"This is a moment of challenge for our country. But we've experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper -- to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am abs...

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution says that "hyperbolic attacks on earmarks do a disservice to the public": Put Earmarks in Perspective, by Thomas E. Mann, Senior Fellow, Brookings: It is hard to take seriously a political opposition whose major antidote to the most serious and frig...

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 avera...

Each morning, I sit and read my e-mail in the bathroom. This morning, at precisely six, ThumbPer meowed. He meowed the meow of a cat who was patiently waiting his turn. It was time to go meditate with a cup of coffee and a cat. At precisely six. I wondered how he knew, what biological mechanism made...

I saw Senator McCain on CNN talking about how the stimulus package is, essentially, reaching into the pockets of future generations and transferring their wealth to the present generation. He kept talking about how much poorer future generations will be as a result of the debt the stimulus package (...

I was thinking about thinking about this: Dynamic Scoring, by Andy Harless: Suppose that, at the beginning of the fiscal year, Congress appropriates $100 billion extra for infrastructure projects. At the end of the fiscal year, how much higher will the deficit turn out to be, compared to what it oth...

With news of a $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit and continually rising unemployment numbers, President-elect Barack Obama is facing an economy that has the constitution of a sickly cat. A remedy for what ails it may be coming in a restructuring of Medicare and Social Security, which Obama said w...

Congressional Blue Dogs are commonly described as moderate or conservative Democrats, but it’s probably more accurate to describe them as deficit hawks. While they’re typically somewhat to the right of their Democrat brethren, their calling card is an insistence on balanced budgets, incl...

Jamie Galbraith responds to the question posed by the National Journal, "Is the deficit a threat to future recovery?" James K. Galbraith, National Journal:  No. The question is grossly misconceived. Right now and for the immediate future, the budget deficit is the only source of deman...

How hard can it be to balance the California Budget when anyone can do it in less than 5 minutes using the California Budget Challenge (CBC). My budget even includes a $1.5B surplus for a rainy day fund. And I did it pretty much without trashing Prop 98 or Prop 13, raising taxes or breaking [...]SHA...