Category: Federal issues
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Medicaid, Pensions Kneecapping State Budgets
Take heed Governor Ralph Northam! Take heed Virginia House and Senate budget negotiators! One in five tax dollars collected by state and local governments across the United States go to Medicaid and public-employee health and retirement costs. Of the $136 billion growth in inflation-adjusted taxes collected by state and local governments between 2008 and 2016, two-thirds…
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Just a Reminder…
The national debt has passed the $21 trillion mark. It took only six months to get there from $20 trillion. Unlike the last time the U.S. racked up debt this rapidly, the economy is growing, not in a recession. Blame whomever you want — Boomergeddon is coming. It’s just a matter of time.
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Comstock Supports the Tax Cuts. Do her Democratic Foes?
by Alfredo Ortiz Democrats have put Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, represented by Republican Barbara Comstock, in their crosshairs in their attempt to take back the House of Representatives on Election Day in November. Seven opportunistic Democratic challengers have entered the race so far, recognizing their chance to represent this historic swing district that favored Hillary Clinton…
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Enjoy It While It Lasts
Woo hoo! Tax cuts and spending increases — it doesn’t get any better than this. The United States is about to enjoy its biggest fiscal stimulus since Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. All this spending and tax cutting is going to feel great for the next couple of years — especially…
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The New Normal: Rising Interest Rates
The United States enjoyed a three-decade decline in interest rates, beginning with the early-1980s quashing of inflation by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volker and culminating with Ben Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing in the mid-2010s. Lower interest rates, which made equities look more favorable by comparison, helped drive stock market indices like the Dow Jones Industrial…
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The GOP’s Hail Mary Pass
Faced with a chronically slow-growth economy, expanding deficits, mounting federal debt, and a looming funding crisis for the U.S. welfare state, Republican congressmen are, to borrow a football metaphor, throwing a hail Mary pass into the end zone in the desperate hope of scoring a winning touchdown. They are gambling that tax cuts combined with…
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Entitlements, Fiscal Limits and the Looming Age of Rage
Now that Democrats are close to parity with Republicans in the House of Delegates, there is renewed talk of Medicaid expansion in Virginia. Meanwhile, in Washington, President Trump and Republicans are pushing a tax-cut plan that would spur economic growth but, even with stronger growth, would increase deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next ten…
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Government’s War on the Poor: College Loans
Students graduating in recent years are defaulting on student loans at a significantly higher rate than earlier age cohorts, finds Mark J. Warshawsky, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a posting on the Mercatus website. “Some students, particularly from nontraditional backgrounds, seem to have been harmed by the…
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Trump Budget Bullet Barely Grazes NoVa
President Trump’s proposed budget would cost the Washington metropolitan region up to 24,600 jobs and billions in lost salaries and procurement spending, according to a new analysis by regional economist Stephen Fuller. But Washington’s Virginia suburbs would get off easier than Maryland and the District of Columbia, reports the Washington Business Journal. The district would lose 14,000 to 15,000 jobs and…
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Health Care as Entitlement for All
by Allen Barringer For seven years now we have lived with “Obamacare,” the Affordable Care Act, and now we are engaged in rewriting it as the American Health Care Act, and, yes, it’s “all very complicated.” One thing already is clear: both Democrats and Republicans talk about “affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans” —…
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What the Obama Giveth, the Trump Taketh Away
The federal budget sequestration may have kept a lid on escalating federal budget deficits, a good thing, but it was a disaster for Virginia’s economy. The cap on federal spending hammered a Northern Virginia economy built largely around the Pentagon. The ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency signaled a possible return to the region’s…
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Virginia Colleges Spend Millions on Federal Regs
The University of Virginia estimates that it spends $20 million a year complying with unfunded federal mandates, just for its academic division, reports Karin Kapsidelis with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The College of William & Mary estimates its compliance costs at $4.5 million to $6.7 million, and Virginia Commonwealth University puts the number at $13 million.…
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No Magical Solutions for Trump
Someone in the national press corps is finally focusing on an issue less ephemeral than Donald Trump’s tweets: the fiscal disaster that looms if all of the president’s programs are enacted. Writes Rachel Blade and Josh Downey in Politico: “I don’t think you can do infrastructure, raise defense spending, do a tax cut, keep Medicare, Medicaid…
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Steve Bannon: Richmond Boy Made Good… Er Bad
by Les Schreiber Virginia has contributed much to the political growth of the United States: George Washington as leader of the Revolutionary Army and first president; Patrick Henry as fiery supporter of the Revolution; Thomas Jefferson as author of the Declaration of Independence and third president. More recently, Doug Wilder became the first African American…
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More Hidden Deficits: Bad Bridges and Bad Metro
Update on America’s hidden deficits: Nearly 56,000 bridges across the country are structurally unsound, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), as reported by USA Today. More than one in four of the bad bridges are at least 50 years old and have never had major reconstruction work, according to the ARTBA analysis.…