Under current law, American companies pay a 35 percent U.S. tax on profits they earn abroad. They get credits for tax payments to foreign governments and don’t pay the U.S. anything until they bring the money home. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the top Republican tax-writer in Congress, wants to… Read more

Former President Bill Clinton told CNBC Tuesday that the US economy already is in a recession and urged Congress to extend all the tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year. In a taped interview aired on "Closing Bell," the still-popular 42nd president called the current economic conditions a "recession" and said overzealous Republican plans to cut the deficit threaten to plunge… Read more

Some colleges are dropping student health-insurance plans for the coming academic year and others are telling students to expect sharp premium increases because of a provision in the federal health law requiring plans to beef up coverage. The demise of low-cost, low-benefit health plans for students is a consequence of the 2010 health-care overhaul. The law is intended to expand… Read more

By Glenn Kessler “I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out; do not buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.” — White House spokesman Jay Carney, remarks to the press gaggle, May 23, 2012 The spokesman’s words caught our attention because here… Read more

FORTUNE -- The Obama administration maintains that its Affordable Care Act is a complex construct that's endangered if the Supreme Court finds its central feature -- the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance -- unconstitutional. It's certainly true that eliminating the "individual mandate" will immediately expose the plan as unworkable. It can only succeed by creating a… Read more

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp nudged the Obama administration to embrace a comprehensive overhaul of the tax system next year, in a speech on Thursday morning. The comments underscored a growing GOP effort to seize the initiative on taxes and fiscal policy, after a period when Democrats appeared to dominate the political messaging wars with their focus on tax-dodging… Read more

http://blog.american.com/2012/05/new-study-high-u-s-debt-levels-could-mean-a-quarter-century-of-weak-growth/ Economists Carmen Reinhart, Vincent R. Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff (from here on out referred to as R3) have a new study out looking at the economic impact of high debt levels: – We identify 26 episodes of public debt… Read more

Barack Obama campaigned four years ago assailing President George W. Bush for wage losses suffered by the middle class. More than three years into Obama’s own presidency, those declines have only deepened. The rebound from the worst recession since the 1930s has generated relatively few of the moderately skilled jobs that once supported the middle class, tightening the financial… Read more

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a Republican member of the board that oversees Medicare financing. The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved… Read more

A tax on medical devices and equipment tucked into the 2,400-page 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the negative impact the legislation is already having on the U.S. economy. Quite simply, nothing is free. Many Democrats were hiding in the weeds Friday as the unpopular health-care overhaul marked its second anniversary, though a few people touted the many… Read more