tax increases

There has been a pleasant lull in reporting about the debt ceiling and budget debate, but don't let the quiet fool you. Right now, 11 men and one woman are crafting a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. They are the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- aka, the Deficit Supercommittee.

With new faces in Congress, President Obama knows his $3.73 trillion budget will be a hard sell. That's why he took his message to the airwaves this week, making TV appearances and issuing statements calling for "tough choices and sacrifices." A top priority of Obama's budget plan is to hack away...

No, it's not a new plague. Rather, it's a little-known economics thesis that explains why uneven productivity gains in different sectors can have a huge impact on everything from consumer spending to government deficits. The latter is the nastiest side effect.

President Obama's blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel proposed today perhaps the most sweeping spending cuts in U.S. history to prevent the federal budget from careening off a fiscal cliff into never-ending debt. Here's the commission's hit list.

Despite the recession and Tea Party cries of "Taxed Enough Already," a surprising number of communities across the country voted to keep their tax burdens at current levels.

As state income tax revenues creep downward, rates are slowly headed the other way: upward. As fewer taxpayers pay in (due largely in part to heavy unemployment rolls and lower incomes), states are grasping at other sources of revenue. At the top of their lists? Millionaires. As of the end of last...

Bill Gates offered a revolutionary observation on Wednesday in Manhattan, during a discussion on philanthropy at the 92nd Street Y lecture hall. Wall Street pay, he said, is "often too high." Gates's wisdom on Wall Street's compensation problem seems obvious enough, but his perspective on the...

Consumers are struggling to make ends meet as our economy falters. And what is the answer to that from politicians? Let's raise taxes. We're being led to believe that our governments need more of our money. The truth is that families are the ones who need to keep more of their hard-earned money. Be...