According to Kevin Drum, the Senate budget resolution earmarks $170 billion for border security; the House budget proposal ponies up $190 billion.  5 minutes of googling was not sufficient to figure out how this unimaginable pile of money will be spent.  Let’s assume half is for deportation.  That’s $85 billion, if we go with the […]

Many moderate and liberal Democrats believe the party should sideline progressive advocacy groups.  The groups sometimes make extreme and unpopular demands that damage the Democrats’ brand and prevent needed compromise.  It appears to me that some critics would be happy kicking the groups to the curb.  I largely agree with the diagnosis (see here, for […]

Is there a self-enforcing budget deal with Trump? In yesterday’s column, Yglesias makes a critical observation:  “there is genuinely no point in negotiating a bipartisan appropriation bill if the president is going to ignore its terms. . . . the entire premise of a bipartisan spending deal is precisely that money will be spent on […]

Democrats need to win elections, full stop.  As I wrote here, this may mean “heightening the contradictions”.  Michael Dorf: If there is a path back to sanity, then, it probably must travel through a change of heart by the people who support Trump’s assault on democracy. They will not likely be won over by appeals […]

I recently reread Hayek’s most famous paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, written in 1945.  I hadn’t read it in many years.   Page for page, TUKS is perhaps the most insightful economics paper ever written.  Every undergraduate economics major should read it.  I am not sure how many other papers written before 1960 […]

I haven’t written about Trump, tariffs, and trade wars because there is plenty of smart commentary out there, and because I really had (and have) no idea how the whole thing will play out.  It seemed plausible to me that Trump might be dissuaded from launching a destructive full scale trade war, that he might […]

Did Biden think he (or Harris) was certain to win the election?  A competent executive knows that high priority initiatives need their constant attention to overcome bureaucratic resistance and infighting.  This is true in the private sector and in government.  Yet this is what we got from Biden: In the final year of President Joe […]

Don Boudreaux has reprinted a few paragraphs from a George Will column under the heading:  George Will explains that RFK, Jr., is what people get “when trust in government collapses.”  Here are the quoted paragraphs, my bold: Indifference to evidence, and an appetite for startling hypotheses, are well-known characteristics of cranks. Kennedy is a man-child […]

Matt Yglesias has a critical piece up on Biden.  I am largely in agreement with Yglesias’ take, although I tend to see his failings as due to longstanding character traits, while Yglesias puts more emphasis on Biden’s age.  A couple of snippets (the whole thing is worth reading, but not sure if it is public): […]

Let’s do some pessimism. Trump has already made it clear that he does not recognize any legal limits on his behavior – no constitutional limits, and no statutory limits.  This is reflected in his effort to halt broad swaths of federal spending for 90 days (which violates both the constitution and the Impoundment Control Act […]