Is it just me, or has this been underreported? President Obama’s budget chief hinted Wednesday that the president’s signature campaign issue — a middle-class tax cut — will not likely survive a budget battle with Democrats on Capitol Hill. The president stresses that despite tough times, things will improve. On a conference call with reporters in advance of the president’s trip to the Hill to | Read More »
Greg Mankiw points out that while Barack Obama’s budget promises to increase the national debt by more than $9 trillion over the next ten years, even that figure relies on rosy growth projections that overstate tax revenues. I’ll refer you to Mankiw for the specific numbers. On the average however, Obama projects annual economic growth to be about a full percentage point better than the | Read More »
Now this is a surprise: President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill (HR 1105) passed by the House on Wednesday…
Headline: “Obama Vows No Earmarks on Stimulus” Fine Print: “We are going to ban all earmarks — the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review…” It’s much easier to ban earmarks if you change the definition. According to the Office of Management and Budget, an earmark is spending where “the congressional direction… circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the | Read More »
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