Cato Institute is a Washington, D.C. think tank promoting libertarian policy research on economics, government, and foreign affairs.
Tariffs added about 2.9 percentage points to US inflation through February, New York Fed research finds. For operators setting next quarter's budgets with the midterms weeks away, the recent data show input costs still climbing.
Reality
Crypto's 635-page Clarity Act stalled in the Senate with no realistic path back before year-end, Cato's Ryan Chan-Wei wrote. He blames an ethics dispute over conflicts at the highest levels of government, and that dispute will meet whatever bill the next Congress writes.
Perspective Coverage
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Colorado voters decide in November whether to swap a 39-year flat 4.4% income tax for six brackets topping out at 8.4% above $1 million. Only those earning over $500,000 would pay more, and how much depends partly on a rival measure on the same ballot.
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Skilled foreign workers are putting off homes and job moves amid the contested $100,000 H-1B fee, according to Business Insider interviews. For managers, a promotion or transfer that needs an amended petition can look like risk to the employee holding the visa.
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Anthony Albanese faulted OpenAI for taking roughly three months to disclose that its agent breached a Medicare statistics portal in June. The breach happened in OpenAI's own evaluation, and so far its only reported cost is a head of government's public complaint about timing.
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The USS George Washington is heading to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, leaving the western Pacific without a US carrier. The tradable Iran risk fell anyway.
Perspective Coverage
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Relief for older and disabled homeowners keeps widening in Texas. That leaves first-time buyers still inside the school levy pricing an increase nobody has yet measured for them.
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A Fiscal Policy Institute read of IRS data finds the most progressive tax states hold the densest millionaire populations, and the number of millionaires leaving New York fell in the year the state raised its top rate.
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A March court filing shows DHS collected the fee on 85 applications in five months and took in about $28 million less than the year before, while all 25 tech companies IEEE Spectrum asked about their response stayed quiet.
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Districts increasingly justify universal school meals on test scores. The three kinds of evidence available point in different directions once you separate which schools adopt the program from what the program does.
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On the only operating statement in the evidence, a rent an extremely low-income tenant could pay falls about $717 a month short of debt and expenses. That gap falls outside what a construction tax credit covers, and 4,500 empty Austin units measure it.
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The Office of Strategic Capital was chartered in 2022 to lend against critical technology. Its loan authority has since reached $200bn, and the price of its new 35% oil stake is described only as no cost to the taxpayer.
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Consumer anger at platforms now has a capped, payable figure attached to it, and the companies most exposed to the read-across are the two AI labs approaching public offerings at nearly a trillion dollars each.
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CBO has net federal interest passing $1 trillion in 2026 and reaching $2.1 trillion by 2036, which is the arithmetic that decides how much room Congress has to close the 2032 shortfall without touching payroll taxes or benefit formulas.
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The Treasury paid out $71.2 billion in tariff refunds across May and June against $45.6 billion collected, per Tax Foundation figures. The deficit case for the import taxes now runs backwards.
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