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Dozens of students at the University of California, Davis, ended a standoff at the main administration building Tuesday night after administrators agreed to some of their demands, officials said. No one was arrested and students left Mrak Hall at about 11:15 p.m., said Sylvia Wright, a university spokeswoman. About 150 students packed the building's lobby at the height of Tuesday's protest, which began about 5 p.m. when students were asked to leave and refused. The number dropped to about 90 later in the night. Last week, authorities at UC Davis arrested 52 people - including 47 students - who protested...

NEW YORK -- Saying the state faces an unprecedented fiscal crisis, New York Gov. David Paterson on Tuesday sought emergency legislation that would give him authority to implement a one-time, across-the-board reduction in state payments to close a $3.2 billion budget gap for the current year. The proposed bill includes a legislative finding that the state's deficit "presents a genuine danger that the state will lack the funds necessary to make payments as they come due," Mr. Paterson said in a Web address. The state's "extremely precarious and worsening fiscal situation" necessitates the payment denials that the legislation would allow,...

Shocking, but true! The ultra-liberal New York Times is concerned about the national debt and deficit spending? I can't believe my eyes! This ranks right up there with Socialist France, formerly Communist Russia, and Communist China warning our government that they're spending too much money. Has the "Old Gray Lady" awakened to the realization that money doesn't grow on trees?

Former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Douglas Holtz-Eakin, testified before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10, giving a sharp rebuke of the Obama administration's out-of-control spending...

An anti-tax recall movement against Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, has failed to gather enough valid signatures to go to the ballot, the California secretary of state's office announced Friday. "I'm elated. I'm euphoric," Adams said Friday. "People generally don't like recalls," he said. "I'm up for re-election in June, in the primary. Voters will have their say then." The recall effort was launched after Adams provided one of three GOP votes needed in the Assembly to pass temporary income tax increases last February. Tim Whitacre, who is active in Orange County GOP circles and managed the recall campaign, could not...

In a fast-paced world, life can sometimes be daunting. Fortunately, the state of Michigan has online advice for almost every aspect of life, from shopping to gardening, eating to driving. Sure, some of it may be painfully obvious, nitpicky or bizarre, but just remember: The state knows what's best for you.

When Mac Taylor, the Legislature's chief budget adviser, declared this week that the state budget enacted just four months ago is already billions of dollars upside down, no one in the Capitol should have been surprised. Anyone with half a brain and a hand calculator could figure out that many assumptions on which the budget was based, both spending and revenues, were unrealistic, some of them conjured out of thin air to "balance" an inherently unbalanced budget for political reasons. Taylor told legislators that the current budget is $6.3 billion out of balance and the 2010-11 budget has another $14.4...

State Budgets: California's slide into fiscal oblivion continues, with no end in sight. Despite lots of budget cuts this year, a $21 billion deficit looms. The politicians' solution? Stop selling high-definition TVs in the state. It's starting to become routine. Last February, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new spending plan with "real, lasting reforms" that would help close its $36 billion-plus deficit and ensure the state never got so out of fiscal whack again. And just four months ago the Governator and California's worst-in-the-country legislature agreed to a plan to close a $24 billion budget gap by cutting spending amid...

WASHINGTON -- Mayors from four U.S. cities said they are facing a once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis and that federal stimulus funds have, so far, been largely unhelpful in helping them balance budgets hit by steep drops in nearly every source of municipal revenue. The comments, from mayors of Philadelphia, San Jose, Calif; Mesa, Ariz., and Bowling Green, Ky., at a panel discussion sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the National League of Cities, underscore how the recession for local government is far from over. Mesa's mayor, Scott Smith, said the steep drops in sales-tax revenue, the city's primary source of money,...

More grim news Wednesday for state workers: California's general fund faces a $21 billion deficit through the middle of 2011. The red ink could flow for years to come, according to a forecast by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.The state's 200,000 or so workers, already taking a 15 percent pay hit from three furlough days per month, knew this was coming. What does the state's rotten financial picture mean to them?• Real job cuts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger already has ordered 7,000 jobs eliminated from the deficit-ridden general fund. And as this column reported a few months ago, the administration has...

