- Back
- Education, Culture, Ideology
- (A) Politics, Political Parties, Election Regulations
- (A) Social Policy, Transfers and Entitlements
- Immigration
- (A) Monetary Policy
- (A) Fiscal Policy
- (A) Science, Technology and Innovation
- (A) Constitutional Issues, Federalism, Federal Agencies and Administrative Law
- (A) Energy and Environmental Policy
- (A) National Defense and Foreign Policy
- (B) Social Policy, Transfers and Entitlements
- (B) Politics, Political Parties, Election Regulations
- (B) National Defense and Foreign Policy
- (B) Fiscal Policy
- (B) Monetary Policy
- (B) Constitutional Issues, Federalism, Federal Agencies and Administrative Law
- (B) Science, Technology and Innovation
- (B) Energy and Environmental Policy
- (A) Education
- (B) Culture and Ideology
- (A) Culture and Ideology
- (B) Education
- Russia and Europe
- Middle East
- China and the Far East
- Latin America
By Paul Winfree and Brian Blase - Congress has an opportunity to reform Medicaid, the nation’s third-largest, and most flawed, entitlement program. Done right, reform could protect the vulnerable, promote private coverage and save hundreds of billions of dollars. Done wrong, it won’t reduce federal spending and will hurt Republicans at the ballot box by making more voters dependent on government welfare. Medicaid’s financing is fundamentally broken. Because of ObamaCare, the federal government pays $9 for every $1 of state spending on able-bodied working-age adults, compared with roughly $1.33 for pregnant women and disabled children. That incentive pushes states to favor healthy...
By Spencer Jakab - Say you added just 1 percentage point to the average interest rate in the CBO’s forecast ...That would result in an additional $3.5 trillion in federal debt by 2033. The government’s annual interest bill alone would then be about $2 trillion. For perspective, individual income taxes are set to bring in only $2.5 trillion this year. Compound interest has a way of quickly making a bad situation worse—the sort of vicious spiral that has caused investors to flee countries... Read More
By John F. Cogan and Daniel L. Heil - The federal government’s system of entitlements is the largest money-shuffling machine in human history, and President Biden intends to make it a lot bigger. His American Families Plan—which he recently attempted to tie to a bipartisan infrastructure deal—proposes to extend the reach of federal entitlements to 21 million additional Americans, the largest expansion since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. For the first time in U.S. history...more than half of working-age households would be on the entitlement rolls if the plan were enacted in its current form. Contrary to Mr. Biden’s assertion...
By The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal - The progressive hits keep coming from the Biden Administration, and the latest is the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan introduced in broad strokes on Wednesday. It’s more accurate to call this the plan to make the middle class dependent on government from cradle to grave. The government will tell you sometime later, after you’re hooked to the state, how it will force you to pay for it. Read More
By Red Jahncke - The Federal Reserve’s policies of increasing interest rates and quantitative tightening—reducing its $8.9 trillion balance sheet—will increase the volume and cost of federal government borrowing, slamming the federal budget and exposing the consequences of decades of deficit spending. Total federal gross interest cost over the 12 months ending on May 31 was $666 billion. If we include the impending extra interest on Treasury bills and the maturing notes, that figure rises to $863 billion. This is a staggering cost. National military spending was $746 billion over the past 12 months; Medicare spending was $700 billion. Read...
By Phil Gramm and Robert B. Ekelund Jr. – Working Americans sense that taxes and transfers now leave them little better off than those who work less. An article on...the most comprehensive accounting to date of how taxes and government payments affect income distribution in the U.S. ...The most surprising finding is the astonishing degree of equality among the bottom 60% of American earners, generated in part by the explosion of social-welfare spending... Read More
By The Editorial Board - WSJ - Some numbers tell a story about comparative governance. Comparative governance is a useful course of study, not least because bad governance is so costly to people and prosperity. We often write about the migration from the Northeast to Florida and other states, but sometimes the contrast is best illuminated with some data. Read More
By Charles Murray - …progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong unifying leader. They were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective. They thought that individualism and the Constitution were both outmoded.…are …enthusiastic about an unrestrained regulatory state…think it’s just fine to subordinate the interests of individuals to … cheer the president’s abuse of executive power and ... have no problem rationalizing the stifling of dissent…. Read More