GOP House Candidate’s Deficit Reduction Strategy: Merge Commerce, Agriculture and Interior Into Super-Department

Republican House candidates, especially challengers seeking to portray themselves as outsiders to Washington politics, are almost universally running on a platform that our federal deficit has gotten out of control. They’re also almost all opposed to letting the Bush tax cuts expire, however, so they’re going to have to propose More…

The Missed Opportunities in the $1,294,000,000,000 Deficit

This afternoon, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Jeffrey Zients gave one final report on the United States’ fiscal year:

Due to careful stewardship of the emergency programs, their effect on the deficit was much smaller than previously estimated. The Troubled Asset Relief

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Economists Lower Growth Outlook

The National Association of Business Economists has lowered its growth outlook for the entire U.S. economy, forecasting persistent high unemployment and sluggish growth for the next two years, if not beyond. From the summary:

• Real gross domestic product (GDP) is now expected to advance 2.6 percent in 2010,

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Job-Creating Stimulus Program Comes to an End, Auguring Thousands of Layoffs

Thirteen years ago, Lee Bush started his own small business, National Collection Systems, a waste management service based in Jackson, Miss. “Times are tough, and they were especially tough when the market turned down,” Bush says. “It’s hard to get loans to fund the business. We got more efficient. And More…

The Food Stamp Cookie Jar

This morning, I wrote a quick update on the sweeping child-nutrition bill that might pass Congress soon, and the standoff on its pay-for, a cut to food stamps, or SNAP benefits. (The bill has passed the Senate, but not yet the House.) The problem is not just that the More…

Stimulus Fail

Via the Corner at the National Review Online: Two departments within the city of Los Angeles received $111 million from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With that money, the departments had expected to save or create 264 jobs. In the end, the total was just 55.

Economists Argue Against Deficit Reduction

Today, more than 300 economists and policy experts released a letter warning that “the still-fragile economic recovery will be undercut by austerity economics of the kind being pushed by conservative politicians and by the Deficit Commission.”

The group argues that President Obama and Congress should press for legislation More…

Job-Creating Stimulus Program Nears End

You probably haven’t heard of the TANF Emergency Fund, a program tucked into the massive $787 billion Feb. 2009 stimulus, but the administration considered it so successful that it requested its extension into next year, with an estimated cost of $2.5 billion.

The Problem With Having an Infrastructure Bank as a Jobs Program

Earlier this year, Stanton C. Hazelroth appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee to testify as the head of the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, the country’s largest public infrastructure bank. Founded with seed funding of just $181 million in 1999, the bank has since More…

Why No Payroll Tax Cut?

Tax cuts are generally less stimulative than spending measures, but among tax cuts, a holiday or slashing of the payroll tax is one of the best options, the Congressional Budget Office reports. So why did President Obama suggest cutting investment and research and development taxes for businesses, rather than More…