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Category Archives: Economic Policy: US Debt Crisis
Taylor and Scalia: Two Giants on the Economy (and the Sequester) and the Constitution | HughHewitt.com | 03.04.13
The Hoover Institution was in Washington last week. Every year the Board of Overseers of the Stanford University-based think tank meets in the nation’s capital. Much of the two and a half days is spent listening to presentations from a mix of the institution’s world-ranked scholars and prominent men and women in government and journalism. […]
At the New Year, the American Middle Class and the Ghost of Christmases Long Ago and Far Away | HughHewitt.com | 12.28.12
Looking back on the year now ending, I have been struck by a disconnect that has entered American language. Through the presidential campaign and now in the fiscal cliff fight, we have heard about “the middle class.” The president – to the cheers of the media — tells us he is for the middle class […]
What is Going on with the Fed? No, Not Anything Like What it Seems | Ricochet.com | 12.15.12
6.5% unemployment or bust; until then, the money spigot is open wide. This was the gist of the Fed’s world-headline-grabbing announcement this week. Less noticed was that, as the FT reported on the same day, “The US Federal Reserve is carrying out its first ever system-wide stress test of bank liquidity…” Translation: The Fed will be pushing […]
A Quiz and Two Rules for the Budget Talks | Hughhewitt.com | 12.11.12
OK, class, here’s a quiz. If the government were to raise the top personal income tax rate by, say, 25 percent, what would be the increase in its take of the total gross domestic product? Twenty-five percent? Are you sure? After all how much of the government’s total personal income tax take actually comes from […]
Why The President Will Go Over The Fiscal Cliff Rather Than Compromise On Tax Rates | HughHewitt.com | 12.4.12
Why is President Obama so unmovable on about tax rates increases on high earners? Oh, I know what he says. Fairness. The rich – whoever they are – must pay their fair share (I’m not going to get into whether they already do or maybe even pay more than their fair share). But that’s no […]
How We Are Racing Towards The Economic Cliff | Ricochet.com | 12.2.12
Forget about the fiscal cliff. Are we headed to the economic cliff? A successful software entrepreneur and school friend sent me this chilling email last week: Yesterday I was speaking to a banker in central California who related how he is being prevented from doing his job due to the compliance people (read government pressures) and could […]
Posted in Economic Policy: US Debt Crisis Comments closed
Looking Over the Fiscal Cliff: What Kind of Deal is a Real Deal? | HughHewitt.com | 11.26.12
The day after the election I found myself in a waiting room for television guests with Howard Dean, the former Democrat presidential candidate. Passing the time, Dean talked and I listened. The topic was the fiscal cliff. Dean was for going over it and forcing the big increases in marginal tax rates that will go […]
Post-Mortem on the Supercommittee | HughHewitt.com | 11.22.11
Following the collapse of the budget supercommittee, a story about Ronald Reagan comes to mind. It was early in his first term as governor of California. Two aides – I believe Lynn Nofziger was one – took him to lunch and gave him a lecture. Forget you’re a movie star, they told him. Forget all […]
Heard at a Reception of Washington Insiders | HughHewitt.com | 11.15.11
With the GOP presidential race in upheaval again and members of the budget supercommittee violating their own rule of silence to take public shots at one another, the Washington political gossip mill was working overtime last night. At a reception of insiders (primarily Republicans), the talk in the back of the room started off focusing […]
Hitting the Policy Reset Button | HughHewitt.com | 08.08.11
With the S&P downgrade of U.S. government debt on Friday, it is time for the Obama Administration to hit the reset button. The question in Washington and around the country is, does the Administration have it within itself to do that? The answer is probably no. During an interview that ran in Saturday’s Wall Street […]
Postmortem | HughHewitt.com | 08.02.11
As usual, the mainstream media has it, if not 100-percent wrong, pretty close. Here is a rundown of questions and answers, winners and losers coming out of the debt ceiling standoff. Question: Was it a long, hard negotiation? Answer: Hard, yes; long, no. OK, it seemed to go on forever. But that’s because when 24/7 […]
Where Do Debt Talks Stand After Last Night’s Presidential Speech? | HughHewitt.com | 07.26.11
Last night, towards the end of his speech to the nation, President Obama recalled Thomas Jefferson’s aphorism on making legislation: “Every man cannot have his way in all things.” The president was trying to pin the intransigence blame on House Republicans, particularly Tea Party freshmen. But he did it in a speech in which he […]
The Stakes in the Debt Ceiling Debate | HughHewitt.com | 07.18.11
If you want to pinpoint when the United States became a global power, you could do worse than pick 1917. That was when U.S. government first received a Triple-A bond rating. The rating is now in jeopardy and could be lost by the beginning of next year – but not for reasons that the Obama […]
The Debt Battle Is Good for the GOP | Wall Street Journal | 07.18.11
Watching the debt-ceiling battle on Capitol Hill—and even more the battle between the tea party young guns and older House Republicans—feels like déjà vu, or, rather, 1995, all over again. Sixteen years ago, in the middle of the government shutdown, I found myself racing up Capitol Hill in a car filled with Republican congressmen. I […]
Another Fine Mess | HughHewitt.com | 06.28.11
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal former Federal Reserve Board governor Lawrence Lindsey says “the deficit is worse than you think.” (see: http://tiny.cc/2q8wx) But rumors around Washington and Wall Street suggest that Lindsey’s is the optimistic scenario. To see why, let’s start with what he says. His argument is simple: the Obama Administration’s projections incorporate […]
Smoke Signals from the Treasury Department | HughHewitt.com | 06.13.11
