Michael Tanner

Posted May 20, 2013

Young people are unlikely to respond to Republicans as long as the party resembles a cross between their curmudgeonly grandfather and the preacher from Footloose.

Posted March 18, 2013

The Ryan budget provides a view of Republican priorities and their vision for how to increase economic growth, reform entitlements, and balance the budget. While timid and imperfect, Ryan’s plan shows that Republicans are at least looking in the right direction.

Posted July 30, 2012

Fans of the "reform" cheered this week's news reports suggesting that ObamaCare will be less expensive than originally feared. But those news reports were wrong.

Posted July 09, 2012

While congressional Republicans have been reduced to taking symbolic repeal votes, and Mitt Romney struggles to determine whether or not the individual mandate is a tax, governors — and state legislators — have become the real heroes of the fight against Obamacare.

Posted July 08, 2012

By striking down part of the law that required states to expand their Medicaid programs, the court tossed a very hot potato into the laps of state lawmakers everywhere.

Posted July 02, 2012

The court, or at least Chief Justice John Roberts, took the somewhat cynical (or maybe reasonable) view that what politicians say is pretty much meaningless.

Posted June 24, 2012

Instead of increasing government spending in hopes of stimulating the economy, as Krugman has urged, the Estonians rejected Keynesianism in favor of genuine austerity.

Posted June 17, 2012

But a much bigger question is: Why is the private sector doing so poorly? Perhaps because most businessmen are not that dumb.

Posted May 27, 2012

The latest Club for Growth scorecard suggests that, on the whole, Republicans in this congress have actually been less fiscally responsible than those in past congresses.

Posted May 13, 2012

Given Europe’s continued slow growth, Professor Krugman might have an argument to make — if there actually had been any austerity in Europe over the last two years.

Posted April 30, 2012

Cato Senior Fellow Michael Tanner demonstrates that actual investment returns over the past 40 years show that a system of private investment will, in fact, provide significantly higher rates of return than the current Social Security system.

Posted April 21, 2012

Governor Christie also noted, this implicitly tells people, “stop dreaming, stop striving.” We demonize those who do succeed, damning them as part of the evil “1 percent.”

Posted April 14, 2012

There are currently 126 separate federal government programs designed to fight poverty and poverty is now at the highest level in nearly a decade.

Posted April 12, 2012

Deconstructing one of President Obama’s speeches can be a bit like taking a trip to an alternate universe.

Posted April 08, 2012

There is nothing really unprecedented about the Court striking down legislation that it finds outside of constitutional bounds. Between 1803 and 2002, the Supreme Court struck down as many as 1,315 laws on constitutional grounds.

Posted April 07, 2012

As one listens to the Obama administration and others defend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a Obamacare), their attitude seems to be that, of course Obamacare is constitutional because, well, because it’s important.

Posted April 01, 2012

Most observers now feel that there’s a real possibility that the high court may strike down at least the law’s individual mandate; if it does, there’s an excellent chance it will strike down the entire ObamaCare law, exchanges and all.

Posted March 26, 2012

The U.S. government is about to exceed its statutory debt limit again before 2013. But that actually underestimates the size of the fiscal time bomb that this country is facing.

Posted March 25, 2012

This case isn't really about health-care reform. Rather, it's about government power and the fundamental relationship between government and the people.

Posted March 24, 2012

Two years in, we can see that Obamacare is a failure even as defined on it's own terms.