Mark Thoma points to two examples of fiscal dishonesty from the Bush Administration. First up is Allan “not Glenn” Hubbard abusing statistics to suggest that the Health Savings Accounts proposal is not just another tax cut for the rich. Edwin Park and Robert Greenstein document how Mr. Hubbard’s claims are misleading. Next up is an […]
AB reader Greg W. alerts us to some spin from Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation: During the 2005 budget reconciliation debate, crit¬ics trotted out the tired old myth that Republicans were cutting spending for the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Many commentators accepted this as truth and repeated it, including […]
Could someone help Thomas Nugent with his writing: Obviously, the out-of-power Democrats on the committee see the glass as half full, so one would have expected them to focus on the less successful economic statistics that characterize this economy. They didn’t disappoint, although their rendering of economic data once again proved they have no idea […]
I liked a picture that Barry Ritholtz put up the other day showing interest rates over the past half century or so, and it got me to thinking. In particular, I wondered which was more anomalous: the clear upward trend in interest rates during the period 1965-1982, or the clear downward trend in interest rates […]
Byron York comments on Dick Cheney’s interview with Brit Hume where the question was clearly whether the Vice President had the authority to declassify information. Did Cheney lie when he claimed there was an Executive Order giving him declassification authority? Mr. York points to Executive Order 13292, issued by President Bush on March 25, 2003. […]
Hat tip tp Charles Patton for pointing out the MarketWatch account of how the Treasury Secretary has dodged the Federal debt ceiling again: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The U.S. Treasury acted Thursday to avoid hitting the national debt limit and said it’s “imperative” Congress raise the debt ceiling by the middle of March. Treasury is suspending […]
Michael Mandel and I agree on at least one thing – R&D is an investment: The factory is a long-lived investment which provides returns not just this year, but years into the future. That’s why Intel’s investment gets added into GDP, separate from the value of today’s production of microprocessors. Similarly, R&D is a long-lived […]
Check out the Valentine Day report from Adweek: DALLAS – The Bush administration spent $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars on 137 contracts with advertising agencies over the past two-and-a-half years, according to a Government Accountability Office report released by House Democrats Monday. With spending on public relations and other media included, federal agencies spent $1.6 […]
Jonah Goldberg over at The Corner opens with: Warrantless searches, Katrina fingerpointing, $7.8 trillion budget, Abramoff spin: these were the stories buffetting the White House last week. Table 3.2 from the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports the Federal spending for 2005 was less than $2.55 trillion. Does Jonah expect this Republican government to triple Federal […]
AB reader Fred C. Dobbs directs us to the Economic Assumptions chapter for the President’s budget. Starting on page 171, we see: When the economy is operating below potential, the unemployment rate exceeds the long-run sustainable average consistent with price stability. As a result, receipts are lower than they would be if resources were more […]