It is politically implausible to solve entirely America's budget problem on the spending side, Rudolph Penner states in "The International Economy" journal (spring 2013). Taxes will have to increase as well.

With less than four weeks left, reaching an agreement to avoid the negative short-term economic impact of the so-called fiscal cliff might be beyond the ability of the strained U.S. political system.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the unified deficit in fiscal year 2007 will be $198 billion.1 This amounts to 1.5 percent of Gross Domestic Project (GDP), which is less than the average over the last forty years. This may lull some into a false sense of complacency. It...

I am happy to be here this morning to urge Congress to enact a stimulus package quickly. In brief, I believe that: A well-designed stimulus package is needed now as an insurance policy to reduce the risk of recession or mitigate its severity if it occurs; The compromise worked out by the...

The fiscal damage to the United States over the last seven years is calculable. It is precisely $3,889,136,064,463, according to the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget, which totaled up the budgetary cost to date of all the tax cuts and spending increases enacted over the past...

With the economy rocked by mortgage defaults, illiquidity in financial markets, a falling dollar, and declining consumer confidence, fiscal matters have been placed on the back burner to some extent by policy makers and commentators. However, the fiscal problems facing the country not only won't...

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides substantial assistance to low-income working families with children. The credit encourages work for many, though may reduce work or wages for some. Counted in the poverty measure, the EITC would have been credited with lifting 6.5 million people out...

Social Security benefits are taxed under a complex regime that raises marginal effective tax rates by up to 85 percent, which could discourage the labor supply of older workers and affect the decision to claim benefits. Using a nonparametric graphical methodology, this paper investigates whether...

This Tax Fact explores the distributional impact of taxing carbon dioxide to combat climate change and in recycling the revenues into tax cuts.

Encouraging savings and assets among low- and moderate-income families should be part of the national strategy to restore household and economic stability. Research shows that low-income families can and do save. Savings can help families weather emergencies and prosper, and asset building can...