You Know It Balances On Your Head

[Audrey]

… just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine:

  • You should really read the entire Cato Institute blog. But if you can't do that, you absolutely, really should read Daniel Mitchell's debunking of the notion that a balanced budget can't be achieved without tax increases.

    … [R]evenues are expected to grow (because of factors such as inflation, more population, and economic expansion) by more than 7 percent each year. Balancing the budget is simple so long as politicians increase spending at a slower rate. If they freeze the budget, we almost balance the budget by 2017. If federal spending is capped so it grows 1 percent each year, the budget is balanced in 2019. And if the crowd in Washington can limit spending growth to about 2 percent each year, red ink almost disappears in just 10 years.

    Note that this isn't exactly pain-free: freezes or caps must be on total spending, not just "discretionary" spending. Tough choices await. Still, if you hear people claim that tax increases are necessary to move toward fiscal sanity, they're either lying or misinformed.

  • Palin on SOTU:

    The President's State of the Union address boiled down to this message: "The era of big government is here as long as I am, so help me pay for it." He dubbed it a "Winning The Future" speech, but the title's acronym seemed more accurate than much of the content.

    That's not a very Presidential comment, but it's pretty funny.

  • Was Obama's State of the Union tantamount to plagiarism? Find out the exciting answer in an article entitled "Obama's State of the Union Was Tantamount to Plagiarism," from Alvin Felzenberg at US News.

  • In higher education news:

    A California university professor has been charged with peeing on a colleague's campus office door.

    For those of you who said: "Math professor, I bet.": good guess.


Last Modified 2012-09-29 6:33 AM EDT