Opinion
  • FILE PHOTO: U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell  speaks in Washington

    Raising the Inflation Target to 4% Is a Bad Idea

    By Jack Salmon

    As inflation continues to massively surpass the Federal Reserve's 2% target, we are beginning to hear growing calls from some economists to raise the target inflation rate to 4%. Before the House of...

  • A New Plan to Save America’s Fiscal Future

    By David M. Walker

    I have been fighting for federal fiscal responsibility for over 30 years. During that time, I have worn many hats, including as comptroller general of the United States, as a partner with Arthur...

  • Along With Its Enormous Costs, the Child Tax Credit Discourages Work

    By Tracy C. Miller

    As part of the $1.85 trillion reconciliation bill, the Biden administration has proposed continuing the expanded version of the child tax credit (CTC) that was part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP...

  • Government Fiscal Responsibility Matters Now More Than Ever

    By Tracy C. Miller

    If President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan are enacted, trillions of dollars of additional spending will need to be paid for over the next decade. This raises fundamental...

  • States Can Get by Without Additional Federal Aid

    By Tracy C. Miller

    National newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times , continue to publish news articles and editorials outlining the arguments for more federal aid to help state and local...

  • The President and Congress Are Fiscal Swamp Monsters

    By Ivan Eland

    All the recent talk in the political media has been about ideological division and partisan rancor, yet the results when progressives and nationalists and Democrats and Republicans agree should also...

  • Congress Needs Some Fiscal Rules

    By Veronique de Rugy and Jack Salmon

    Approval ratings for Congress are slumming at 17%. This is nothing new. With the exception of a short-lived patriotic spike following 9/11, it has been going on for decades . Yet this already failing...

  • U.S. 1040 Individual Income Tax forms are seen in New York

    The Surprising History of the Standard Deduction

    By Sheila Weinberg

    Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put his signature on what he heralded as “a realistic tax law—which will tax all unreasonable profits, both individual and corporate.”...

  • Month After Month, Our Politicians' Poor Financial Decision-Making Continues

    By Sheila Weinberg, The Fiscal Times

    With the first quarter of the year now behind us, let’s take a moment to remember just how rocky a start it was. The federal government entered the year with a whimper, as a shutdown paralyzed...

  • The U.S. Capitol Building is seen at sunset in Washington, U.S. May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Zach Gibson - RC1E8C8195C0

    Sen. Mike Enzi: Senate Budget Is a First Step to Strengthen America’s Future

    By Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)

    This week the Senate Budget Committee will consider a budget plan that will reduce deficits by half a trillion dollars over the next five years. The budget does not presume to solve all of our fiscal...