Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Just add cash. That was the ingredient Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill needed to strike and pass a long-term budget deal after months of bitter fighting across and within party lines about how to spend funds that had been limited by budget caps. An $89 billion injection "changes a lot of votes," explained North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of Republicans' arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and an opponent of the bill, hours before it passed. And that figure, an important factor in securing the support of lawmakers from the Republican-heavy states of Texas and Florida, only...

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 — our gross domestic product — totaled about $19 trillion. If the Congress spent $4 trillion of the $19 trillion that we produced, unless you believe in Santa Claus, you know that Congress must force us to spend $4 trillion less privately. Taxing us is...

Job One. Congress has one task mandated by the Constitution: ensuring that the Federal Government has funds appropriated to continue operations. Click on the links in the column on the right. The last time all appropriations bills were passed individually prior to the start of the fiscal year was 1994. The last time the spending laws were passed on time was 1996, but that included an omnibus appropriation.

What will happen to the federal government’s environmental protection work if Congress can’t pass a funding bill on time? Right now, it’s hard to say. [snip] Agencies conducting research on climate change will feel the effects of a shutdown. During the 17-day government shutdown in 2013, research on melting ice, rising seas, and global weather ground to a halt. Much of climate field research requires extensive careful planning, and research sites like the polar ice caps are only accessible at certain times of the year. Stopping work in these areas proved especially disruptive for data collection: It created gaps in...

The federal government collected record individual-income-tax revenues through the first quarter of fiscal 2018 (October through December), according to the new Monthly Treasury Statement. This was the last quarter before the new tax-cut law signed by President Donald Trump on Dec. 22 took effect. Despite taking in record individual-income-tax revenues, the federal government ran a deficit of approximately $225 billion during the quarter. The Treasury collected a record $390,847,000,000 in individual income taxes in October through December, according to the Treasury statement. That was $30,568,380,000 more than the $360,278,620,000 that the Treasury collected (in constant December 2017 dollars) in individual...

Several California cities and counties are suing Big Oil for allegedly suppressing evidence of climate change dangers. But ExxonMobil's attorneys did some legwork and found something interesting in municipal bond offerings of many of the same cities and counties suing them. Those offerings include several examples of climate change threats being downplayed or even completely ignored. The Big Oil lawyers also note that: * San Francisco has twice made bond offerings for its Municipal Transportation Agency since 2014 that do not contain the words "global warming" or "climate change." * San Mateo County is suing the oil companies because it...

In his book The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly wrote the following: (page 29) But although Hamilton is much the finer man and much the sounder thinker and statesman, there were certain limitations in his ideas and sympathies the effects of which have been almost as baleful as the effects of Jefferson's intellectual superficiality and insincerity. He perverted the American national idea almost as much as Jefferson perverted the American democratic idea, and the proper relation of these two fundamental conceptions one to another cannot be completely understood until this double perversion is corrected. To make Hamilton and Jefferson...

“In a 2017 poll conducted by NBC News/Wall Street Journal, a record 57% of Americans responded that they want MORE government in their lives, and that the government should be doing more to solve people’s problems. That’s the highest percentage since they started asking this question in 1995. In fact, 57% is nearly double what people responded in the mid-90s. Furthermore, the number of Americans who feel the opposite, i.e., responded that the government is doing too many things that should be left to private businesses and individuals, fell to a near record-low 39%. Bottom line: people want more government.”...

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii. “I...

Sen. Marco Rubio says the GOP "probably went too far" in slashing the tax burden on corporations. The Florida Republican told the News-Press of Fort Myers that corporations will largely use their major tax cut to buy back shares or increase dividends to shareholders — which "isn't going to create dramatic economic growth." "If I were king for a day, this tax bill would have looked different. I thought we probably went too far on (helping) corporations," Rubio told the newspaper in the interview published Friday. "By and large, you're going to see a lot of these multinationals buy back...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put out a press release on the Friday before Christmas touting of his efforts to secure a $4.99 million federal grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service to The Nature Conservancy “to support the conservative of private lands” in Kentucky. “Senator McConnell contacted the NRCS in support of TNC’s application,” said the release. […] McConnell’s press release also quoted Will Bowling, who is the director The Nature Conservancy’s Central Appalachian Project. Bowling expressed his gratitude to McConnell for securing his group this multi-million-dollar grant of taxpayer money. …

