Stephen Moore

Economic growth will lower the deficit

As sure as the cuckoo clock chimes at midnight, the left is bloviating that the Trump tax plan will "blow a $5 trillion hole in the deficit." Many of the people complaining loudest were in the Obama administration and helped preside over a $9 trillion tidal wave of new debt. Now they are fiscally chaste. Sure.

April 30, 2017

Coal will have a big comeback

Buried in an otherwise humdrum jobs report for March was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Labor Department that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016 and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs.

April 16, 2017

Government makes poor people poorer

For all the obsession in Washington and in college faculty lounges over income inequality, why isn't there more outrage over government policies that exacerbate the problem? There are hundreds of programs that make the poor, poorer and increase poverty in America. Many of them were exposed last week by my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation forum on this very topic.

April 9, 2017

Medicaid’s poor design shows Congress’ poor planning

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more poorly designed program in the federal budget than Medicaid — the federal health insurance program for the poor. The costs are shared between the states and the feds, which means that the more money a state wastes under Medicaid, the bigger the check that Washington writes to the state. No wonder the program costs keep spiraling out of control.

April 2, 2017

Liberalism is false compassion

Last week on CNN I debated a liberal commentator who complained that the problem with the Trump budget blueprint is that it lacks "compassion" for the poor, children and the disabled. This woman went on to ask me how I could defend a budget that would cut Meals on Wheels, after-school programs, and special-ed funding, because without the federal dollars, these vital services would go away.

March 28, 2017

Donald Trump fiscal policy makes conservatives cheer

What hypocrites liberals and the media are. For weeks on end they've been beating up President Trump for not taking the initiative on the $10 trillion debt build-up under Barack Obama or the runaway entitlement programs that could bankrupt our nation.

March 19, 2017

Energy security requires not going ‘green’

If you listen to the media narrative on climate change and "clean energy," you'd think that the rest of the world has moved smartly and seamlessly toward 21st-century green energy, while the U.S. is the high-polluting laggard that just won't get with the program to save the planet.

March 12, 2017

Saying yes to 4 percent growth

Imagine if John F. Kennedy's advisors had told him in 1961, we will never put a man on the moon. Or what if Ronald Reagan's advisors had assured the Gipper: the Cold War is unwinnable; we should sue for peace. Actually many naysayers told JFK and Mr. Reagan exactly these things, but fortunately these presidents were visionaries. They asked: "Why not?"

March 5, 2017

States pleading poverty, demanding new taxes

Stop me if you've heard this story before. Governors and state legislators are pleading poverty again and they are demanding tax hikes of every imaginable kind. More than half the states are facing big deficits this year and they are mostly blue states like California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois and New York and Oregon. (See chart.) These are the highest tax states with some of the deepest pools of red ink. There's got to be a message here.

February 26, 2017

Federal regulation is stifling business

At the first meeting of the Trump Leadership Council -- an advisory group consisting of top CEOs from major companies -- President Donald Trump asked these business leaders what was their biggest problem. I expected the answer to be America's anti-growth tax system.

February 19, 2017

Carbon tax will not help environment and make Americans poorer

I have nothing but respect for former Secretaries of State Jim Baker and George Schultz, but come on gentlemen: you've been snookered.

February 12, 2017

Stock market rise under Donald Trump could lead to bull market

The stock market has risen about 9 percent since the election of Donald Trump with near a $2 trillion increase in wealth. Is this the start of a big bull market rally?

February 5, 2017

Finding a better way to promote prosperity

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire seethed the edict puts "ideology over women and health." She favors a policy that requires Americans to fund activities that they find morally offensive. So much for "pro-choice." If Planned Parenthood wants to fund organization that fund abortions abroad, their donors should put up the money, not unwilling taxpayers.

January 29, 2017

Donald Trump’s $10 trillion stimulus plan

All of Washington seems to be in cardiac arrest over the news reports late last week that President Donald Trump is planning a budget with $10 trillion of budget cuts over the next decade.

January 22, 2017

The case for a border adjustable tax system

If America's competitors were intentionally trying to design a tax system to destroy the American economy, they probably couldn't come up with a dumber tax system than the way the United States currently taxes our own businesses.

January 8, 2017

Big Green biggest loser of 2016

The day after the presidential elections the executive director of the Sierra Club glumly called the Donald Trump victory "deeply disturbing for the nation and the planet." Well, yes, if you're a climate change alarmist who hates fossil fuels, you're in for a bad four and maybe eight years.

January 1, 2017

Economy needs a boost

Since the election, the stock market has soared, consumer confidence has climbed to its highest level in 20 years, and several companies have committed to multi-billion dollar new investments in the United States. To say that America has a new spring it its step -- at least for now -- would be an understatement. It feels like the last joyous scene in "It's a Wonderful Life" when George Bailey stumbles home on Christmas Eve to a house full of friends and family.

December 25, 2016

The right way to spend on infrastructure

Back in early 2015 oil and gas company Conoco-Phillips requested a permit from the Obama administration to launch an oil drilling project in Alaska. The energy project, called the Greater Moose's Tooth Development, is located within the National Petroleum Reserve and would create thousands of jobs in an economically depressed area of the state. The project has the full approval of the local community, and poses little threat to the environment in a sparsely populated region.

December 18, 2016

This Christmas we need the gift of humility

On election night at around 6 p.m. a Hillary Clinton political operative went on TV and smugly opined that she believed they had a 95 percent chance of winning. Wow, 95 percent. In statistics we call that a very high level of certainty. But of course five hours later the woman was in tears and the 1 in 20 long shot named Donald Trump came in.

December 11, 2016