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The standard media coverage of President Obama's new budget claimed the proposals will cut $600 billion in spending over the next decade. It was just about impossible, though, to find any media story mentioning some basic numbers that belong in any story about a new federal budget. How much money is the federal government spending this year? How does that compare to what it spent last year, or expects to spend next year? Perhaps the reason for this failure is because the real numbers don't match up with the storyline. For example, in the current year, the federal government is...

President Obama's budget released Tuesday claims to reduce deficits by trillions of dollars, but a closer look at the details reveals that the deficit reduction is dependent on a number of gimmicks.Overall, Obama's budget for fiscal year 2015 still projects deficits of $4.9 trillion between 2015 and 2024 if all of his policies are adopted. But that is about $3 trillion less than what the Congressional Budget Office is projecting for the period and $2.2 trillion less than what the White House's own Office of Management and Budget is estimating for the period if there are no changes to current...

The White House dropped President Obama’s FY2015 budget readout yesterday, and as the NYT rather aptly titled it, it amounted to little more than a “populist wish list” that doesn’t even try to look serious about addressing our runaway entitlement spending or ballooning national debt. It includes a lot more of the stimulus-spending-as-growth utter crapola we’ve been dealing with for the past five years, and to really demonstrate just how bass-ackwards his and the Democrats’ brand of economic thinking really is, we need look no further than what his would-be budget would inflict on one of the few bright spots...

China plans to spend $132 billion on its military as it asserts its maritime interests, putting it at odds with the US military preeminence in the Pacific. China made headlines today with its annual military budget, up 12.2 percent to $132 billion dollars this year. That's about one quarter of the $495 billion military budget that President Obama presented to Congress yesterday. Predictably, official commentary here stresses that China is a peace-loving nation with no aggressive intentions. But Beijing has also signaled its ambitions to be the power that holds the ring in the western Pacific, and those ambitions have...

The nation’s top military commander painted a dark picture Tuesday of future U.S. defense capabilities clouded by shrinking Pentagon budgets and adversaries’ technological advances that he said would erode American battlefield superiority. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided his sobering views as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated evaluation of U.S. military strength issued every four years. Dempsey predicted that it would become increasingly difficult to balance the competing demands of protecting allies abroad, securing Americans at home and deterring future wars. “The smaller and less capable military outlined in...

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 not be something he'd claim after five years in office -- years after making similar claims and not delivering on them. Does he think we have no memory, or that we're just ignorant? Are these just poll-tested phrases that work because most voters are too busy to pay attention?...

If the news from the past few days hasn't been enough to dampen your fire, try this on for size. Tis the season for budget proposals in Washington. President Obama is the first to reveal what he wants to spend our money on, with Paul Ryan soon to follow. I'll try to take a look at Mr. Ryan's, when he turns it loose, but for now, all we have to go on is what the President has listed as his priorities. My friends, it is not pretty. It's more of the same, really. He wants more infrastructure spending, more education...

Fiscal Irresponsibility: Just how out of touch is President Obama? In the midst of a faltering economy and rising global threats, he proposes a budget that would sharply cut defense spending and impose $1.8 trillion in tax hikes. Despite its relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things, the annual White House budget proposal does provide a window into the president's thinking on the size and scope of government. The fiscal 2015 budget — released a month late on Tuesday — also manages to showcase Obama's worrisome detachment from reality. The budget rests, for example, on the assumption that real...

The three network morning shows combined gave less than two minutes of air time to President Obama's proposed 2015 budget on Tuesday, though they all managed to highlight how the plan "will cut taxes for thirteen and a half million working Americans" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]. What the NBC, ABC, and CBS broadcasts all ignored was that the debt projections under the President's budget were off by $2.7 trillion compared to recent numbers released by the Congressional Budget Office. As the Washington Post pointed out on Tuesday, "[Obama's budget] forecasts a dramatic reduction...

Paul Ryan: 'Budget Isn’t a Serious Document; It’s a Campaign Brochure' 'This budget never balances—ever.' Daniel Halper March 4, 2014 11:55 AM Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, slams President Obama's budget in a statement released by his office. “The President’s budget is yet another disappointment—because it reinforces the status quo. It would demand that families pay more so Washington can spend more. It would hollow out our defense capabilities. And it would do nothing to preserve or strengthen our entitlements. The President has just three years left in his administration, and yet he seems determined to do...