California again is facing a mammoth budget deficit and the prospect of more severe cuts to state services, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office warned in a report released Wednesday.Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said the state will face a $20.7 billion deficit next year and that the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger need to start work to fill that gap "as soon as possible." He also noted that many one-time fixes state leaders have relied on in the past to close deficits are not available. The state will face $20 billion annual deficits through 2015 if permanent fixes are not made,...

California faces annual budget deficits of $20 billion even while assuming state employees would receive no salary increases through 2014-15, according to a forecast issued today by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office. The fiscal report also assumes that the state would not provide automatic cost-of-living adjustments to social service programs, courts and higher education -- just as the University of California system today is considering raising tuition 32 percent over the next year to compensate for state budget cuts. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said today that his projections assume that state worker furloughs will end in June 2010. In the...

I concluded the talk by emphasizing that fiscal policy is on an unsustainable path to an extent that cannot be solved by minor tinkering. The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services. That fundamental disconnect will have to be addressed in some way if the budget is to be placed on a sustainable course.

Despite revenue projections that are holding relatively firm, California faces a $21 billion state budget shortfall over the next year and half, according to sources who have been briefed on a projection from the Legislature's budget analyst. The shortfall will be detailed in a report due to be released Wednesday by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor. Sources said the report will show the state will fall short by $6.3 billion in the fiscal year that began July 1, due largely to failed projections in the spending plan lawmakers cobbled together in July. Lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger failed to reduce the...

Hollywood studios are now thinking twice about splurging on A-list movie stars and costly productions in reaction to the poor economy, but also because of the surprising success of recent films with unknown actors.

While President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan is primarily a military one, it also has substantial budget implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior administration officials say. The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said. Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per...

Krugman's Magic Solution To Budgetary Woes Economics / Economic Theory Nov 13, 2009 - 04:01 PM By: Robert_Murphy Long-time readers know that I am second only to Bill Anderson in my constant criticism of Paul Krugman. Indeed, I quite recently defended the gold standard from Krugman's ridicule. Given this context, I am very surprised to confess that Krugman has convinced me of the virtues of currency debasement. As I was reading his blog post on the tragic fate of Ecuador, I applied Krugman's lessons to my personal life, and suddenly everything became clear. In a flash, all of my household's...

WASHINGTON -- The federal government kicked off fiscal year 2010 by posting its widest-ever October budget deficit, the Treasury Department said Thursday. The $176.36 billion gap is more than $20 billion wider than the shortfall recorded in October 2008, driven up by lower tax receipts, stimulus-related revenue reductions and consistently high government outlays. Treasury's monthly budget statement shows receipts were $135.33 billion in October, down 18% from a year earlier and at the lowest level since October 2002. Meanwhile, outlays were $311.69 billion, down 3% from a year earlier and at their second-highest monthly level on record.

Obama Traveling To Nations He Plans To Borrow Billions From In Order To Finance His Reckless Big-Government Experiments, Historic Deficits AS OBAMA PILES MORE DEBT ONTO HIS ALREADY HISTORIC DEFICITS …Today, Obama’s Treasury Department To Announce $150 Billion Deficit In Month Of October. “On Thursday, the Treasury will report on the federal budget in October, which is expected to show that the government spent $150 billion more than it took in …” (Neil Irwin, “Twin Deficits Will Help Gauge Economic Health,” The Washington Post, 11/9/09)Obama Had Record Deficit Of $1.42 Trillion In FY 2009, Three Times More Than Previous Record...

In a breathtaking example of hypocrisy, Jim Cooper testified today - presumably with a straight face - that deficit spending of the sort that has lead to $55 trillion dollars in unfunded mandates threatening to cripple the US Economy is a "fiscal cancer." While he does say that the Health Care bill passed in the House on Saturday won't help address the problem, he neglects to mention he voted for it. Instead he recommends another Congressional panel to make recommendations.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger estimated Monday that California's budget will fall out of balance by $5 billion to $7 billion this fiscal year, on top of a $7.4 billion gap already projected for 2010-11. If true, state leaders would confront at least a $12.4 billion to $14.4 billion problem when Schwarzenegger releases his budget in January. California currently has an $84.6 billion general fund budget. The Republican governor spoke with The Fresno Bee editorial board Monday after signing a bill placing a water bond on the November 2010 ballot. He emphasized deep spending cuts as a budget solution but did not...

