Econ Comments & Analysis
Fox Business | Federal Government’s ‘Hall of Shame’
Every two years, before Congress is set to begin its session, the Government Accountability Office releases a list of the federal programs most at risk of fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. The GAO, a Congressional watchdog agency, is charged with monitoring the effectiveness of the federal government, whose programs it says cost U.S. taxpayers $3.5 trillion in fiscal outlays.
Mercatus | In Washington, 'Austerity' Is a 67% Budget Increase
It is lamentation season for the few financial regulatory agencies that do not have carte-blanche authority to set their own budgets. The annual ritual should include a mandatory listen to the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need." Adding to the existing list of questionable interpretations of the song, financial regulators should hear a comforting message in those lyrics: you may not get the budget you ask for, but-with a little more effort on your part to spend carefully-you might just find that the budget you get is big enough to do your job.
Mercatus | President Obama's Fiscal Year 2016 Budget: Tax and Spend
President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 envisions the federal government collecting and spending an increasing amount of taxpayer money over the next ten years. For the upcoming fiscal year, the president expects to spend a tick under $4 trillion while hoping to collect revenues worth $3.525 trillion. The resulting deficit of $475 billion in 2016 would be smaller than the projected deficit for fiscal 2015, but deficits would soon begin to climb again under the president’s policies.
