Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| Larger Spending Cuts Would Help the Economy The $825 billion stimulus of 2009 cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per job but yielded no short-term economic growth... |
| Tax Relief for Child Care Should Be Maintained Child care merits tax relief because labor economists have proven that reductions in the cost of child care lead to increased work... |
| Tax Bills for Rich Families Approach 30-Year High For 2013, families with incomes in the top 20 percent of the nation will pay an average of 27.2 percent of their income in federal taxes; the average family in the bottom 20 percent of households won't pay any federal taxes... |
| Mismanaged Federal Properties Cost Taxpayers Billions Mismanagement of federal property is estimated to cost taxpayers at least $1.6 billion each year... |
| Why We Should Limit the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction Because the current tax system fails to tax imputed rent, it leads to a tax advantage that could be fixed by replacing the home mortgage interest deduction with a 15 percent refundable credit... |
| The Truth about Obama's Sequestration Report The White House's report of sequestration's effects is full of doom and gloom, but the predictions involve some large assumptions and generally overstate the impact of sequestration... |
| Stimulus Spending Fails to Improve Economy Because stimulus is the result of the political process and suffers from diminishing returns, it is unlikely to be targeted in the most efficient manner at areas of "slack" in the economy... |
| U.S. Roads in Good Shape Between 1989 and 2008, all states lowered their highway fatality rates and 40 states reduced their percentages of deficient bridges... |
| Capping Tax Expenditures a Substitute for Raising Taxes By limiting tax savings from all deductions and the two major tax exclusions to 2 percent of an individual's adjusted gross income, the deficit could be reduced by $220 billion in 2013... |
| Take the Public-Private Road to Efficiency Private infrastructure projects are more likely to be chosen without political influence and are more likely to be completed on time and on budget... |
