What is the hidden cost that Americans are paying to have the U.S. federal government spend so much money? To answer that question, let’s take a closer look at when U.S. federal government spending really went out of control. Here, if we track the U.S. federal government’s spending [1] per U.S. household against median…
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San Jose City Councilman Pete Constant wants to answer his office phone but the City Hall employees’ union says he should not be allowed to do so. The union has taken the Councilman to court, attempting to force him to hire someone else to be his administrative assistant and answer phones for $70,000 a…
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If you want to quickly see how President Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats’ federal government spending proposal for 2011 stacks up against what Congressional Republicans have in mind, shown against a background illustrating the trend in U.S. federal government spending since 1967, here you go! References 1 Obama, Barack. The State of the…
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In a January 19th article in the Wall Street Journal, “What Congress Should Cut,” former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe propose abolishing “the Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, end farm subsidies, and end urban mass transit grants, for starters.” The primary economic challenge today is…
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Despite the threat of another mass labor protest scheduled in France tomorrow, President Sarkozy is promising the modest increase in the standard retirement age from 60 to 62 will pass the legislature. Many of the French protesters are the students and youth—angry because they feel they are entitled to these “social protections”. Young people in the…
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Citizens Against Government Waste reports that the U.S. Senate’s version of the 2011 Department of Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations Act includes 590 projects ($2.2 billion) with an increase of 29.4% in costs over Fiscal Year 2010’s 588 projects. “The significant increase in the number of projects is indicative of senators’ continued…
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The New York Times on Monday, columnist Peter Orszag addresses the important issue of the the unsustainable budget deficit problem and the current high unemployment. What Orszag suggests as a “compromise” neglects the heart of both problems. Orszag suggests that “ideally only the middle-class tax cuts would be continued for now” but that doing…
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This new interactive graphic from the Wall Street Journal traces the growth in job gains and losses in the United States from December 2007 through August 2010. The results show that all sectors of the U.S. economy have dramatically declined except for employees in education, health care, and government, with federal and state workers…
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In a new online poll by the Wall Street Journal, 82.2% of those participating are voting no to the question, “Can more government stimulus lower the nation’s unemployment rate?” As the article states: “Washington’s response to the country’s stubbornly high unemployment rate will depend in part on who wins an increasingly intense debate over…
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Independent Institute Senior Fellow William F. Shughart II‘s new article, “We must cut taxes, curb spending and crimp regulations,” is being syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services to newspapers across the United States and Canada, including the Sacramento Bee, Lexington Herald-Leader, Standard Times (Bedford, MA), Bellingham Herald, Albany Times-Union, Guelph Mercury, Kitchener Record, etc. “The…
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