Free Republic

RUSH: I mean, yeah, the Democrats are doing what they’re doing, and it’s undeniable. But Trump’s budget. This is absurd. This is outrageous. McCain and Lindsey Graham pronouncing it dead on arrival before it shows up. The media — you wouldn’t believe — the media is accusing Trump of outright indecency by suggesting economic growth of 3%, such a thing is not possible. It’s irresponsible to make people think that it is. That Trump’s budget’s gonna kill people with all these cuts. There aren’t any cuts in the Trump budget. As always, all there are is reductions in the rate...

What's sad is that the Democrat hysterics happen ever two years, the media repeats it, people freak, and the unimaginable never happens. Repeat. President Trump has unveiled his proposed budget and the Democrats are repeating the c-word....

We’re used to hearing politicians vow to cut spending. We’re also used to them not following through. So it’s hard to blame voters for feeling cynical. Year after year, their elected representatives kick the can down the road. They pass continuing resolutions -- Washington-speak for “business as usual.” Then the next campaign starts, and so do the promises. Meanwhile, the sky doesn’t fall. Should they even worry? In a word, yes. As the annual budget battle in Washington gets underway, it’s time to remind ourselves (and the politicians) about the price of inaction. President Trump inherited a national debt of...

The media fools telling you that simply don't know how the tax code works. For the past 18 hours or so, the mainstream media has joined online lefty sites with the seemingly big news that the 10-year Trump budget plan contains a $2 trillion “math error” that makes the premise of the entire thing totally laughable. What they’re telling you is that the White House counted the same positive numbers twice - once assuming that economic growth would render tax rate cuts revenue neutral, and then counting the same economic growth as the cause of an entirely different $2 trillion...

Big Government: President Trump's budget is taking its share of hits for supposedly indulging in fanciful accounting, unrealistic assumptions and proposing massive cuts to vital safety-net programs. How much of that is true? You decide. Trump's budget plan proposes to balance the federal budget in 10 years and do so entirely through spending restraint. That alone is enough to raise the hackles of the Washington, D.C., swamp creatures. But critics have other complaints. The main ones: It relies on unrealistic economic projections. Critics say Trump's budget numbers rest on a rosy scenario of future economic growth. The New York Times...

President Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposal would completely eliminate 66 federal programs, for a savings of $26.7 billion. Some of the programs would receive funding for 2018 as part of a phasing-out plan. Here are the programs the administration wants on the chopping block. Agriculture Department — $855 million · McGovern-Dole International Food for Education · Rural Business-Cooperative Service · Rural Water and Waste Disposal Program Account · Single Family Housing Direct Loans Commerce Department — $633 million · Economic Development Administration · Manufacturing Extension Partnership · Minority Business Development Agency · National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Grants and Education...

“The National Science Foundation last year used your taxpayer money to fund a climate change musical. Do you think that’s a waste of your money?” asked the director of Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, during a White House briefing on Tuesday. He also noted the cuts to climate change research, saying that, under President Barack Obama, the “pendulum went too far to one side” and the government spent too much on climate science. “Does it mean that we are anti-science? Absolutely not,” he said. “We are simply trying to get things back in order to where we...

The Trump administration’s 2018 budget to be released tomorrow will include a range of proposed spending cuts. The budget will call for cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs. These reforms come on top of proposed cuts to discretionary programs released in March. There is more good news. The budget will propose cuts to the fat benefit packages received by federal workers. An April CBO report found that benefits for the government’s civilian workers were 47 percent higher, on average, than for comparable private-sector workers. One cause of the excess is that federal workers receive both a defined-benefit...

The Budget He knows folks. He knows its coming, and yet he's going to take it out of your ass, and he has the entire GOP with him in doing it too. What's "it"? The medical cost explosion, which has run about 9% compounded for the last 30 years or so and which shows exactly no sign of slowing down, as I've noted repeatedly. In fact Obamacare only got one year of flat spending in Medicare and Medicaid. One. After which it went right back to where it was. As I have repeatedly shown by the numbers just taking one...

Donald Trump, whose populist message and promises to help American workers propelled him to the White House, is set to issue a budget proposal on Tuesday that instead takes aim at the social safety net on which many of his supporters rely. Rather than breaking with Washington precedent, Trump’s spending blueprint follows established conservative orthodoxy, cutting taxes on the wealthy, boosting defense spending and taking a hatchet to programs for the poor and disabled – potentially hurting many of the rural and low-income Americans that voted him into office. The budget proposal underscores the wide gulf between campaigning and governing,...