Federal Spending: Tipping Point Allie Winegar Duzett, November 9, 2009 “We need to get a grip on our budget,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) argued at this week’s Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing. The spending is “out of control,” Rep. Ryan declared, adding that “there is either A) no desire to get it under control, or B) no capacity to get it under control, or a combination of the two.” Rep. Ryan has recently sponsored a bill that would address this problem. “Our bill … creates a legally binding budget, [and] gives the budget the force of law,” he stated. “The problem...

To get a handle on how out of control federal spending has become, consider this: It surged to $30,000 per household in 2009. That's up from $21,000 (adjusted for inflation) in the 1980s and '90s. Yet rather than cut back, Congress plans to spend even more. Lawmakers want an additional 11 percent domestic discretionary spending hike in 2010, as well as an expensive new health care entitlement. In the absence of spending restraint, closing these budget deficits would require permanent tax increases exceeding $8,000 per household. This is absurd. Instead, Congress should reform Social Security and Medicare, eliminate outdated programs,...

Mike Genest, who announced recently that he's resigning as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget director, deserves a respite after four years of dealing with the state's chronic fiscal crisis. Genest is a genuinely nice guy,... His imminent departure, however, is a reminder that as Schwarzenegger settles on what he'll propose on state spending two months hence, California is still speeding toward a train wreck. The Legislature's budget analyst, Mac Taylor, will issue his appraisal soon. He'll probably tell his bosses what they don't want to hear – that things are getting worse, not better. State revenues are running billions of dollars...

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a massive overhaul of the American health care system Saturday night by a vote of 220 to 215. One Republican, Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana, crossed the aisle, while 39 Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing the measure. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called passage of the bill "an historic moment for our nation and for America's families," while Republicans warned that the bill will raise taxes, increase insurance premiums and make cuts to Medicare. An enormous round of applause broke out throughout the House chamber when the crucial 218th vote was cast to...

Taxation: Policymakers piled up a $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009. The figure is so high that if Congress were to use the income tax to balance the budget, rates would have to be nearly tripled. The 2009 deficit was larger than the combined federal debt of the first two centuries of the country's existence. As staggering as that is to the mind, the 2010 deficit projects to be even bigger, roughly $1.5 trillion. The rates for joint filers earning at least $373,601 would have to be almost tripled, from 35% to 95.2%, to help close the 2010 deficit. (See...

CHICAGO (AP) - Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say. The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "Your neighbor may be...

The White House is beginning to send strong signals that it recognizes the $1.4 trillion budget deficit is a looming political problem that needs to be addressed, even as President Obama reminds Americans that the country's fiscal crisis originated with the Bush administration and will not be resolved overnight. The president's budget director, Peter R. Orszag, on Tuesday will deliver the second major speech on the deficit in a week by a top White House official. Mr. Orszag's speech on "reining in the deficit" will be the first time that a top White House economist will look forward at the...

Pelosi vs. NH: Wrecking the state budgetSaturday, Oct. 31, 2009 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a health care reform bill that allegedly would cost the federal government less than previous House Democratic plans. But it would cost states more. The previous House bill would have made families earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level eligible for Medicaid, which states partially fund. New Hampshire pays 50 percent of its Medicaid costs. That would have cost states an additional $33 billion. Under Pelosi's bill, families earning up to 150 percent of the poverty level are to be covered by...

New Orleans not only faces a $68 million budget shortfall for 2010. City government is running more than $30 million in the red this year, due in large part to a sharp drop in sales tax revenue, officials said Wednesday. Earlier optimistic assessments that huge post-Katrina investments in New Orleans would insulate the city from the worst effects of a national recession have proved wrong, city economist Jerome Lomba told the city's Revenue Estimating Conference. City sales tax revenue for 2009, projected last fall to total $157 million, is now expected to fall $23 million short of that amount, in...

The unprecedented, improbable and indeed almost unimaginable global financial crisis has virtually put an end to the comfortable notion that American and Western capitalism would dominate the world economy. In turn, the financial meltdown threatening another Great Depression has been the rationale for a phenomenal expansion of government spending to prop up demand and fend off economic disaster. As a result, the deficit quadrupled from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.85 trillion this year. It has gone from 3.2% of gross domestic product to 13.1%, twice the post-World War II record of 6% in 1983 under President Reagan. What's more,...

