Jonah Goldberg: Wake Up And Smell The Tea

Tea Party downgrade? Not hardly. Is this a wake-up call to Washington?” NBC’s David Gregory asked Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) on Meet the Press, referring to the S&P downgrade. “Well, it’s a partial wake-up call. I believe this is, without question, the tea-party downgrade.” Shortly after pointing fingers and assigning blame, Kerry went on to lament how Republicans insist on ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Feeding The Monster

Thomas Sowell: Debt-Ceiling Chicken

Thinking about the long haul. The big news, as far as the media are concerned, is the political game of debt-ceiling chicken that is being played by Democrats and Republicans in Washington. But, however much the media are focused on what is happening inside the Beltway, there is a whole country outside the Beltway -- and the time is long overdue to start thinking ... MORE

VIDEO: Why Debt-Ceiling Debate Is Full Of Malarkey

No More Taxes, No More Debt, No More Obama

by William Kristol. The debt ceiling fight has now reached a point typical of many dramas of this kind, when participants and commentators alike start to lose sight of the forest for the trees. That's inevitable. Trees are what Congress and pundits do for a living, and in any case which trees are left standing just where is not unimportant. So lots of underpaid congressional staffers will be ... MORE

John Stossel: Down The Money Hole

America is falling deeper into debt. We're long past the point where drastic action is needed. We're near Greek levels of debt. What's going to happen? Maybe riots — like we've seen in Greece? We need to make cuts now. Some governors have shown the way. You know about Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, John Kasich, etc. But you probably don't know about Luis Fortuno. Fortuno is governor  ... MORE

The Case Against Raising the Debt Ceiling

by Robert P. Murphy. A recent NPR story on the debt ceiling seeks to correct the American public's "misunderstanding" of the issue. But as we'll see, whether through ignorance or deception, the analyst on whom the story relies makes claims about the debt ceiling that are simply not true. It turns out that the public's gut reaction to politicians' piling on ever more red ink is ... MORE

It's Not The Debt Ceiling, It's The Dollar

by Lewis E. Lehrman. Today, the chorus line of the debt ceiling and dollar bears is "all fall down." The missing issue of this President election is monetary policy -- America's need for a stable dollar. But massive Federal Reserve credit expansion, QE1 and QE2, has forced the volatile dollar down to such a depreciated level on the foreign exchanges that, absent QE3, a ... MORE

It's Time To Kill The 'Robin Hood' Myth

If you were to judge by the rhetoric, you might think that Paul Ryan’s plan for reducing the federal deficit slashed the government’s budget by 90%, and funded the killing of kittens to boot. E.J. Dionne, for instance, calls it “radical,” “irresponsible,” and “extreme,” and asks, is this “the end of progressive government?” The truth is that Ryan actually proposes increasing ... MORE

David Harsanyi: Our Imaginary Debt Ceiling

Political posturing trumps economic sense. It is reprehensible how politicians waste our time with whimsical notions about "debt ceilings" and "budgets." A federal debt limit is much like other government guidelines—e.g., "speed limits" and "filing taxes"—that exist only theoretically. In the past decade, Congress has raised the debt limit -- instituted in 1917 to restrain ... MORE

Don't Let The Debt Get In The Way Of The Party

by Mark Steyn. The other day Paul O'Neill said that ...     Oh, wait. I suppose I ought to explain who Paul O'Neill is. A decade ago, he was George W. Bush's first Treasury secretary. I have no very clear memory of him except that he toured Africa with Bono and they were photographed in matching tribal dress looking like Col. Gadhafi's Mini-Me twins at a Tripoli sleepover. Other than the dress-up fun, ... MORE