March 1, 2025

What DOGE can learn from the states

The Department of Government efficiency (DOGE) faces many challenges in downsizing the federal government.  The cuts in federal government programs proposed by DOGE have made headlines, but this approach to fiscal responsibility suffers fro...

February 15, 2025

A New Property Tax Revolt

It has been half a century since Howard Jarvis launched the first property tax revolt with Prop 13 in California. Since then, forty-six states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of property tax limitation. Some of these measures have...

June 22, 2023

Colorado's Balanced Budget Solution

Economic stability requires a commitment to both price stability and a balanced budget. During the “Great Moderation” in macroeconomic policy in the 1980s and 1990s, it appeared that we had solved this commitment problem in the United Sta...

March 31, 2022

Goodbye, Budget Control Act

Congress just passed the FY 2022 Omnibus Bill to finance the government over the remaining year.  In that resolution, there is no mention of the spending limits in the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA).  The reason is that those spend...

August 26, 2020

Is It time for Americans to adopt the Swiss debt brake?

As an economist, I have written extensively about the Swiss debt brake as a potential solution to the U.S. debt crisis.  The United States is experiencing debt fatigue and must enact new fiscal rules to restore sustainable debt le...

December 1, 2018

Did Colorado Just Become a Blue State?

After the midterm elections, Colorado voters woke up to an electoral map as blue as the sky. Democrats won almost all competitive races, including every state office. They now control both houses of the state legislature. But before we permanently pa...

January 13, 2018

An Alternative to Federal Infrastructure Investment

President Donald Trump has proposed a trillion-dollar plan for infrastructure investment.  The plan calls for public-private partnerships in which the federal government invests several hundred billion dollars to rebuild the nation's in...

February 15, 2017

On Spending, Is Rand Paul the Last Man Standing?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the only legislator to vote against Senate Concurrent Resolution 3, which sets the framework for budget negotiations in the 115th Congress. His vote was dismissed as an alleged example of libertarian extremism, but I sugges...

February 2, 2017

Capitulation before the First Shots Are Fired

For a half-century, conservatives have watched Congress incur deficits and accumulate debt, making ours one of the most indebted countries in the world. There is little doubt this debt is unsustainable or that the federal government must enact reform...