Stephen Moore

Barack Obama’s real debt and deficit legacy

Congressional Republicans have been raked over the coals in the last two weeks for slamming through budget caps and inflating government spending and debt by another $300 billion. The criticisms are well deserved.

February 18, 2018

Making America a strategic mineral superpower

Why is the United States reliant on China and Russia for strategic minerals when we arguably have more of these valuable resources than both these nations combined? This has nothing to do with geological impediments. It is all politics.

February 11, 2018

American companies bring jobs back to the U.S., and Democrats smirk

The unseemly sight of nearly the entire Democratic congressional delegation sitting on their hands and clinging to their chairs throughout President Trump's State of the Union speech makes one wonder whether they want America to succeed on Mr. Trump's watch.

February 4, 2018

Why Republicans must seize the moment to ensure that no portion of the Trump tax cuts expire

Just one month into the new tax bill, only those wearing left-wing ideological blinders — which unfortunately is still millions of anti-Trumpers — can deny that the Trump tax cuts are helping just about everyone.

January 28, 2018

Get ready for a congressional budget blow-out

With all the talk about a possible government shutdown due to an impasse on immigration reform, no one seems to be paying attention to a story of even bigger long-term consequence. Congress is preparing a two-year budget that blows past bipartisan spending caps to the tune of $216 billion through 2019. These are the latest stunning tallies from an analysis by Congressional Quarterly. (See chart).

January 21, 2018

Many workers have already benefited from Trump’s tax bill

One premise of modern-day "progressives," is that taxes don't have much influence on how much and when people invest, how much they work and save, or where they live. Just Google "Taxes don't matter" and you will find scores of academic studies and news stories assuring us that taxes have little or no effect on behavior.

January 14, 2018

Trash talking about Donald Trump

I will never forget my senior year in high school. We were playing our bitter and highly-rated rival in football and in the week before the game, the other team was trash talking us nonstop. They said we were too fat and too slow and too small to even keep the game close. "You suck, we're great, that's why we are going downstate," was their abusive chant. Then we went out and beat them something like 24-0. It was sweet and it sure shut them up.

January 7, 2018

Tax bill is a Christmas gift from economist Arthur Laffer

The unsung hero of the Republican Christmas gift of a tax cut is Arthur Laffer — the Reagan economist who helped devise the Gipper's tax reductions. Those tax cuts rebuilt the U.S. economy in the 1980s and pulled us out of the mini-depression of high inflation and unemployment in the late 1970s.

December 24, 2017

What John F. Kennedy and Donald Trump have in common

Last week during an address at the White House President Trump likened his tax plan to "the tax cut that John F. Kennedy proposed 55 years ago." This elicited some howls of protest from Mr. Trump's liberal critics who say it's historically inaccurate to compare the Trump plan to JFK's.

December 17, 2017

Small tweaks to GOP tax bill would make huge difference

The Senate-passed tax bill is a policy triumph that will provide a shot of performance enhancing drugs into the veins of the economy. It's not perfect, but the combined effect of cutting business tax rates, eliminating the state and local tax deduction, and repealing the ObamaCare individual mandate tax, means we are at the precipice of the biggest conservative policy victory since the Reagan years.

December 10, 2017

Tax plan is a cut for everyone

Whenever I'm asked whether the Trump tax cut is for the rich, I say yes. It is a tax cut for the rich. It is a tax cut for the middle class. It is a tax cut for small businesses. It is a tax cut for the Fortune 100. If you pay federal income taxes, you will in almost all cases, be getting more take-home pay come January 1.

December 3, 2017

How the Republican tax plan can help small businesses

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has caused a bit of a hullabaloo by complaining that small businesses don't get the benefits that corporations do in the Republican tax plan. Mr. Johnson has credibility here because he is one of those rare breeds in Congress who actually knows something about running a business — having done so for 30 years.

November 26, 2017

Republicans showing backbone on tax reform

Republicans have long been known as "the stupid party." They do stupid things, like waiting until mid-November to pass a must-pass tax cut that should have been done by April.

November 19, 2017

Trump economic revival mysterious to the left

Time Magazine's cover this week is a classic. It blares: "The Wrecking Crew: How Trump's Cabinet Is Dismantling Government." Also last week The New York Times ran a lead editorial complaining that team Trump is shrinking at an "unprecedented" pace the regulatory state that was erected to new heights under President Obama. These and other media reports have had all the subtlety of a primal scream.

November 5, 2017

IRS tax code is a big mistake

President Donald Trump has proposed what he calls "the biggest tax cut since Ronald Reagan." He also wants vast simplification so that Americans can fill out their taxes on a postcard return. Let's hope that part of this reform package will be to defang the IRS, which treats Americans as if they are guilty until proven innocent and invades the basic privacy rights of citizens.

October 29, 2017

NAFTA needs to be renegotiated

America's trade negotiators are now in the process of crafting a 2.0 update of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Fortunately, it now appears that Donald Trump's intention on NAFTA is to mend it, not end it. The trade deal has been a stunning economic success for all three nations: Canada, Mexico and the United States. Freer trade has meant steady increases in the volume of trade, greater competitiveness and lower prices.

October 15, 2017

Sports and politics do not mix

There's a famous old Woody Allen joke that: "those who can't do, teach. And those that can't teach, teach gym."

October 8, 2017

Tax cut under Trump will spur economic growth

The latest Trump tax cut plan would be a steroid injection for the U.S. economy. Bravo to the White House and congressional leaders for packaging the biggest pro-growth tax cut since Reagan.

October 1, 2017

Obamacare can be fixed at the state level

Back in 1996 I worked with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Dick Armey to pass one of the most historic bipartisan policy solutions in modern times: the welfare reform act.

September 24, 2017

Private aviation gets unfair break over commercial airlines

Liberals love to portray the Republicans as the party of the rich and powerful. The GOP has tried valiantly to shed that criticism, but then why are so many in the party defending the special interest favors that go to private and corporate jet owners over the interests of all the rest of us? Do Warren Buffett and LeBron James really need a taxpayer subsidy to jet across the country?

September 17, 2017