Links for October 20th

Planet Money: What If We Paid Off The Debt?Back in the good old days—before President George W. Bush, before fighting two wars, before September 11th, before a huge tax cut paid for with debt—it looked very much like the entire debt would be paid off by 2012. In producing the final Economic Report of the …

Links for July 16th

Tabulaw: What Congress Does When it Runs Out of NumbersCongress recently passed a bill that created section 139D of the tax code. But there was already a 139D. No problem—they just kept the existing one. So there are two section 139Ds. Given my work on codes, this makes my head feel all explodey inside. New …

Links for July 9th

GAO: Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Provide a Financial Benefit to the GovernmentGetting rid of the $1 bill would save the government $184M/year. Not an enormous amount, on the scale of the budget, but there's no getting around that $184M is a very large amount of money indeed. Ten years ago, …

Links for May 2nd

New York Times: A Tipping Point for Gay Marriage?With the government unable to muster a legally defensible argument against gay marriage, it's amazing that the House of Representatives went ahead and hired their own private law firm to carry on the right. But it's more amazing still that the law firm dropped the case, finding …