Fiscal Policy

Five Trillion Dollars Is Not Enough

by Laurence M. Vance November 17, 2022

The federal government seized from the American people almost $5 trillion ($4.896119 trillion) in fiscal year 2022 (Oct. 1, 2021 through Sept. 30, 2022), according to The Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government (MTS), published by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. But this was still not enough to quench Uncle ...

‘We the People’ Are the New, Permanent Underclass in America

by John W. Whitehead April 12, 2022

“We are now speeding down the road of wasteful spending and debt, and unless we can escape we will be smashed in inflation.”—Herbert Hoover This is financial tyranny. The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones who must foot the bill for the government’s ...

Biden’s $3.5 Trillion “Make Big Government Even Bigger” Plan

by Richard M. Ebeling October 11, 2021

President Joe Biden journeyed from the White House to the Capitol building on October 1, 2021. There he admonished and pressured Democratic Party Senators and Congressmen to come together and pass both his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and his $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act, which might more accurately be called the Make Big Government Even Bigger bill. He ...

Biden’s Demagoguery that Government Spending is Costless

by Richard M. Ebeling October 5, 2021

There is only one way to describe the fiscal mindset of those in the White House and in Congress who are proposing new federal budgetary expenditure and taxing increases in the trillions of dollars: a fantasy land of financial irrationality. The Biden Administration insists on additions to the already bloated American welfare state that will see an expansion in entitlement ...

America’s Fiscal History: From Liberty to Paternalism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 28, 2021

If passed in its proposed forms, the $3.5 trillion of new “entitlement” programs and spending over the next ten years, and the accompanying call for increases in a wide variety of taxes, will represent the largest expansion of the American welfare state since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society agenda in the second half of the 1960s. It will further envelop ...

More Government Debt as Far as the Fiscal Eye Can See

by Richard M. Ebeling July 30, 2021

  For the last two years, the federal government has been legally at liberty to borrow any amount of money necessary to cover its deficit spending under the Bipartisan Budget Act of August 2019. Unless Congress extends this Act or raises the official debt limit, starting on August 1, 2021 Uncle Sam will only be able ...

Unhinged…..And Then Some!

by David Stockman December 21, 2020

Jerome Powell puts you in mind of the boy who killed both of his parents and then  threw himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he was an orphan! That’s what JayPo essentially did in his presser yesterday while trying to explain that the  most hideous equity market bubble in history is actually not that at ...

Gridlock Is Good—Except In The Jaws Of Massive Public Debts

by David Stockman November 9, 2020

James Madison is surely smiling from his grave. Pursuant to his constitutional design, last night a badly divided electorate got an utterly  gridlocked government—with the Supreme Court and Senate in the hands of one party  and the House of Representatives and White House marginally in the hands of the  other. That’s as good an RX against tyranny as it gets. Vlad ...

America’s Fiscal Follies are Dangerously in the Red

by Richard M. Ebeling September 10, 2020

The Congressional Budget Office has recently issued a federal “Budget Outlook Update” for the next ten years in the context of the government’s fiscal condition in the face of the coronavirus and Washington’s spending spree. The message: the deficit for fiscal year 2020 is huge, and the national debt is getting bigger, faster than had been projected before ...

Debt, Deficits and the Cost of Free Lunches

by Richard M. Ebeling June 19, 2019

It seems that every generation or two, fundamental economic ideas are questioned and challenged. The reasonable and important idea that governments should balance their budgets on an annual basis was challenged in the 1930s by the rise of Keynesian Economics and the counter-argument that deficit spending was desirable, if it was used to maintain full employment. Now it seems ...

The Libertarian Angle: National Debt and the Debt Ceiling (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation March 19, 2019

The national debt keeps going up and the federal budget keeps running in the red. Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss. Go to the podcast.

Debts and Deficits are Out of Control

by Richard M. Ebeling February 6, 2019

Understandably, the problems and politics of the moment dominate the news and attract the attention of most policy commentators and much of the public. Will there be another government shutdown, will House Democrats attempt to impeach the president, will interest rates remain low, and will there be a trade war with China? But there are longer-term problems as well, ...