Economic Policy News

The House Budget Committee last Thursday approved a budget resolution for fiscal 2019. The House budget, dubbed “A Brighter American Future,” would achieve balance in 2027. Importantly, the House budget proposes about $300 billion in spending reductions by using a powerful fiscal tool called reconciliation. The Senate needs to follow suit to unlock those savings…

The House Budget Committee this week unveiled its fiscal 2019 budget proposal, and the most important aspect is that it provides reconciliation instructions to authorizing committees to find more than $300 billion in mandatory spending cuts. More than two-thirds of the federal budget consists of mandatory spending, which is not subject to the annual appropriations…

With reported growth of 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017 and 6.7 percent annual growth projected for 2018, India now boasts the world’s fastest-growing economy. The question now becomes how to preserve the momentum. First and foremost, India must recognize that the growth enjoyed for the past two decades came largely…

An economic crisis has engulfed Puerto Rico. The Financial Oversight Management Board, a federally-mandated advisory group, has worked to help Puerto Rico deal with its financial crisis and establish policies that will lead to long-run growth. The board says Puerto Rico must reform its labor market to have a bright future. While the oversight board…

In April, the Congressional Budget Office released its updated budget projections, and the outlook is grim. The annual federal deficit is projected to rise to over $1 trillion by 2020 and to top $1.5 trillion by 2028. In the next decade, debt is projected to skyrocket to over 96 percent of the economy. This is…

The Senate Budget Committee met May 23 to consider the Government Accountability Office’s annual report on government efficiency and effectiveness, which identifies areas of unnecessary overlap, fragmentation, and duplication among federal programs. The Government Accountability Office supplements that identification of waste with recommendations of what to do about it, presenting specific proposals upon which Congress…

A provision in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2019 would delay by at least two years a much-needed new round of Base Realignment and Closure. That delay would represent billions of taxpayer dollars that could have been saved, but instead would have to be allocated to infrastructure that isn’t fully…

Egypt’s economy is rebounding after years of economic stress and political turmoil. As Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, noted earlier this year, Egypt is at a turning point in its economic structure and is signaling to investors it is serious about comprehensively reforming its economic system. According to The Heritage Foundation’s…

It doesn’t take a genius to realize the U.S. budget process is broken. The biggest reason for that is that too much spending is growing on autopilot. Now, Congress wants to double down by budgeting even less frequently. Speaking to the Washington Examiner this month, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., who co-chairs the Joint Select Committee…

In a recent commentary in The Wall Street Journal, “Freer Markets, Freer Media,” Kevin Brookes and Patrick Dery of the Montreal Economic Institute offered a surprising insight: One proven way to keep reporters safe around the world and to advance freedom of the press is, in fact, to promote economic liberty. That’s because economic freedom…

Spending by Washington, D.C., public schools can be difficult to pin down. Estimates suggest spending is somewhere between $27,000 and $29,000 per child per year, which is roughly double the national average. Assuming $27,000 per student per year, D.C. taxpayers spend about $350,000 on a student from kindergarten through graduation. One could be forgiven for…

The Republican Study Committee has released its fiscal year 2019 budget proposal, “A Framework for Unified Conservatism.” In light of the recent budget-busting deal and projections of trillion-dollar deficits returning, the plan sends a strong message: A truly conservative budget is the answer to the unsustainable budget course the nation is on. The RSC framework…

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., recently revived the “penny plan,” which calls on Congress to reduce spending by at least one penny on the dollar from one year to the next. The proposal was introduced in 2011 by then-Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and has been introduced…

The first public hearing of the new Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform will take place on Tuesday. The committee was established in February by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and is made up of 16 members (eight Democrats and eight Republicans) equally divided between the House of Representatives and the…