Daily Policy Digest
Tax and Spending Issues
| More Firms Enjoy Tax-Free Status The percentage of U.S. corporations organized as nontaxable businesses has grown from about 24 percent in 1986 to about 69 percent in 2008... |
| How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo In 2004, the Buffalo News estimated that the city had garnered more federal redevelopment aid per capita than any other city in the country, yet the city has virtually nothing to show for it... |
| Convention Wisdom Available convention space has steadily increased to 70 million square feet, up from 40 million 20 years ago, despite fewer convention and meeting attendees... |
| Who Should Pay for Highways? The latest proposed allocations for highway funds from both the House and the Senate far exceed revenues provided by the fuel tax... |
| Entitlement Reforms Should Cut Benefits and Taxes Were the retirement age for Social Security raised, the loss of benefits would be greater than the recuperated taxes for all income groups, say Thomas R. Saving, a senior fellow, and John C. Goodman, president and CEO, at the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| The Never-Ending Budget Battle The budget process is broken, and public interest in reforming it is keen, but changing the budget rules alone is unlikely to fix our fiscal woes... |
| Will Republicans Hand the Left a VAT Victory? Because the value added tax will not take other taxes off the table such as the income tax or the capital gains tax, it will likely be used to justify larger government budgets... |
| Why European Loans Could Hurt U.S. Taxpayers Because the United States has a 17.75 percent share in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), U.S. taxpayers are at risk for an almost $20 billion loss should those countries bailed out by the IMF be unable to repay their loans... |
| Jobless Tap Disability Fund Currently, there are 10.6 million Americans collecting disability benefits -- a figure that has increased from 7.2 million in 2002... |
| Make Social Security Pay Its Own Way The federal government has in the past few decades found several occasions that warranted a break from Social Security's original framework of its trust fund remaining apart from general revenues... |
