On tax policy, let’s stop pretending. For all of the Democrats’ rhetoric about how they look out for average people while Republicans look out for the rich, there’s hardly a dime’s worth of difference between the parties. It’s all there in the new budget plan from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D- N.D. With …
Continue reading “Democratic Tax Policy: Myth versus Reality”
I don’t know what’s more pathetic – Republican presidential candidates who urge a GOP nocompromise stance in White House-congressional budget negotiations related to the debt limit, or media that doesn’t explore the implications. The New York Times reported over the weekend that “Republican presidential candidates were campaigning against any outcome that smacks of compromise, underscoring …
TESTIMONY OF LAWRENCE J. HAAS SENIOR FELLOW FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY COUNCIL TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON H. R. 963: “THE SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING ACT OF 2011” Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Nadler, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the …
Continue reading “THE SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING ACT OF 2011”
Today’s decision by the two Republican participants to withdraw from negotiations led by Vice President Biden to reach a deficit-reduction package, saying they won’t go for tax increases, would seem to put President Obama and congressional Democrats on the defensive. It doesn’t have to. At first blush, Republicans seem to have the upper hand. The …
Winston Churchill may have said it best about his fond friends: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” On fiscal policy, we Americans have long been “trying everything else.” We’ve cut taxes and boosted spending for at least a decade, turning surpluses into deficits that …
Continue reading “Moving in the Right Direction on Deficits”
While Washington frets that gridlock over budget deficits will hurt the economy in the long run, policymakers have apparently forgotten that gridlock can produce economic harm in all sorts of ways. Take trade. The Wall Street Journal reported that, in Colombia, lawmakers have voted for legislation that will “open the floodgates to trade with China.” …
Continue reading “Other Nations Now Side Stepping U.S. on Trade”
Will history judge today’s national leaders in the same way that it has judged former Senators Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley – as well-intentioned but misguided policymakers who helped send the economy further into the ditch? Smoot and Hawley? They sponsored legislation, which President Herbert Hoover signed in mid1930, which raised tariffs on more …
Continue reading “Biden Gang: This Generation’s Smoot-Hawley?”