Douglas Holtz-Eakin

When it rains, it pours…data. Yesterday the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) dropped the report on 1st quarter gross domestic product (GDP) and the March report on personal income and outlays, which happens to contain the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation: the price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE). For good measure there was the latest data on new and […]

There is a certain madness that grips presidents and presidential wannabes when gasoline prices rise. Per The Wall Street Journal: President Trump said he supports suspending the federal gasoline tax, responding to a surge in fuel prices driven by the war in Iran. “I’m going to,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, arguing that […]

The Wall Street Journal had a nice editorial summarizing the evidence that the United States Postal Service (USPS) is a broken business model doomed to financial failure and arguing that Congress should permit it to be run like a private-sector business. The former is a self-evident truth. The latter raises an important question: Why isn’t it a private-sector […]

The U.S. labor market has (deservedly) received a lot of attention lately. A fair (and very rough) summary of the state of play is that low fertility, reduced immigration, and deportations have resulted in slow-to-negative labor force growth (see graph, below). In these circumstances, it takes essentially no job growth to keep the unemployment rate […]

AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin joins us to discuss the latest tariff smack-down, global economic uncertainty, and Congress’ to-do list.

House Committee on Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs *The opinions expressed herein are mine alone and do not represent the position of the American Action Forum. I am grateful to Jordan Haring, Brian Faughnan, Angela Kuck, and Sarah Smith for their assistance. All errors are my own. Chairman Burlison, Ranking […]

This week provided a look at Iran War Inflation: Month 2 (IWI2), with the release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) for April. It was not fun reading. Obviously, given the standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, energy inflation stood out. The energy component went up at an annual rate of […]

The Trump Administration backed off its proposed Pointless Citizenship Compliance Rule (PCCR) that would require banks to verify the citizenship of all customers. AAF’s Dan Goldbeck had estimated that merely verifying all new accounts could result in anywhere from 33.1–73.3 million additional paperwork hours and $2.6–$5.6 billion in additional costs. The good news is that the administration backed off […]

The Fed – technically the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee – has a problem: inflation. Yes, it is true that the Fed has a dual mandate for full employment and price stability. But the reality is that the combination of AI-related infrastructure spending and defense spending to replace depleted munitions will keep the economic […]

Student loans are back! This time, it is not another round of Biden-era loan forgiveness issues. Instead,The Washington Post has a story featuring the hyperbolic headline “Loan rules would gut aid for thousands of low-paying college majors.” What, exactly, is going on here? The rules in question are Department of Education rules to implement the student […]