Publications

In his fiscal year 1998 budget, President Clinton has proposed a hodgepodge of targeted tax credits, tax deductions, tax cuts and tax increases. Problem is, the tax credits, tax deductions, and tax cuts have "sunset" provisions, meaning that if balanced budget goals are not achieved, they will expire in 2001. But--you guessed it--the tax increases go on indefinitely. There's no "sunset" for them if the budget balances.

Pro-growth tax cut proposals are sharply criticized as benefitting only "the rich." Often, the assaults of class warfare derail tax policies that would help boost economic growth and hence individual incomes. Our study shows that pro-growth tax cuts increase the incomes of the lowest income taxpayers by a greater percentage than anyone else, even "the rich." Because of this, the living standards of the lowest income taxpayers change for the better--more so than all other taxpayers. But to have such tax policy enacted will require abandoning class warfare rhetoric.

An analysis of the likely economic and budgetary effects of the major provisions demonstrates that targeting tax cuts is a move in the wrong direction.

In this report, economist Stephen Moore compares the budget requests of presidents Gerald Ford through Bill Clinton. Among the interesting findings are these: (1) The bulk of the deficit that built up during the Reagan administration was due to Congressional appropriations, not Reagan budget requests. Had Reagan's vetos been upheld, and his recissions honored, the deficit would have been significantly lower; and (2) that Bill Clinton is the first president in a generation to outspend Congress, outspending both the Democrat 103rd Congress, and the Republican 104th Congress.

This is a comprehensive examination of the Kennedy tax cut program, beginning with the changes in depreciation rules in 1962. The conclusion is that the Kennedy tax cuts clearly stimulated the incredible economic growth and job creation of the 1960s, despite the charges of recent critics. And economic growth only slowed when taxes began rising again toward the end of the decade.

Candidates Bob Dole and Jack Kemp have proposed a dramatic tax cut plan that is designed to stimulate increased economic growth, remedy the decline in the value of the dependent deduction, and reduce the punitive treatment of capital gains. An analysis demonstrates that the plan is likely to achieve its goals, and only requires a spending cut of less than 2% to pay for itself.

In this paper, economists Gary and Aldona Robbins describe in detail their dynamic revenue estimation model, and demonstrate several simulations to compare how dynamic analysis differs from static analysis. This paper is part of a project demonstrating ways that government estimators can build elements of dynamic analysis into their forecasting models, and contains an introduction by Senator John Ashcroft, and Rep. Tom Campbell.

President Clinton has proposed a 2-year, $1,500 per year refundable tuition tax credit for the first two years of post-secondary education. But for every new student drawn to postsecondary education, the President's proposal would spend $51,500. Because already today, over 62 percent of all high school graduates go to college, and because tuition rates have risen in correspondence to the increase in federal student aid, the President's proposal is at least an inefficient expenditure of taxpayer funds.

The Institute for Policy Innovation and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution asked leading experts on government regulation for examples of the worst government regulations. The result is a rogue's gallery of the worst examples of government regulation based on pork politics, bad science, bureacratic inefficiency, and invasion of privacy. All are candidates for the newly-instituted Corrections Day calendar.

In recent months the news has been filled with reports of sluggish economic growth and the problems such inadequate growth causes, such as declining personal income, corporate layoffs, etc. But how did the economy get in this shape, and is there anything we can do about it? In this report economist Stephen Moore documents the change in fiscal policy that has taken place under Presidents Bush and Clinton, and contrasts the results of this change with the economic results experienced during the 1980s under President Reagan. The result is a strong case for a return to the supply-side policies of the 1980s.