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AEI’s Mark Perry is featuring a colorful presentation of the U.S. government’s current fiscal year budget. It’s just coincidental that the app produces the following Easter-inspired color scheme when you select for “Total” spending and “Agency” for the bubble color: Looking at the data, we’ll bet you didn’t know that the Department of Defense…
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The budget recently passed by Senate Democrats approves spending of $3.7 trillion over the next year alone, and this is not a new trend. Economist Burton Abrams notes that since 2000, the U.S. federal government has overspent in excess of $10 trillion. Deficits of $16 trillion confirm that government has a hard time saving….
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The November election made California the highest-tax state in the nation by raising the top rate of state income tax to 13.3 percent, an increase of 29.13 percent. Sales tax now ranges from 7.5 percent to 10 percent in parts of Los Angeles County. But the same legislators who pledged fiscal restraint now want…
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Previously, we considered the negative impact that having too much national debt might have on the performance of the U.S. economy, keeping it from being able to grow as fast as it might otherwise if it were not for having such a large national debt. But that may be a small cost to bear…
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The federal government won’t say who they are, but in 2013 two people still get government payments for the U.S. Civil War, which ended nearly 150 years ago. No government official made that information public. It only emerged as the result of an investigation of federal payment records by the Associated Press, which also…
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Not long ago, we summarized the findings of new academic research into the fiscal stability of nations to determine the level of government-issued debt they can afford to rack up before it begins to harm their economies. One of the paper’s co-authors, Jim Hamilton of the University of California in San Diego, applied the…
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“These people are collecting their hourly rates, flying out here to do whatever it is they do, eating peanuts and watching TV on the plane. When they get here, their usual hourly rate kicks in again. These guys are just rolling.” That may sound like a rant from some television tabloid but it’s actually…
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The assets of Americans 35 or older have dropped 22 percent since 2007, according to Pew Research, and the decrease is because of high unemployment, a weak housing market, and a sluggish economy. Americans now learning hardship first-hand might consider the way members of Congress are attempting to tighten their belts in light of…
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The answer is revealed in the chart below, which appeared as part of Dylan Grice’s commentary in the March 13, 2013 edition of the Edelweiss Journal: The chart shows the accumulated amount of U.S. government-issued debt for each quarter from 2009-Q1 through 2012-Q3. The Federal Reserve began accumulating U.S. government-issued debt once again in…
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According to Byron York, Republicans are gearing up to defund Obamacare. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee want a vote on a budget amendment to defund the president’s government healthcare plan but the Senate Republican caucus remains “deeply divided” about such a move, which of course the Democrats oppose. Whatever the politics involved, a…
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