Republican Tom Campbell, a candidate for governor who was the last state finance director to preside over a balanced budget, warned this week that California may be awash in more red ink, with revenue expected to fall short of projections by as much as $3 billion by the end of December. The alarm from Campbell, a former dean of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, came after state officials acknowledged two weeks ago that state revenue for the first quarter of the fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, fell $1.1 billion short of predictions. Still, as national headlines have trumpeted...

One trillion, four hundred twenty billion dollars. It’s an astounding number. It’s more than the entire economy of India and enough to give every man, woman, and child in the United States $4700. It is also our country’s federal budget deficit for 2009. That means that in the fiscal year 2009, which runs from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009, the federal government spent $1.42 trillion more than it took in. To put this in perspective, last year’s deficit was $459 billion – still an astounding number, but less than half the deficit for this year. When our nation...

Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) lead analyst covering US debt said that the Amercan goverment could lose its “AAA” rating if it cannot cut the deficit and budget gaps in the next three to four years. Steven Hess told Reuters: “The Aaa rating of the U.S. is not guaranteed.” The current rating should be stable for at least 18 months.It was only earlier this year that the UK government got a similar warning from credit agencies.China expressed concern to Secretary Geithner that it does not have an unending appetite for US Treasury paper. At some point the People’s Republic will not be willing to...

Daley: City Managers To Take Nearly Five Weeks Off Thousands Of City Workers To Take 24 Unpaid Days In 2010 CHICAGO (CBS) ― Faced with a $550 million budget deficit, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley on Monday said that all non-union city workers would take nearly five working weeks of unpaid leave next year to save the city money. Daley announced plans Monday to save $114 million by requiring 3,600 non-union city workers to take 24 unpaid days off, eliminating 220 vacant jobs and cutting expenses like travel and supplies by $20 million.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released updated information on the nation’s fiscal outlook, based on the projections from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). On October 7, CBO announced that the nation's budget deficit for 2009 was $1.4 trillion, triple 2008's, which was the worst in history at the time.

The Obama administration on Friday said the government ran a $1.42 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2009. That made it the worst year on record since World War II, according to data from the Treasury and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Tax receipts for the year fell 16.6% overall, while spending soared 18.2% compared to fiscal year 2008. The causes: rising unemployment, the economic slowdown and the extraordinary measures taken by lawmakers to stem the economic meltdown that hit in fall 2008. Consequently, the annual deficit rose 212% to the record dollar amount of $1.42 trillion, from...

Given all the hullabaloo directed at Senator Max Baucus as he and his Democratic allies anticipated cost estimates of his healthcare bill with the nervous agitation exhibited by actors who fidget all night as they await reviews of a hopelessly bad play, Americans are now aware of the Congressional Budget Office. In fact, there was so much hullabalooing that the public has also come to know that Washington’s politicians regard the CBO as the “gold standard” when it comes to letting everyone know how much the Federal Government will take in or how deeply one of its programs will dig...

A $42.8 billion Homeland Security budget cleared the House Thursday after Democrats won a showdown vote preserving President Barack Obama’s authority to temporarily transfer Guantanamo prisoners into the United States for the purpose of prosecution. Republicans had prevailed on the same issue when framed as part of a non-binding resolution two weeks ago. But Democrats have since dug in, their lines stiffened in what became a test of loyalty to the president’s stand on Guantanamo and their own ability to break the impasse over year-end appropriations bills. --- SNIP --- New York Rep. Peter King, the ranking Republican on the...

WASHINGTON — The budget deficit for the current year will be $172 billion, according to new estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. The latest CBO figures, disclosed by a congressional aide, also predict the budget could come back into surplus by 2012, although that would require President Bush's tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010. The estimates also understate the ongoing cost of the war in Iraq, but provide a basis for majority Democrats on Capitol Hill to work to match Bush's vow to balance the federal budget in five years. The improvement in the deficit figure comes...

Three months ago, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature enacted a much-revised state budget, this column pointed out that the state was seemingly operating on a five-month budget cycle. With recession rampant, it would take about three months for new holes to appear in a revised budget and two more months for the politicians to make still another adjustment. As if on cue, state Controller John Chiang is providing new evidence that the 2009-10 budget is leaking red ink. During the first quarter of the fiscal year, state revenues came in more than a billion dollars under the budget's...