Net Neutrality was just repealed. Why isn't that precedent setting? It's very precedent setting to me. You see, this word, "precedent", too, has been corrupted by the progressives. What if an entire agency were abolished tomorrow? Would that be precedent setting? In reality, yes it would be setting a precedent. But would it be cast that way? No, of course not. It wouldn't be talked of that way, and it wouldn't be reported that way. But on the other hand any time a court decision, or trillion dollar budgets, or thousands of executive orders, etc etc..... all of that and...

Net Neutrality is aflame again as the FCC voted today to repeal Obama-era net neutrality regulations. This decision was heavily opposed from such internet giants as Facebook, Google and Twitter, causing the internet to be chock full of statements opposing the FCC’s decision. However, what really is Net Neutrality, and is this reversal of the decision really the “End of the Internet” as many of these sites are claiming? In the end, the answer to that question will depend on whether you believe government regulation of the internet is the best solution to keeping it open, innovating and competitive —...

State attorneys general are now threatening lawsuits against the federal government's repeal of "net neutrality" rules. New York's attorney general says he'll lead a multistate lawsuit to stop the Federal Communications Commission's rollback of rules that guaranteed equal access to the internet. Democrat Eric Schneiderman has been investigating fake public comments submitted to the FCC during the net neutrality comment process. Schneiderman says his analysis shows 2 million comments stole the identities of real Americans, including dead people and children. The Washington state attorney general has likewise vowed to sue over net neutrality.

The Democratic Party and the liberal left’s obsession with disparate impact race politics crept into K-12 public education. Their latest social engineering experimentation uses black and Hispanic kids in poor urban classrooms as pawns for political power. Education is secondary. Liberals believe they can artificially wipe away serious behavior problems that are cultural in nature. They do this by labeling reasonable standards of classroom discipline as racist or discriminatory. When urban schools with predominantly black and Hispanic students enacted protocols that create an environment where learning can take place, more suspensions and expulsions resulted, accompanied by a widening of the...

Four years after Gov. Jerry Brown launched his signature program to boost California jobs by awarding tax credits to the businesses that create them, businesses have left two-thirds of those available credits unclaimed — a sign that most expected jobs have yet to materialize. Nor can the state say for sure how many of the administration’s 83,414 projected jobs over five years have actually been created. State offices responsible for awarding and monitoring the California Competes tax credits say they aren’t keeping count. So far, the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) has awarded $622.8 million to 865...

A short-term spending bill passed by Congress earlier this year runs out on Dec. 8, and keeping the money tap open is one of the main concerns as lawmakers return to town this week. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Congress needs to pass a long-term spending bill, but “sometimes you need to do a short-term extension.” And Thune discouraged talk about a government shutdown: “There shouldn’t be any discussion about shutting down the government,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “We can make this thing work,” Thune said. “We just need to get people at the table, negotiate it. I think...

Nearly 30,000 people in Switzerland are on a “blacklist” because they don’t pay their health insurance premiums, according to Swiss media. Blacklists have only been permitted as an option since 2012 and only nine cantons have chosen to introduce them, the Aargauer Zeitung reported on Wednesday. The lists include people who do not pay their premiums or fall behind in their payments. […] Those blacklisted will no longer receive cover for medical bills apart from in an emergency. […] Swiss basic health insurance (LaMal) is compulsory for everyone in Switzerland. Individuals can choose from one of over 60 private insurers...

An IRS Special Agent gets to carry an AR15 in certain circumstances. Another agency, Health & Human Services, trains special agents on heavy military-style weapon platforms by the same vendors that train our Special Forces warriors.

The Government is to cut the controversial six-week wait for Universal Credit payments in the comings days in a bid to see off a Conservative rebellion. Universal Credit combines six benefits into one single benefit and is designed to simplify the welfare system and to "make work pay". It was the flagship welfare reform of David Cameron's coalition government, but has been plagued with delays since its inception and by criticism over its design. One flaw is the six-week wait time which has been criticised across the political divide amid concerns it is pushing claimants into arrears on rent and...