By Independent Institute – After going over two years without any kind of fiscal plan, Illinois’ state government now has a budget after the state’s legislature overrode a veto by the state’s governor to impose large tax increases on the incomes...
By Independent Institute – There is a sad race underway between two fiscally-troubled states in the Union, where the state governments of both Connecticut and Illinois appear intent on becoming the first full US state to file for the...
By Independent Institute – Before diving into the more interesting numbers contained within President Trump’s first official budget proposal, let’s ask a budget history trivia question: When was the last time that any US President proposed a budget for the US...
When the US territory of Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy last week, we took the opportunity to identify the most likely candidates among US states to follow the new legal precedents that are now being set by its example.
The US territory of Puerto Rico is the oldest colony in the world. Part of the United States since 1898, the Caribbean island with a predominantly Spanish-speaking population of over 3.7 million has often been promoted as a candidate to...
On Wednesday, congressional leaders introduced a stop-gap measure to prevent the U.S. government shutdown that would have begun after April 28, when the previous Continuing Resolution was set to expire. Congress and the president will still...
Since the middle of 2016, the city of Dallas has been dealing with a Texas-sized problem for one of its public employee pension funds. Specifically, the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System was so at risk of becoming insolvent that the...
The Congressional Budget Office released its 2017 Long Term Budget Outlook this week, several months ahead of its usual schedule where it is typically published in July each year. The most interesting part of the new long-term...
For the U.S. national debt, the date of March 16, 2017, marks the day when the statutory debt ceiling limiting how much money the U.S. government can borrow will go back into effect for the first time since it was suspended back on...
On March 15, 2017, the US government’s statutory debt ceiling for its total public debt outstanding will go back into effect at whatever level of accumulated national debt is on the books as of that date. CNBC has marked the...
Over the years, MyGovCost has told many stories of bureaucrats behaving badly, but technology may have finally advanced enough to provide a real solution for bad bureaucrats: we can replace them with robots! That possibility is now being discussed...
On January 25, 2017, President Trump followed up on his campaign promises to fight illegal immigration and issued an executive order that threatens to stop federal funds from being spent in the 300 US jurisdictions that have...
Those looking for an inspiring story of entrepreneurship won’t find one in The Founder, the new biopic depicting Ray Kroc’s dogged pursuit of building the McDonald’s Corp into an iconic brand and food-industry juggernaut. According to the screenwriter...
Every January, the Congressional Budget Office releases its Budget and Economic Forecast for the next 10 years, which in January 2017 covers the period from 2017 through 2027. The following chart shows what the CBO foresees for the portion of the U.S. government’s...
There was much vitriol surrounding the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. One thing that struck me was the frequency with which commentators threw around the words fascism and fascist
The Kersten Institute for Governance and Public Policy at Stanford University has a project that tracks the liabilities of pension funds for state government workers across the nation, where the liabilities represent the gap between...
