During the upcoming presidential debates there will likely be a lot of attention paid on what the role of government ought to be. As taxpayers, you and I account for about two-thirds of the government’s annual revenues – an estimated 47 percent in Fiscal Year 2013 through our individual income ...

The first of three presidential debates is scheduled for Wednesday. We don't know precisely what topics the candidates will cover, but we can make some educated guesses. And one reader from Duluth, Minnesota, wrote in to ask us about a likely topic: the much-debated 2009 stimulus package, which greatly increased federal spending for several years. The president and his team were famously over-optimistic about how quickly the economy would recover, but that's a separate issue from whether or not the stimulus helped ease the devastating effects of the downturn. Here's the low-down.