How bad is the developing U.S. government debt crisis? A recent Washington lunchtime conversation with a Reagan-era Treasury Department official suggested that the answer could be much worse than the administration acknowledges or the president understands. Not long ago the president refused to put his own spending cut plan on the table. House Republicans had […]
Lessons of NY 26 | HughHewitt.com | 05.31.11
What are the lessons of New York 26? We all know the narrative: The GOP candidate was riding high until the Democrat shouted Medicare. Does that mean Medicare is the new third rail of American politics? Now that we are getting down to specifics of cutting spending, is the Tea Party finished? Are we back […]
Republican Pros Handicap 2012 Presidential Run | HughHewitt.com | 05.16.11
In looking to the 2012 campaign, the mood among Republican pros in Washington at the moment is low-grade manic depression. Anyone can beat President Obama, the conventional GOP wisdom goes, except the anyones who are actually running. You might ask, why would anyone believe that anyone can beat the president? The killing of America’s most […]
Reality Check As We Approach the Opening of the Presidential Political Season | HughHewitt.com | 04.25.11
The story of the 2012 presidential race was previewed over the last few days in an odd couple of journalist venues, an entry in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary and this weekend’s edition of Meet the Press. The Political Diary piece was by John Fund, a columnist who shows up everywhere around Washington. The […]
Checking Out? The President and the American Debt Crisis | HughHewitt.com | 4.18.11
The White House stance on reducing the deficit, laid out in the president’s speech at George Washington University last week, was clueless – clueless and dangerous. Starting moments after Mr. Obama stepped down from the podium, political commentators have been giving the address a thumbs down. Everyone has seen the media comments about the talk’s […]
Today’s Budget Speech: How Clueless Is He? | HughHewitt.com | 04.13.11
Here is good gauge of the cluelessness and disarray of the Democratic Party’s present leadership in Congress and the White House. Over the weekend, the president and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid congratulated everyone in sight on the just-concluded budget deal. Meanwhile, also over the weekend, former House speaker – now House minority leader – […]
Action By Inaction | HughHewitt.com | 03.14.11
This week the op-ed columns have been full of outrage at the do-nothing presidency. In National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson writes of “Obama as Hamlet,” indecisive in his approach to the uprisings across the Arab world. In the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone says the president is still following his practice in the Illinois legislature […]
Facing the Facts to Save Our Future | HughHewitt.com | 03.07.11
This week, with the battle over public finance continuing across the country and in Congress, the left launched an amazing counter attack. Too bad for them that new facts belied their argument even as they were making it. The counterattack came down to four words: “We are not broke.” Predictably, The New York Times led […]
Did I Hear It Right? The Battle of Wisconsin is Over? The Governor Has Won? | HughHewitt.com | 02.28.11
At a private Washington dinner last night, one of the nation’s most prominent political scientists and pollsters said that the battle of Wisconsin is over. Governor Scott Walker has won. The remark came amidst a flurry of wide ranging discussion and passed almost unnoticed, until one guest interrupted, “What did you say a moment ago? […]
Posted in Economic Policy: US Debt Crisis Comments closed
“Repeal or Revise” and the Thunder out of China | HughHewitt.com | 01.18.11
A column last Friday in The Financial Times underscored the urgency of the new GOP House majority’s “repeal or revise” agenda. Not that addressing domestic U.S. concerns was the author’s intention. The article by columnist Philip Stephens (see: http://tiny.cc/my1m0 ) surveyed the deterioration of US-China relations during the past year: tensions over Korea, Taiwan, and […]
Whose Century Is This Anyway? | HughHewitt.com | 12.13.10
The news out of Washington this week has focused on the tax bill before Congress. Both House and Senate liberal Democrats continue to display their economic illiteracy, playing the class warfare card even after the current and prior presidents of their own party have, at least for a time, given up that ghost. The real […]
Not bipartisan; Right: Answering Questions About Team B, a Shadow CBO | HughHewitt.com | 12.06.10
Judging from the feedback, including a call from Fox Business, last week’s column struck some kind of cord. Everywhere I was asked about it, the same questions kept coming up. So this week, I want to acknowledge those queries and give answers. As a reminder, the column called for creation of a shadow Congressional Budget […]
Create a Team B to Fight Budget Estimate Battles, a Citizen’s Budget Office | HughHewitt.com | 11.29.10
As the new Congress faces job one – putting the government’s fiscal house in order – here is a modest proposal: Create a new Team B. The first Team B convened in the mid-1970s and dealt with intelligence estimates. Many experts felt that CIA reports systematically discounted the actual strength and aggressiveness of the Soviet […]
Enron Lives | New York Post | 03.08.05
Talk about shooting the messenger: Critics are slamming President Bush’s drive to reform Social Security for its supposedly astronomical transition costs. But those costs don’t arise from Bush’s solution. They show up on the books simply because Bush wants to undo the Enron-style techniques that the government has used on Social Security. That honest accounting […]
The Real Debt | New York Post | 08.28.04
In his speech Thursday to the Republican convention, can President Bush do better with the American people than John Kerry did in Boston? The answer may turn on how aggressively the president addresses the senator’s signature economic charge — that Bush budget deficits have saddled the government with crushing debt. Handled assertively and self-confidently, this […]
Postmortem: The Budget Battle on the Morning After | HughHewitt.com | 10.17.13