Professional news: After 8 years and 300 publications at the Manhattan Institute … … I’m excited to join the Brookings Institution as a budget & tax fellow in its Tax Policy Center. New home, but same, center-right, fiscal hawk, free market economic analysis.

Let's say you take out a $400,000 mortgage loan at 6.25% - and choose a 50-year mortgage instead of 30 years. In return for saving $283 monthly, you will pay an extra $421,302 in interest over the life of the loan. Or if you sell at 15 years, will have paid down just $29,000 in equity. Not good.

As always, it's appalling at the same time it's so cheap, tawdry, and embarrassing. What a pathetic, shabby little gangster.

NEW from me @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social. Secretary Bessent has proclaimed that monthly budget figures show a rapidly declining budget deficit. But he is confusing small timing shifts for major policy changes. Deficits are set to continue rising. 🧵 thedispatch.com/article/defi...

I'm trying to figure out how sending $7 billion to Africa to save 20 million lives from HIV (many of whom are kids) is an outrage (America First! We can't afford it) ... yet somehow sending $20 billion to Argentina is affordable, wise, and responsible.

this shit would be a bit much for news anchors in Pyongyang

NEW from me. Trump wants to take over the Federal Reserve and lower interest rates in part because he believes it will cut federal budget interest costs by "$1 Trillion per year." In @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social, I show that fiscal dominance would NOT reduce interest costs very much. 🧵

Trump campaigned on a trade war and immigration crackdown. And farm-heavy counties still gave him 78% of the vote. Sorry guys, you voted for this. Enjoy the consequences!

NEW from me. In the @washingtonpost.com. I examine the emerging debt crises that are destabilizing the British and French governments - and how America faces similar economic & fiscal challenges on an even deeper level. 🧵 www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

MAGA Twitter is really a sight to behold right now. One cis white male tragically murdered another, and somehow the *transgender community* is responsible and must be stripped of their constitutional rights. It is just dangerous ugliness from unhinged, fanatical bigots.

This political era is all about vengeance & escalation. Impose maximum suffering on the other side. They started the war, and they are evil, sick, and must be destroyed. Civility & grace is for losers & wimps. Real leaders fight - no apologies, no mercy. We desperately need de-escalators.

NEW from me. My new video for @reason.com says fine, tax the rich, but recognize that it cannot eliminate more than a small fraction of the soaring budget deficits. And no, those old 91% tax rates and the European tax systems do not prove otherwise. www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0x1...

senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, former chief economist to Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) & director of budget and spending policy for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign👇🏽

NEW from me at The Dispatch. Imagine if a president could just eliminate border spending on a whim. Or gut defense, Medicaid or veterans spending. Even defund SCOTUS after a decision, or end SocSec in blue districts. This is the power Trump seeks with impoundment. 🧵 thedispatch.com/article/trum...

It turns out that - no surprise - the White House had been illegally hiding a key federal spending database in order to obscure that it was beginning to illegally impound spending, as it had prevously signaled it would do. 🧵 www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

1) The BEA (Commerce Dept) measures GDP - not BLS. 2) That stratospheric pre-2012 election GDP estimate showed... 2.0% growth. 3) Zero evidence of these estimates being rigged. 4) That DOD jump was driven by the looming sequester. These conspiracy theories are absurd and sad.

Trump firing the BLS director for a bad jobs report - days after demanding the Smithsonian remove him from the list of impeached presidents - is banana republic stuff. If a Democrat pulled these stunts, Republicans would be setting themselves on fire outside the White House.

NEW from me. In today's Washington Post, I show that the Trump White House's promise of $6 to $7 trillion in ten-year tariff revenue is fantasyland math. Tariffs may offset just 3% of ten-year deficits (or 1/6 of the new tax cuts) with lots of economic pain.🧵 www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

So a government drowning in trillion-dollar deficits would borrow $150 billion more at 4.5% interest rates that taxpayers will be paying forever, in order to compensate us for higher tariff prices that they deny are actually happening. Makes sense.

For those interested who may have missed it or just seen clips - my full interview on PBS @firinglineshow.bsky.social is posted below. I address the new tax cuts, soaring debt, DOGE, Social Security, Medicare, tariffs, inflation, and firing Jerome Powell. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHTN...

"If businesses are going to invest in long-term factories, they need predictability and consistency out of Washington," says Manhattan Institute senior fellow @jessicabriedl.bsky.social. "Not a president turning the tariff dials every five minutes." Follow on Apple: bit.ly/4lPez7n

Is America careening toward a debt crisis? Conservative economist @jessicabriedl.bsky.social talks about how we got here--and how to fix it. Don't miss our new interview airing on @pbs.org this weekend on Firing Line. bit.ly/4feltkc

Tonight - and again over the weekend (and online) - you can catch PBS Firing Line and my 30-minute interview discussing the tax cuts, the debt, tariffs, inflation, and the Federal Reserve.

