The White House won a hollow victory in the Senate last week on its tax bill. The bill will do almost nothing for growth and could even be counterproductive, owing to harmful tax increases included in the package. In defense of the Senate, it was in an untenable...
Bruce Bartlett
Bruce Bartlett is a Senior Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).
A Tax Plan Worse Than Nothing
The Bush administration is rapidly losing control of the tax legislative process. Its unwillingness to acknowledge that its plan needed to be totally rethought once a $350 billion revenue loss cap was imposed in the Senate has created an anarchic situation in...
Exempting Dividends from Taxation
President Bush’s plan to eliminate the double taxation of corporate profits, by exempting dividends from taxation, appears to be on life support. Even before his tax package was reduced from $726 billion to $550 billion in the House and $350 billion in the...
A Flat Tax for Iraq
With the end of war, the United States is now working rapidly to restore civil administration in Iraq and get its economy moving again. A key issue will be the Iraqi tax system, which cannot wait until all the questions about Iraq’s form of government are worked...
Tax Cut Politics
The Bush administration is understandably upset that its proposal for a $726 billion tax cut has effectively been watered down to $350 billion in the Senate and $550 billion in the House. However, this is less of a barrier to enactment of the administration’s...
Government Subsidizing Obesity?
Dr. Robert Atkins died last week of complications from a fall on April 8. Famous for the high protein/low carbohydrate diet that he pioneered, overweight people the world over mourn his death. [1] For many, he was their savior, giving them a workable method for...
Japan’s Crippled Banking System
Back in the 1980s, a lot of best-selling books were written about how the United States should emulate Japan. Pursuing free market economics based on individual entrepreneurs was passe, so it was often said by Ronald Reagan’s critics. Instead, we should follow...
Iraq is Better off without the International Monetary Fund
Leaders of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund met in Washington over the weekend for their annual spring meeting. They were under great pressure from the United States to step in to Iraq and help get that country’s economy back on its feet. However,...
Tax Day Should Also Be Election Day
April 15 is like a national holiday for conservatives. It is the one day each year when Americans are forced to think about the cost of government. That is why many conservatives have long thought that tax day should also be Election Day. A review of polling data on...
The Cost of Post War Iraq
Many of those who oppose military action in Iraq cite the cost as a principal reason. Before the war, they often exaggerated the monetary outlay, the loss of American lives, the danger of a long war and other concerns in order to discourage U.S. engagement. They were...
The Economic Effects of President Bush’s Budget Proposal
On March 25, the Congressional Budget Office released an important study of President Bush’s budget proposal. What was novel about this study is that the CBO attempted to calculate the impact of the proposal on the economy as a whole. Normally, it assumes that...
War: Good for Iraq?
Every day, Americans watch their televisions in awe, as U.S. cruise missiles and precision bombs rain down on Baghdad. There is also much destruction going on elsewhere in Iraq. It may seem absurd, therefore, to suggest that the war in Iraq could somehow end up being...
Let the Steel Tariffs Die
A little over a year ago, on March 5, 2002, President Bush made a serious mistake by imposing tariffs on imported steel. At the time, there were many, including myself, who said that the negative impact of this action on steel consumers would be much greater than any...
The Old Europe’s Paper Armies
When it came down to it, two of America’s closest Cold War allies — France and Germany — were unwilling to bear the responsibility of major powers when it came to Iraq. They weren’t there when we — and the world — needed them....
Milking the Cigarette Tax Cow
With many states now running large budget deficits, legislators are looking anew at higher cigarette taxes. Even though these taxes have been raised sharply in almost every state in recent years — on top of price increases mandated by the tobacco settlement...
George W. Bush’s Tax Plan as a Replay of Reaganomics?
One of the favorite liberal myths of the 1980s is that Ronald Reagan and his advisers played an elaborate trick on the American people. They got a huge tax cut passed in 1981 by convincing Congress, the press and the American people that it would lose no revenue....
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