Karl W Smith

The success or failure of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda could depend on a single senator from a mountainous state who has idiosyncratic views and is not especially popular in his own party. That’s right: Biden’s future may lie in the hands of Mitt Romney. The Utah senator introduced a…

Some centrist Democrats in Congress are pushing for a suspension of the gasoline tax, on the federal and state levels, and it’s not hard to see why: Many of them face tough odds for re-election next year, and rising fuel costs affect every one of their constituents. From both a political and…

Responding to stubbornly rising inflation, the US Federal Reserve has pledged to raise interest rates more quickly than expected, which will likely dampen a red-hot housing market. On the other hand, it could be that the housing market is booming because it is on the cusp of a fundamental shift —…

US President Joe Biden is pushing for a temporary increase in oil and gas production at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. While Biden himself has acknowledged that his effort might seem ironic, to some climate activists, it is more than that: It’s hypocritical, especially coming from a…

The first step toward understanding the Great Supply Chain Disruption of 2021 is to recognize that the phrase itself is not quite accurate. Supply chains are not disrupted so much as overloaded, and the effects are more national than global. This understanding has implications not only for US…

There are so many forces at work on the labor market that they are difficult to disentangle: unemployment insurance bonuses, hesitancy over Covid, lack of child care, low wages. Still, after more than a year of debating whether to spend more government money to stimulate the economy, Congress needs…

The restaurant and entertainment industry was hit hard by both the Covid recession and the federal government’s response to it. The pandemic kept customers away, and now employees are being kept away by the enhanced unemployment benefits included in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American…

Democrats believe, correctly, that a strong recovery this year is crucial to both President Joe Biden’s economic agenda and his political prospects. That’s one reason they’re trying to push the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan through Congress so quickly. For the plan to work, however, the…

Larry Summers is concerned that President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package is too big. What makes his point especially noteworthy — besides the fact that he is Larry Summers — is that he also readily admits that former President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus, of which he was one of the…

There are two big lessons from the $900 billion Covid relief package just approved by Congress. The first is that, despite everything, big bipartisan deals are possible when they amount to handing out goodies rather than forcing each side to accept something they don’t want. The second is that…