Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts

Wanted: A Budget-Cutting President

by Donald Lambro.    The candidate who wins the presidency in 2016 will be the one who vows to wage all-out war on a bloated, inefficient, corrupt government in need of a top-to-bottom, budget-cutting revolution. Next to an underperforming economy, the problem that concerns most Americans is the government’s $18 trillion debt, fueled by six   ... MORE

AP: Obama Relies On Accounting Tricks To Pad Numbers

by Andrew Taylor.   President Barack Obama’s budget is relying on a series of familiar accounting tricks to show $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade, an amount that would shrink by almost half if they were excluded. But so-called “pay-go” rules officially require tax cuts and new spending on the mandatory side of the ledger to be balanced by  ...  MORE

Government Looks to Save Money by Cutting Military Pay

by Onan Coca.  In a speech on Wednesday off the coast of San Diego, outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned troops that the U.S. can’t afford its military personnel anymore.Troops are already bracing for the results of a report on Feb. 1, which will most likely not be friendly to military pay. The report is by the Military Compensation and    ... MORE

The 5 Most Troubling Things in Congress’ New Spending Bill

by Romina Boccia.   Yesterday evening, the House of Representatives released its stopgap spending measure which blindly continues the bloated spending in the January omnibus bill that included special-interest handouts, wasteful and unnecessary energy spending, and transportation boondoggles. Instead of debating and voting on  ... MORE

Steve Chapman: The FBI Prospers By Feeding Fear

Careful, he might be behind the tree.     James Comey became FBI director last year, at a time when Osama bin Laden was dead, terrorism at home was on the decline and the United States was shrinking its inflammatory presence in the Muslim world. So naturally, he says the danger is way worse than you think. Referring to al-Qaida groups  ... MORE

California Officials Dread Rail Project Trial

by Steven Greenhut.       Those readers who are familiar with Judge Gideon Tucker's words that "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session," might chuckle that two good-news-for-taxpayers stories came out of Sacramento last week. They came, coincidentally, as legislators had left town to enjoy their spring   ... MORE

Matt Welch: Obama's Mourning In America

Presiding over diminished expectations.     One of the best ways to survive the grotesque and empty power pageantry of Washington's annual State of the Union extravaganza is by visiting the University of California, Santa Barbara's online archive of past addresses and looking up the speeches that corresponded to where the current POTUS     ... MORE

Why Republicans Are Surrendering On The Debt Ceiling

by Molly Ball.    The last stage of grieving is acceptance. The first wave of Tea Party lawmakers strode into Congress in 2011 on a wave of denial and anger. They were angry at President Obama and business as usual in Washington. But they were also in denial about their power—or rather powerlessness—to change it. Three years later, the right-wingers ... MORE

John Stossel: Budget Baloney

Regurgitating hope and change.     This week, President Barack Obama proposed "a budget that will create new jobs in manufacturing and energy and innovation and infrastructure, and we'll pay for every dime of it by cutting unnecessary spending, closing wasteful tax loopholes!" What? I must have fallen asleep and woken up in 2008. That could     ... MORE

House Punts on Debt Ceiling, Cedes Power Of The Purse

by Robert Romano. A feckless gaggle of representatives. Last August, before a partial government shutdown occurred in the ill-fated attempt to defund Obamacare, House Republican leaders were reportedly urging their conference to just wait for the debt ceiling, that that would be the time to achieve some concessions. On August 13, National      ... MORE

Ed Krayewski: Four Washington Scandals That Still Matter

Despite the distractions.       President Obama’s attempt to lead the United States into an intervention in Syria may have provided the White House a distraction from the summer of scandal, but they’re still there, festering. As the president waddles toward lame duck status, the various scandals will increasingly come to shape Obama’s second term.   ... MORE

Reid J. Epstein: President's Cigarette Tax Up In Smoke

Fortunately, it just hot air all along.      Remember the cigarette tax hike President Barack Obama proposed in his big budget rollout? The White House barely does. Presidential budgets are all about theater. But this year’s was more theatrical than most: Its biggest single new proposal — the sin tax to generate $78 billion to fund a preschool     ... MORE

Paul Craig Roberts: The Assault On Gold

The Federal Reserve's last stand?    For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices. When gold prices hit $1,917.50 an    ... MORE