"Today's Republicans have seemingly given up on conservative economics." Manhattan Institute senior fellow @jessicabriedl.bsky.social discusses tariffs and trade deals, Trump's #BigBeautifulBill, and the threat of rising debt. FRIDAY @pbs.org Local listings: to.pbs.org/39hI6Tf

No sentient human could possibly believe that Trump wanting to fire Powell really has anything at all to do with some explainable building cost overruns that Powell has little to do with - and that roughly equal the 4-year projected cost of Trump's taxpayer-funded golf outings

Should economic conservatives oppose the new tax cut law? A 60-minute debate hosted by OpentoDebate.Org. Jessica Riedl of the Manhattan Institute against the bill. vs. Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation for the bill. Watch below: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk-d...

Should economic conservatives oppose the new tax cut law? A 60-minute debate hosted by OpentoDebate.Org. Jessica Riedl of the Manhattan Institute against the bill. vs. Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation for the bill. Watch below: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk-d...

Recently, I was subject to an aggressive harassment & slander campaign that began on Twitter, spilled over to major radio shows & podcasts, and led to a major right-wing website doxing my kids. The death threats were a cherry on top. www.jessicariedl.blog/p/when-the-o...

It’s … curious … how so many people will assert that so many things are biologically or genetically determined or influenced—but just not this one thing … 🧵 by @jessicabriedl.bsky.social:

So glad we're finally putting a stop to the "weaponization" of government institutions against political opponents.

"You can spin your political base, but you cannot spin the economy or the bond market," @jessicabriedl.bsky.social writes. wapo.st/4nl6s3z

NEW from me. In the @washingtonpost.com, I take Republicans to task for attacking the CBO and the score of its tax bill. If they want a dynamic score showing huge economic growth effects, they should write a better bill. 🧵 www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

First time I've seen a tax cut so poorly designed that the dynamic score RAISES the cost by $356 billion. The infinitesimal growth revenues are dwarfed by the rising inflation and $441 billion in interest costs from higher interest rates.

One of the more devastating fact checks I've read. Every single claim made by Sen. Scott about CBO was wildly false. My favorite was his claim that CBO also committed major tax scoring errors in the 1930s and 1960s. CBO did not even exist until 1974.

But I was told that DOGE was going to dramatically slash the budget deficit by eliminating DEI grants and Politico subscriptions, firing staff at VA hospitals, and taking away life-saving HIV meds from impoverished African children.

"US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick vows to support Maine lobster, suggests industry will be exempt from tariffs on Canada" www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-... 🤔

"Nobody’s going to spit on our police officers," says Trump, who four months ago pardoned people who beat police officers with pipes, flagpoles, baseball bats and 2-by-4s at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

This is pretty devastating. Lutnick admits that tariffs were never about reciprocity, eliminating foreign trade barriers, or negotiating better deals. They just don't like international trade. Period. He even says about imports: "we don't want other people making them."

Elected Republicans are coalescing around the talking point that CBO's tax cut estimates are complete fiction and that tax cuts pay for themselves. Well, CBO's 2018 and 2019 revenue estimates - which included the previous year's TCJA - were ... 99.5% accurate. 🧵

Right, because the best way to revitalize American manufacturers is to...tax them to death on their input costs. Solid thinking. 🙄

Opinion: The debate over gay rights is a liability ... Opinion: The debate over civil rights is a liability ... Etc. FUCK OFF

You cannot blame "formatting" for completely fabricated sources. What a joke.

Trump is going to destroy the global economy again to prove he isn't a wuss

NEW from me @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social “Farm country voted overwhelmingly to unleash a new trade war. And now these same farmers want taxpayers to finance another round of bailouts to protect them from the consequences of their own votes.” Hell no.

NEW from me at MSNBC: The wildly irresponsible GOP tax bill: - Costs more than the 2017 TCJA, 2020 CARES Act and 2021 American Rescue Plan - Combined. - Is a special interest bonanza that won't help economy. - Spends $52B bailing out farmers. - Is already raising interest rates.

Update: Treasury rates continue rising up, up, and away. These rates alone could add $500 billion more to annual interest costs within a decade (relative to the CBO baseline of 3.6% govt interest rates). Caution: Depressing charts to follow: 🧵

The biggest story few are talking about: CBO projects that the government's interest rate never exceeds 3.6% over 30 years. If rates remain at 4.5%, that adds $40 trillion more to interest costs over 30 years - as much as adding a second Defense Department.

But Trump promised us that China paid the tariff, so why would he tell American companies to eat it?🙃

The biggest story few are talking about: CBO projects that the government's interest rate never exceeds 3.6% over 30 years. If rates remain at 4.5%, that adds $40 trillion more to interest costs over 30 years - as much as adding a second Defense Department.