By any fair estimate, the 2012 Republican presidential contest has been whittled down to four serious contenders: Mitt Romney, who retains de facto frontrunner status; Rick Perry, who’s still alive despite a halting entrance into the race; Herman Cain, who was won the affections of conservative voters with his no-nonsense style, and Newt Gingrich…

Herman Cain’s vaunted 9-9-9 tax proposal is brilliant in theory, and in a political vacuum. In principle, there is good reason to admire it. We don’t live in a political vacuum, however, and in practice it could cause major problems. The first problem is, common sense says 9-9-9 can’t raise enough revenue even for the slimmed down…

The world is an upside-down place when Mitt Romney is supporting a policy championed by Paul Krugman. Yet that’s precisely what’s happening as a bill that seeks to deter China from manipulating the value of its currency winds its way through Capitol Hill. The legislation, which passed the Senate on Tuesday, may still fail to secure passage…

With President Barack Obama threatening to raise taxes on corporate jet purchases, members of private aviation unions are wondering why their manufacturing industry is being singled out for punishment.  In a June 29 speech about cutting the deficit, President Obama said six times that buyers of private jets should pay more for the privilege.&…

When President Obama appeared before a joint session of Congress last week, he pitched his newest supposed economic panacea – the American Jobs Act – as a plan to “provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and if they hire, there will be customers for their products and services…

As if American voters needed additional confirmation of the failure of Barack Obama’s economic agenda, consider the following.  In 1947, the federal government began tracking quarterly gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of overall economic vitality.  Since that date, not one President has failed to enjoy a quarter of…

The liberal politicization of economics continues unabated with President Barack Obama’s nomination of a labor economist to chair his Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).  A look at the nominee’s record shows that his expertise is promoting liberal policies using economic language, not job creation.  Alan Krueger, a Princeton…

Want to silence a liberal?  Simply ask anyone demanding higher taxes to produce copies of their own tax returns.  Many who insist on tax increases most loudly and sanctimoniously, including Barack Obama himself, didn’t themselves pay Uncle Sam at the rates they advocate.  So try it.  You’ll likely witness an amusing…

Ever heard of “bracket creep”?  It’s the scourge of middle-class families, and one of the favorite weapons of tax-and-spend liberals.  Just ask Barack Obama.  On his Midwestern bus tour this week, the president hammered Republican presidential candidates for pledging not to raise taxes if elected.  In his view…

During the recently concluded debt ceiling debate, prominent liberals like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) were fond of saying that reforming Social Security was unnecessary because the program “has nothing to do with the deficit.”  Is that true? Here’s an excerpt from an opinion column Senator Sanders wrote on July 21, arguing…

Try this thought experiment: You are sitting on a pile of cash or cash-equivalents. You are worried about the overall economy, and particularly about your nation’s debt. Inflation is almost nonexistent right now, but you know the most common way for nations to pay off debt is to inflate their currency. Your cash, therefore, may lose value &ndash…

There was no shortage of disappointment in last week’s dénouement to the months-long fight over raising the nation’s debt limit. President Obama was predictably petulant. The news media was issuing apocalyptic pronouncements, but for all the wrong reasons. And the final resolution staved off immediate dangers, but ignored the long…

With the prolonged debate over the debt ceiling finally having concluded earlier this week, many Americans are anxious to leave the divisive and exhausting disputes over our nation’s economic future behind. Reality, however, offers us no such luxury.   While the compromise that ended the debt ceiling impasse may save a few trillion dollars…

What if a bill could provide a fail-safe way to reduce federal spending by one percent a year, cap spending at a historically sustainable level and balance the budget in eight years?   If it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t.  But it does need a grassroots movement to demand a vote on it in the House and Senate.  Rep.…

However the current budget/debt limit battle plays out, Washington lawmakers in the next phase of financial policy-making should move beyond simple accounting and focus primarily on economic growth. Arithmetically, there is no way within reason to handle this nation’s debt and future unfunded liabilities without powerful and long-lasting growth…

Conservatives spend so much searching for the latest political version of American Idol, no matter how evanescent, that they somehow seem to miss real substance when it appears. That’s what might have happened a few weeks ago when former Sen. Rick Santorum, now running for president, released what could be the boldest and best economic-growth…

To say that Barack Obama has a well-defined leadership style would be perhaps too complimentary. What Obama has instead is a style of crisis management masquerading as leadership. Time and time again, the president waits for issues of public import to reach a moment of absolute peril before publicly weighing in. It was his way in the debate over ObamaCare…

This week, we learned that 141 Obama White House aides earn over $100,000 annually.  That’s approximately one-third of its entire staff.  The pundit class buzzed and the increasingly impatient voting class burned over that revelation, and understandably so.  Amid ongoing economic struggle, it came as agitating news for those outside…

It would be one helluva entertaining spectacle to watch liberals do back flips with budget numbers if the consequences weren’t so serious. Not even Cirque de Soleil performers are so acrobatic and adept at shape-shifting pyrotechnics. The left’s latest gambit is to claim that federal domestic discretionary spending, in context, is not extravagant…

If you thought the genius who steered General Motors through bankruptcies and bailouts had learned anything about how a prosperous market economy works, think again.  In a stunning series of policy prescriptions, CEO Dan Ackerson reveals an almost criminal attempt to make permanent the government’s distortion of the U.S. auto market. …

Talk to stalwart Barack Obama supporters (there are still some of them out there) and many of them will tell you that the key to the 44th President’s reelection is the state of the American economy.    The president, they reason, is still personally popular, able to trade on a likable personality and an innate charisma that recommends…

Major news outlets are suddenly all agog because the vaunted Obama economic recovery not only never was much of a recovery at all, but also seems to be disappearing. “We are on the verge of a great Great Depression!” screams Drudge’s massive headline in red. The Wall Street Journal reports the bad news that the private-sector economy…

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy…

“Obama, Biden Declare ‘Recovery Summer’”  That was a Politico headline on June 17, 2010.  The previous month, President Obama prematurely declared a tepid 3.2% economic growth rate for the first quarter of 2010 “an important milepost on the road to recovery.”  One year later, we’re still…

The Federal Reserve Board is badly misunderstanding American psychology, and probably misinterpreting underlying economic realities. Inflation looms like one of the ugliest monsters in Binkley’s Closet of Anxieties, except that this beast is no mere figment of imagination. A public that sees its grocery and gasoline costs rising precipitously…

Of all the canards nurtured by liberals, perhaps the most corrosive is their persistent reference to income as “distributed” or “taken.”  What explains that bizarre mindset?  It’s as if liberals believe in some sort of mystical, heartless roulette wheel in the sky that arbitrarily “distributes” cash…

Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe – who has the distinction of being both a wag and a world-class intellect – is a high priest of the aphorism. Reviewing President Obama’s Wednesday speech on fiscal policy, he was characteristically concise: “[It] was in keeping with the President’s habitual practice. He said nothing…

The Left’s denunciation of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) 2012 “Path to Prosperity” budget proposal was swift, but curious. So far, no liberal commentator inside or outside government has seriously addressed the central inescapable issue of federal spending:  It is unsustainable at current levels. …

The Obama Administration’s proposed tax increases will reduce the amount of money available for charities from America’s largest givers.  Instead, the federal government will reap a coerced windfall from higher taxes and lower deduction levels. A new report published by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, explains…

In February 2009, Barack Obama unequivocally pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term:  “As our interest payments rise, our obligations come due, confidence in our economy erodes and our children and our grandchildren are unable to pursue their dreams because they’re saddled with our debts.  That’…