At least one group of Americans has been profiting despite the faltering economy: members of the U.S. House of Representatives. They're supposed to be the part of the government that's "closest to the people." But as the saying has it, they came to do good and stayed to do well. In their cases, mostly very well. "Between 1984 and 200...

The big news, as far as the media are concerned, is the political game of debt-ceiling chicken that is being played by Democrats and Republicans in Washington. But, however much the media are focused on what is happening inside the Beltway, there is a whole country outside the Beltway — and the time is long overdue to start thinking about wha...

WASHINGTON — Congratulations, Speaker Boehner, to you and the members of your new majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The gracious humility of your acceptance remarks was a vivid contrast to your predecessor's ill-mannered comments as she handed over the speaker's gavel. She clearly does not intend to be held accountable for the di...

President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office in January 2009 during a severe economic downturn led by a meltdown in housing prices — and promptly made things worse. By bailing out banks, insurance companies and auto firms — done to a lesser extent by the previous administration — Obama rewarded poor performers and punished t...

Now that we have new representatives, it's time to advance immediately on them and address the issue that can both rebuild our economy and relieve us of government oppression: tax reform. As I began to point out in last week's article, Congress' plan to subsidize all its outrageous borrowing and spending will demand far more than the tax man's just...

The Congressional Budget Office just reported that in the past two years since President Barack Obama took office, federal spending is up 21.4 percent. The national deficit was $1.29 trillion in 2010 (second to the $1.4 trillion in Obama's first year in office, 2009), which means that for every $1 the federal government spent this past year, it bor...

Across the pond, British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is calling for 19 percent cuts in government spending. As The New York Times reported, British finance minister George Osborne believes that the cuts will steer the country — where the deficit runs at about 11.5 percent of total economic output &md...

The White House's wish almost came true last week. It was hoping most of us and even the mainstream media would miss the release of the Congressional Budget Office's preliminary report on the 2010 federal fiscal year. And most did. The Wall Street Journal, however, exposed why the White House was being so secretive about its results: The CBO conclu...

When Barack Obama was elected president, he made claims that he would "go through our federal budget — page by page, line by line — eliminating those programs we don't need." But that is just another broken promise in a long line of others. A couple of weeks ago, the Cato Institute faced off with President Obama by taking out ...

Just in case anyone mistakenly believes Obama has heard (or gives a rip about) the loud voice of the American people rejecting his socialism, appeasement, unconstitutional abuses of power and unpresidential combativeness and divisiveness, let me share a few tidbits. —After House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, issued a damning critique ...