Obama outlined new government programs in his State of the Union speech the other week. But they won't work, I argue in my syndicated column this week:... continue reading »

This week pundits were excited that President Obama signed a bill that resolved what they called the "debt-ceiling crisis." In their minds, failing to increase the government's borrowing limit would lead to an economic disaster. They missed the point.

In my syndicated column this week, I talk about the real problem.

The problem is that Republicans and Democrats under Bush and President Obama doubled spending.

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On my show tonight at 10pm, I lay out a way to completely get rid of the deficit.

I don't claim to be a budget expert. But others, such as Chris Edwards at Cato and Stuart Butler at Heritage, are. They found lots of serious cuts. My staff found a few more, and put together a list that would completely balance the budget:

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In his column today, Ezra Klein sums up Keynesian economics by saying that Keynes "taught us that although markets are usually self-correcting, they occasionally enter destructive feedback loops....In that situation, the role of the government is to break the cycle. Because businesses and consumers have stopped spending, the government breaks the cycle by spending."... continue reading »

Our debt is out of control - nearly 70% of our economy, and it's projected to reach Greek-like levels in just 15 years. What to do? Many politicians say: stimulate!

John Maynard Keynes believed that. Last night on the O'Reilly Factor, Bill attacked me for defending Ron Paul's criticism of Keynes and the Fed. It's hard to make points over Bill's interruptions, so I'll make some here... continue reading »

How can the big spenders still call proposed budget cuts "draconian"?

"Stimulus" dollars went to fund a study on teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly. That was one of the ridiculous spending programs I highlighted in my last special "The Money Hole."

But it's just one of many. Every year, Uncle Sam gives about $150 million to Brazilian cotton farmers. Why?... continue reading »

The media spent so much time covering union protests in Wisconsin, that I mostly missed a much bigger protest over much bigger (17,000 government workers fired!) cuts in Puerto Rico.

When Luis Fortuno became governor in 2009, Puerto Rico's economy was a mess.

Or, as he told me:

"Not just a mess. We didn't have enough money to meet our first payroll."... continue reading »

The government now spends nearly twice as much as it receives in taxes. With government constantly promising to "invest" to "fix" more problems, and the baby-boomers about to balloon the cost of promised entitlements, this will only get worse. We are on an unsustainable course to Greek levels of debt -- the blue bars in the chart below are our projected debt:

On my show last night, I pitted five think tanks against each other in a contest to see who had the best plan for getting our (currently unsustainable) budget under control.

The winner - the plan that most people in the audience voted for - was the Heritage Foundation. Maybe that's because it was the only think tank to submit a plan that actually balances the budget (the others all aimed for "sustainable deficits.") Below is a clip of Stuart Butler of Heritage defending his budget on my show.

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In his speech yesterday, Obama brought up income inequality to justify higher taxes on the rich.

In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that’s who needs to pay less taxes? ... continue reading »