Economic Policy News

The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of Economic Freedom—an annual global study that compares countries’ entrepreneurial environments—was released earlier this month. Since 1995, the index has measured a nation’s commitment to limited government and free enterprise on a scale of 0 to 100 by evaluating four critical policy pillars, including rule of law and regulatory efficiency….

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 raised the defense budget caps for both 2018 and 2019. For the coming year, the defense budget will be $647 billion, excluding war funds. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2019 will determine how these resources are to be spent and provides a chance to continue reversing…

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 signed into law last week really should be renamed the Bipartisan Budget Crash Act. This spending spree takes a Mack Truck and rams through the hard-fought budget caps under the 2011 Budget Control Act to the tune of at least $300 billion. When all is said and done, the…

The U.S. fiscal outlook is dire, but don’t blame it on tax reform. President Donald Trump’s budget demonstrates that the GOP-passed tax cuts are entirely sustainable—it’s the spending that’s the problem. It is worth remembering where we were before tax reform. Without the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, government scorekeepers projected that the government would…

Last week, Congress passed a continuing resolution that will keep the federal government funded through March 23. This is the fifth continuing resolution of the fiscal year—a sixth may be needed before March 23, since both parties have agreed to begin debate on an immigration bill this week. But as bad as the decision to…

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are experiencing a “Great Escape” from poverty, and increasing economic freedom around the globe is the reason, according to the recently published 2018 Index of Economic Freedom. The Index of Economic Freedom, a publication of The Heritage Foundation, which, for two decades, has analyzed economic policies in…

Just how bad is this new budget deal? The Heritage Foundation’s Justin Bogie joins us to explain what the short-term and long-term consequences of this big spending splurge could be. Plus: President Donald Trump attends the National Prayer Breakfast, and Vice President Mike Pence is bringing Otto Warmbier’s dad to the Olympics in South Korea.

Good news: For the first time in a while, the United States isn’t just economically stronger. It’s economically freer. How do we know? Check the just-released 2018 “Index of Economic Freedom,” an annual data-driven research project that scores and ranks almost every country. The U.S. isn’t alone, I’m glad to say. Since it began measuring…

The bipartisan budget deal to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two years is worse than you think. Not only would it bust the budget caps that have long kept federal spending under control. It also would renew a package of expired tax subsidies, marking the return of a corrupt ritual of…

Congressional leaders on Wednesday announced their latest budget-busting deal. The plan would provide a much-needed boost to defense spending, but fails in almost all other areas. Over the next two years, it would raise the Budget Control Act caps by $296 billion with only a third of that being paid for. This agreement would raise…

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That’s a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017—our…

Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas was chosen last month to replace a fellow Republican, Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, as chairman of the House Budget Committee. With fiscal 2018 appropriations yet to be finalized, Womack finds himself in an uncertain position. If a deal is reached to raise the Budget Control Act caps for 2019, some…

We live in a Golden Age of economic progress. People living today enjoy long lives, good health, and high standards of living unimagined just a few generations ago. Billions of people around the world have escaped poverty. Things we take for granted—antibiotics, the iPhone, air travel—would have seemed like magic to our great-grandparents. These blessings…

In the coming weeks, Congress is set to vote on a spending bill that will include funding for federal disaster relief. Following a year of intense hurricanes and record-breaking wildfires, the congressional desire to continue the trend of expanding the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide the bulk of relief funds to states affected by…

Lawmakers are discussing the possibility of passing yet another continuing resolution on Jan. 19 to keep the government from shutting down. If another continuing resolution comes to fruition, it will be the fourth one since the fiscal year started back on Oct. 1. As of now, we have already passed more than one-quarter of the…