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- California's state controller is warning that disappointing tax receipts will push the state into a bigger budget deficit than expected. A report released Friday by Controller John Chiang says state revenue is about $1 billion short of what lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger expected when they reached a budget deal during the summer. The report says the biggest dip is in income tax, with receipts down about 11 percent.

Former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis joined Republican predecessors Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian in filing a friend-of-the-court brief Wednesday supporting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's line-item vetoes of $489 million in state spending this summer. The California Chamber of Commerce, the California Taxpayers Association and the California Business Roundtable also signed the amicus brief. Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto authority to cut the funds out of the July budget revision, which he said was necessary because the Legislature failed to pass the entire deal he negotiated with legislative leaders behind closed doors. Lawmakers left the budget slightly in the red, and Schwarzenegger...

Golfers call it a "mulligan" or even more colloquially, a "mullie," but the rest of us would say it's a "do-over" when things don't go as well as hoped and we make a new stab at getting it right. Capitol politicians and various interest groups are pursuing mulligans on many of the specific provisions of the state budget that legislators ultimately adopted in July and that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger later signed after slashing nearly a half-billion dollars in spending. "This has been a very tough budget, probably the toughest since I have been in office here in Sacramento," the governor...

The Cato Institute today announced the launch of "Downsizing the Federal Government," a new website aimed at providing policymakers, media and the public with comprehensive data on federal spending. The federal government is running massive all-time record budget deficits, spending too much, and heading toward a financial crisis. Without a change of direction in Washington, average working families will be faced with huge tax increases and a lower standard of living. This makes the launching of this website especially timely and applicable.

UC Protest Movement Continues to Unfold By Richard Brenneman and Riya Bhattacharjee Thursday October 01, 2009 UC Berkeley students headed back to Sproul Plaza Wednesday evening to discuss possible actions to protest the university’s budget cuts and related topics. After a hugely successful student and faculty walkout Thursday, Sept. 24, which received national and international media coverage, about 200 students took part in a general assemby at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30. The meeting had barely begun by the time the Daily Planet went to press. Student organizers said the meeting was intended as a grassroots effort to brainstorm ideas...

Gov. warns of California-style NY state budget By Daniel Massey Published: September 29, 2009 - 3:50 pm More than 100 leaders of New York state's business community gathered Tuesday morning for a meeting in Manhattan and sources say that Topic No. 1 was … the state of California. Gov. David Paterson addressed the assemblage and reported that New York's budget is not in as abysmal shape as California's, but it's headed that way if nothing is done to control state spending, according to two people who attended the event, which was sponsored by the Partnership for New York City and...

Granholm signs temporary budget bill Shutdown ends after Granholm signs interim budget Updated: Thursday, 01 Oct 2009, 12:42 PM EDT Published : Wednesday, 30 Sep 2009, 11:50 PM EDT LANSING, Mich. (WOOD) - Michigan lawmakers missed a midnight Wednesday deadline to balance the state's budget by eliminating a projected $2.8 billion deficit, opting instead for an interim one-month budget. The Legislature had been moving toward that goal without tax increases, opting instead for cuts and the use of federal stimulus money. But a full-year plan was out of reach after a standstill on the most contentious cuts. A status report:...

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- With a midnight deadline that's come and gone, Michigan lawmakers continue to struggle to craft a spending plan, leaving many of those with a stake in how the budget turns out as uncertain as they were the day before. A deal to fill a nearly $3 billion shortfall with federal recovery dollars and more than $1 billion in cuts fell through, as many lawmakers discovered they couldn't stomach deep cuts to schools and local services such as police and fire protection in the stricken state. Michigan already is struggling with the nation's highest unemployment rate, a...

LAST week, the Senate Finance Committee voted 12-11 not to wait for the Congressional Budget Office to "score" its health-care bill before the committee votes on it. Imagine that: Some senators actually wanted to know how much the bill costs before voting on it. Let them get away with something like that, and before you know it they'll be demanding honest accounting practices -- sending the whole legislative process to hell in a hand basket. When it comes to the health-care-reform debate, you see, honest budgeting is nowhere to be seen.