlights (7/29/2011 edition)
News articles on some of the more interesting developments on the privatization and public-private partnership (PPP) front over the last week include:Federal"Postal Service eyes thousands of post...
View ArticleToo Cute to Fail?
The 2012 Republican presidential wannabes may not have Mount Rushmore-ready leadership skills, but they're an unusually fine-looking bunch of politicians.And that’s not even counting two of the...
View ArticleGDP Continues Its Fall to 1.3%, Key Statements in the BEA Report
Second quarter GDP numbers are in, and they are not pretty. By now you have probably seen the headline numbers: 1.3% annualized gross domestic product growth between April and June 2011.That is a very...
View ArticleDoes Your Body Belong to You?
“Perhaps you’ve noticed the trend among certain people these days,” wrote Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times the other day, “to decide that certain other people are not living acceptable lives and...
View ArticleDebt Debate Obscures Bad Economic News for Obama
Headlines are swamped with news about the debt debate, drowning out some singular bad news for President Obama: The economy is tanking. Even if the debt ceiling is raised, his presidency may be...
View ArticleRick Perrys Fair-Weather Federalism
Two of Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s most cherished loves are in conflict. Those two things are the 10th Amendment, which states that the “the powers not delegated to the United States by the...
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The Facts About Spending Cuts, the Debt, and the GDP
Editor's Note: Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy appears weekly on Bloomberg TV to separate economic fact from economic myth.Raising the debt limit might put off a...
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