The U.S. national debt hasn’t grown since May 19, 2013! It’s true! On May 16, 2013, the total public debt outstanding reached the statutory limit of $16.7 trillion, however a subsequent act of Congress had suspended the debt limit until May 19, 2013, by which it had grown to roughly $16.74 trillion. Since then…
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Calculating the cost of government is a difficult task but as a general rule the costs will always be higher than taxpayers imagine. A California case shows why this is so. Pension plans, including those in government, include contributions by the employer and the employee. The employee contribution of Susan Muranishi, an administrator in…
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Want to know some of the crazier things the U.S. government is spending money to achieve this year? The Independent Journal Review (no relation to the Independent Institute or the venerable Independent Review) just featured their list of the Top 25. Here’s a handful of the ones that really caught our imagination: $349,862 for…
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When something as big as Medicare makes decisions the consequences involve more than health care. For example, in April the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made a decision to increase funding to the private-sector Medicare Advantage program by $8 billion. That decision was worth billions to private health insurers, and as the…
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Whatever happened to the scary budget sequester? If you’re like most Americans, you probably haven’t noticed any real impact to your daily life from spending cuts that the U.S. government has actually implemented during the last three months. Which is probably a very different experience from what you might have expected given how loudly…
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We noted in March that California’s Board of Equalization jacked up the excise tax on gasoline by nearly 9 percent, 3.5 cents, to 39.5 cents a gallon. That tax hike takes effect today, July 1, and has nothing to do with market forces. The Board of Equalization, a tax agency, approved the excise tax…
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Between spending cuts or tax hikes, which do you suppose does more damage to a nation’s economy? If you said tax hikes, you’re right! Political Calculations recently looked at the impact of both government spending cuts in Greece, Spain and the United States, and found the following impacts for each dollar of either spending…
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What effect will President Obama’s having ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to go to war against U.S. coal-fired power plants have upon the U.S. economy? If you guessed “a negative one”, you’re correct! One very telling confirmation of that outcome is being reported by Amy Harder of the National Journal, who has obtained a…
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In early June the government sold 30 million shares of GM, a move doubtless timed with GM’s return to the S&P 500 index, a position the auto giant lost in 2009 when it filed for bankruptcy reorganization. But as Business Week noted, as of April 30 the federal government still held 241.6 million GM…
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As recent testimony confirms, the Internal Revenue Service has been singling out groups for extra scrutiny and abuse based on their political views. At the same time, the IRS has been singling out people who are not even supposed to be in the United States for special convenience. For example, in 2011 the IRS…
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