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’…

It made for quite a spectacle:  President Obama instructing an audience of struggling entrepreneurs and employers to just start hiring and stop conserving their cash.   Gee, why didn’t they think of that?  Barack Obama has never owned a company in his life.  He has never faced bankruptcy for a family business built…

Breaking News:  Due to intense grassroots and Congressional opposition to the Omnibus Spending Bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it late Thursday night and will yield to Republican leaders in the Senate to provide basic funding for the government temporarily into the New Year through a simple Continuing Resolution…

At least Bill Clinton – no paragon of humility or contrition – could acknowledge that “the era of big government is over” after his 1994 corrective.  Not Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi, however.  According to them, their electoral “shellacking” merely reflected irrational voter panic about economic conditions…

A balanced budget amendment, in the wrong hands or crafted in the wrong form, can unfortunately provide a vehicle for big-government advocates to rationalize higher taxes.  To illustrate, a federal government that dramatically expands spending only to throw up its hands and plead no alternative to tax hikes to satisfy a new balanced budget amendment…

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Translation: In a Washington where most decision makers must face the voters on a regular basis, a man with an appointed four-year term can act with impunity unavailable to those who have to answer to the electorate.   Such is the story of Dr. Ben Bernanke, the Princeton economist turned Federal…

“The rich are not paying their fair share.”  So said Hillary Clinton earlier this year, parroting one of the political left’s favorite canards.  In fairness, perhaps she only meant to reference her own gilded marital syndicate with Bill.  Regardless, she’s absolutely right, but in a very different manner than…

Democratic leaders today resemble the proverbial murderer who slays his parents, then shamelessly seeks mercy from the court because he’s an orphan.  After creating their Frankenstein-like federal spending monster, they now use that monster’s voracious appetite to justify higher taxes on small businesses and the American people. …

Earlier this month, the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) launched its “One More Vote” campaign to rally grassroots activists across the country to force Washington to stop the excessive spending of our hard-earned tax dollars. Specifically, the “One More Vote” initiative calls for a constitutional amendment…

“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely as he spends his own.”  ~Milton Friedman What the Obama Administration lacks in logic, it surfeits in raw chutzpah.  According to Obama, America just can’t afford $700 billion in additional tax relief.  After all, flipping Friedman’s wisdom on its head,…

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that the inconvenient truths of the free market have a way of puncturing political pretension. Take, for example, these data from a 2009 report by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):   "When comparing California with Texas, U-Haul says it all. To rent a 26-foot truck…

Act Now: Congress and Obama Want Preferential Tax Treatment for Foreign-Owned Energy Producers CFIF has released a Living Social(ist): Bad Deal Alert, a new take on the trendy deal-of-the-day email coupon services exploding in popularity across the country. Instead of offering half-priced chocolate spa baths or $1 admissions to your local petting…