Last week, we got the jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). They reported a job gain of 162,000 for the month of July. There wasn’t a lot of hoopla about it because the numbers were pretty pathetic. Many analysts had expected somewhere between 175,000 to 200,000 jobs. Plus, the BLS dropped the […]
Bravo Senator Coburn!
We’ve heard a lot of whining and seen a lot of hand wringing about how awful the the sequester is to the nation’s economy. (The sequestration is the automatic budget cuts imposed by Congress that is occurring in the federal government.) We hear about federal employees being furloughed, children not being able to attend school, […]
Boeing Bogusness is Business as Usual
Today, Citizens Against Government Waste expressed outrage over the revelation that laid-off Boeing workers in the state of Washington will qualify for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), an unemployment benefits program that far exceeds the benefits normally handed out to unemployed workers. According to an August 1 story in the Seattle Times, the Department of […]
Stay Vigilant!
In today’s Congressional Quarterly, the headline reads, “Senate Democrats Weigh Sequester-Replacement Plans for September Votes” immediately followed by “the White House tries to broker a bipartisan budget deal with a small group of Republicans.” We who favor reducing the size of government need to be vigilant the next few months as Congress begins to negotiate […]
Keeping Internet Access Free of Taxes
On November 1, 2014, the moratorium banning discriminatory taxes on the Internet and taxes on Internet access imposed by the Internet Tax Freedom Act in 1998 will expire. At the time the legislation was initially enacted, the Internet had approximately 300 million users. Since then, the number of users on the Internet has increased to nearly […]
Ho Hum
Yesterday, the President traveled to Tennessee to discuss his “new” proposal for spurring on the economy and creating jobs. He proposes to lower the corporate tax rate and simplify the tax code by closing tax “loopholes.” Currently, the federal tax rate in the U.S. for corporations is 35%, one of the highest among industrialized nations. […]
I See Dead People
A Government Accountability Office report released June 28 has an eye catching headline, “USDA Needs to Do More to Prevent Improper Payments to Deceased Individuals.” Yup, here we go again, our government using our tax dollars to pay dead people. The GAO discusses in its report how the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) doles out […]
Gridlock is Good
Last week, the NBC News and the WSJ released a poll on Congress’s and President Obama’s approval ratings. The Wall Street Journal states, “Rising frustration over partisan gridlock in Washington has damaged faith both in President Barack Obama and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, with disapproval of Congress hitting an all-time high.” According the results, some […]
A Big Nuthin Burger
Yesterday and today, the President pivoted for the 19th time to the economy and gave a one hour-plus speech on the economy. On Wednesday, his first stop was Knox College in Illinois where he gave a commencement address in 2005. Many news reports prior to the event predicted the President wouldn’t come up with any […]
A Diller, A Dollar, A Cost-Saving Scholar
On Monday, July 22nd, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) co-hosted a lunch briefing with the Dollar Coin Alliance (DCA), of which CCAGW is a member. The purpose of the briefing was twofold: first, to reiterate the benefits and considerable cost savings to be realized by a transition from the dollar bill to […]