Barack Obama

Billions and Billions: Putting the Looming Tax Hikes in Perspective

By Chris Andriesen
09/27/2010
The Problem $3 billion, $5 billion, $10 billion—the talk surrounding impending federal and state tax hikes is downright scary these days. Governor Pat Quinn proposes a 33 percent increase in the state’s individual income tax rate, equal to raising the burden on Illinois taxpayers by a total of $2.8 billion. David Vaught, Governor Quinn’s budget...

Consumer Protection or Consumer Burden?

09/23/2010
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson If you’ve been experiencing changes to the terms of your bank accounts or credit cards, then you can thank (or blame) new financial regulations. While the new regulations have been touted as “consumer protection,” the unintended consequences of the legislation have made some consumers worse off. Theodore Frank of the Manhattan Institute...

Recession Ends – Yet A Disaster for Obama

09/22/2010
by John Tillman The worst possible news for President Obama is that the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the downturn ended in June of 2009. Why a disaster for the president? Simple: As of June 2009, only $201.3 billion, or 25.6 percent of the total stimulus bill, had been awarded (not necessarily spent, as this...

Commit, Speaker Pelosi

09/16/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen A report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that the sunset of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010 would cost the average middle-income Illinois family earning $68,958 some $1,640 in higher taxes in 2011. Check out our handy table to see how much your family could pay in higher federal and/or state...

Good and Bad Incentives

09/15/2010
by Ashley Muchow Robert Barro, in his most recent WSJ article, takes note of various logical shortcomings in the Obama administration’s economic agenda.  Rather than focus on the supply-side rationale of creating incentives that stimulate both supply and demand—thus yielding sustained economic growth—the Obama administration has ignored the breadth of supply-side manifestations in the policy measures it...

Why Obama’s Latest Spending Spree Won’t Sell

09/07/2010
by Kristina Rasmussen Not one to stop good money from going after bad, President Obama announced plans for a new stimulus spending spree, this time to the tune of $50 billion for roads, rail boondoggles, and the like. I don’t think the American people will buy into it. Over the past year, chances are you’ve driven by more than...

Fixed Race To The Top?

08/27/2010
by Collin Hitt Illinois lost a very-high-stakes federal grant competition. The “Race To The Top” program has gathered headlines across the country for the better part of a year.  It wrapped up earlier this week, with 12 states and the District of Columbia splitting $4B in stimulus largesse to fund public education. Ostensibly, the grant...

Regime Uncertainty

08/25/2010
by Kate Piercy “Where are the new jobs?” asks John Stossel in his article today. Why aren’t businesses hiring? Well, Stossel concludes businesses will not start investing in new workers until the current “regime of uncertainty” ends, explaining: After previous recessions, unemployment didn’t get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can...

Unfunded Public Pensions

08/19/2010
by Kate Piercy R. Eden Martin, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, offers some solutions to the critical pension problem facing Illinois in today’s Wall Street Journal. Martin concludes, “Public pension funds are in dire need of change, but state and local hopes for a federal bailout now stand in the way...

Top Marginal Tax Rate of 88 percent!

By Chris Andriesen
08/17/2010
Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University constructed the diagram below using data from the Congressional Budget Office during the very early stages of the Great Recession and before the Obama presidency. It shows the increase in marginal tax rates required to fund entitlement spending for 2010, 2050 and 2082. The required increase...
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Chicago Forward 2026: A pro-growth plan to end city budget deficits

Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.

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Diana Graham

Process for unionizing non-state workers raises red flags

By Paul Kersey
06/19/2014

CBS Chicago: Illinois’ highest-paid superintendent receives $400K per year to oversee 1,200 students

By Ted Dabrowski
05/02/2016