Along with several other states, Minnesota has returned to a budget surplus after some sharp deficit years. Whether that is because of luck or good policy is a matter of divided opinion. But there reportedly is about $1 billion on the table. Already there are many suggestions on how to "use it" -- ranging from tax cuts to new spending. This is premature, fiscally irresponsible and dangerous to the state economy. This surplus is not a long-lasting "structural" one, and that should be taken into account. We should first build up a reserve fund for the day we go back...

If you're in the hospital with multiple fractures, a staph infection and a collapsed lung, you may not take great comfort when your doctor informs you that his last patient has it worse, being dead. Sometimes encouraging comparisons are not that encouraging. So Chicagoans didn't break out confetti upon hearing that Standard & Poor's Ratings Services regard the city's fiscal condition as less dire than Detroit's. In other news, most residents of Baghdad were not killed by suicide bombers yesterday. The S&P report is not exactly a burst of sunshine. It judges "both Detroit's and Chicago's budgetary performance to be...

A Capitol Hill source source says that Senate Democrats will not produce a budget this year. The news is expected to come from Senator Patty Murray's office at 3 p.m. today, as part of a Friday afternoon news dump. Murray is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama released this statement. "Senate Democrats are required by law to produce a budget," wrote Sessions. "Our nation is in enormous financial distress, and workers and families are suffering. Senate Democrats have produced only one budget in the last five years. This Senate and, more importantly, the American public,...

As the Obama administration announces proposed sweeping defense cuts, a Congressional Budget Office report documents how increases in other areas of domestic spending may be forcing the White House to reduce money for the military. The CBO report finds that mandatory spending, which includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, is projected to rise $85 billion, or 4 percent, to $2.1 trillion this year. Interest on the debt is worse. It is projected to increase 14 percent per year, almost quadrupling in dollar terms between 2014 and 2024. "We are going to be spending more in interest in a couple of...

Just two days after the Pentagon outlined major cuts to the U.S. Army and other military programs, President Obama is calling for a whopping $300 billion commitment for America's roads, bridges and mass transit systems -- though as much as half comes from a tax plan that has bleak prospects on the Hill. The president talked about the stimulus-style plan during a stop Wednesday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn. Officials say the money, as proposed, largely would come from "pro-growth business tax reform." But aside from the challenges in pushing tax reform, Obama could have a hard time making the...

Full title: Col. Oliver North: 'There is no strategy' to the defense budget that reduces military to pre-WWII levelsVIDEO at link: Ollie North up to the 4:45 minute mark. GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Colonel Oliver North joins us. Nice to see you, Colonel. LT. COL. OLIVER NORTH, HOST, 'WAR STORIES' & FORMERLY U.S. MARINE CORPS: Good to be with you but not on a day like this. VAN SUSTEREN: All right. I was going to ask you two things. Two-part question. First, do we have to make cuts in the military? Is that smart and wise? And secondly,...

According to news reports, the US military will be cut dramatically: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has proposed shrinking the Army to its smallest size in 74 years through a series of base closures and troops cuts, and by completely eliminating several Air Force aircraft fleets. The move comes as the U.S. Army moves into the final phases of a massive troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Congress raises new red flags about American deficit spending. Hagel surprised some observers on Monday when he outlined a global military philosophy that removed America from the center of its universe. [SNIP] I oppose these...

Benefits for active ­duty personnel and their families would be slashed under a budget proposal released Monday by the Pentagon. The budget would dramatically reduce the Army’s size and trigger a new round of controversial base closures, while cutting healthcare co-pays and deductibles and reducing the subsidies military families get for housing and low-cost goods. Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel acknowledged the cuts would be controversial, but argued they were unavoidable in a belt-tightening era following the end of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Congress has taken some important steps in recent years to control the growth in compensation spending, but...

Teeing up what could be a politically explosive fight before the midterm elections in November, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday will recommend billions of dollars in annual budget cuts that would reduce housing allowances and other benefits, increase health-care premiums, and limit pay raises, CBS News confirms. The recommendations, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, are part of a broader effort to trim the Pentagon's budget while minimizing the impact on preparedness and capability. But they're likely to provoke fierce opposition from veterans' interest groups and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The Pentagon argues that personnel costs are simply...

S&P is “keeping a close eye on budget gimmicks” that the state has tried to use to paper over problems. Petek says that the most populous state in the country, with an economy the ninth largest in the world, already is “overly reliant on personal income taxes” and that the state’s “tax structure is behind the deficit, because it over relies on the personal income tax” as its source of revenue. He adds that “for California to rely on capital gains tax revenue from things like the Facebook initial public offering is like looking for change in the seat cushions.”...