by Amanda Griffin-Johnson Mercatus senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy’s latest publication describes the dire consequences of the federal government’s spending trajectory. She shows the long-term divergence between federal government spending and tax revenue in the chart below. As Veronique de Rugy explains: If we do not change course, servicing this debt will end up as our biggest...

A painstakingly accurate chart from the Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy illustrates what current policies will do to our share of the nation's debt. Take your portion today, and double it.

by Ashley Muchow Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy has made it on our list of bloggable material for quite some. She has, yet again, delivered another applicable piece of statistical analysis. In the graph below, de Rugy uses the earliest records available to plot the historical path of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and the trend of the top...

by Ashley Muchow Using data from the CBO’s 2010 Long-Term Budget Outlook, Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy has charted the long-term path of federal spending on three of its largest components–Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and interest on federal debt. Here’s the kicker: interest costs, if they remain on their current path, are set to become the majority of...

by Amanda Griffin-Johnson As the debate over whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts continues, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center adds some much needed perspective by comparing the size of the tax cuts to the amount of spending over the next decade. In The American, the journal of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. de...

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...