This budget will separate the men from the boys. As Trump releases a Reagan budget, the Republican posers are going to have to piss or get off the pot. As he finally does what they’ve promised to do, we’ll see where people really stand. Because the Trump budget is what Republicans have preached and campaigned on for decades. And now he’s called their bluff. It charts a course to balance. It fights welfare dependency. It builds our military and strengthens our borders. It pushes back against suffocating regulation and the agencies that impose it. It pulls the federal government out...

This week, while Donald Trump ensnares himself in the most serious threat to his presidency to date, Congress is, to some extent, continuing with the typical business of government. A series of hearings during “Infrastructure Week” are focusing on the administration’s rumored infrastructure plan.Although the White House has been talking up private infrastructure investment as a replacement for public funding, a panel of experts told Congress that, even with perfectly executed public-private partnerships, the federal government still needs to provide its own support — especially for projects, like transit lines, that aren’t guaranteed to generate toll revenue for profit-seeking investors.This...

Another fight is brewing in Washington that analysts predict could be of epic proportions. President Donald Trump's team is expected to roll out its fiscal 2018 budget proposal this week, starting the process of laying out the government's funding future. {snip} The proposal is expected to include cuts to domestic spending programs across the board, with especially deep slashes to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department. According to a report from Axios' Jonathan Swan, the budget proposal is also expected to include deep cuts to spending on Medicaid — the program that provides health coverage for low-income Americans —...

President Trump's 2018 budget proposal on Tuesday won't reform Social Security or Medicare — in line with his campaign promise — but it will make serious cuts to other entitlement programs. A source with direct knowledge tells me the Trump budget will save $1.7 trillion on the mandatory side over the next ten years.Expected reaction: In the past couple days I've spoken to a number of White House officials about the budget proposal. The best summary, from one White House source: "Conservatives will love it; moderates will probably hate it." These mandatory cuts — especially to politically-sensitive programs like...

Republican gubernatorial candidate Frank Wagner visited Roanoke Friday to pitch his campaign message of improving transportation infrastructure in order to create more jobs across Virginia.At a Roanoke County Republican Committee luncheon, Wagner, a GOP state senator from Virginia Beach, discussed his proposal to raise the gas tax for projects like widening Interstate 81 and building Interstate 73 and the Coalfields Expressway.Yes, he’s a rare Republican calling for a tax increase. He understands the irony. Building up major pathways in and out of Southwest Virginia will improve the business climate, he said.In the economically depressed Southside region , adding broadband and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government had a $182 billion budget surplus in April, confounding market expectations for a deficit, according to Treasury Department data released on Wednesday. The budget surplus was $106 billion in April 2016, according to Treasury's monthly budget statement. The fiscal 2017 year-to-date deficit was $344 billion compared with $353 billion in the same period of fiscal 2016. When accounting for calendar adjustments, the surplus last month was $145 billion compared with an adjusted surplus of $146 billion the prior year. The adjusted deficit for the fiscal year to date was $373 billion compared with $314...

How much a Constitutional Budget would cost? During this entire budgeting and continuing resolution process, there are two words that will never be put together. They are “constitutional,” and “budget.” Why? Because no one in Washington wants to be restrained by the Constitution when it comes to getting money, spending money, and especially spending money they don’t have. Which is why we are some $20 trillion in for the National Debt. But it never had to be this way. It’s one thing to talk about the Constitution. It’s quite another to actually live by it. The Supreme Court doesn’t. They...

We may witness the final unraveling of the social contract in America Having won the White House, the House and the Senate, the victorious Republicans have handed the Democrats the budget process. In doing so they have surrendered everything they were supposedly fighting for: no wall, no end to Obamacare, no end to sanctuary cities, and no end to funding for Planned Parenthood. The Democrat leaders are celebrating their victory after losing election after election. Those of us who voted Republican, who voted to get our country back, are mourning a loss after winning election after election. This does not...

A comparison between the latest budget and the proposed budgets of Clinton and Trump With all the posturing between the Trump people promoting the latest budget agreement as a “win”, and the Fake News, and their Democrat minions saying that the budget was in the benefit of Democrats. I still feel betrayed. I do. This is not what was promised. After listening to El Rushbo, perhaps I have misread what is actually going on here. So as an exercise in sanity, I decided to compare the promises of both Trump and Clinton with the latest budget agreement. Here are my...

I have refrained from jumping on the Trump-defense bandwagon over the budget just as I have refrained from bashing what is a terrible budget bill. Trumpers were righteously indignant, feeling betrayed. Trump defenders always cling to the “Trump is playing 3D chess” (which, in fact, so far he has done). One is evidence of things we can see, the other, as the Bible would say, is faith—evidence of things not yet seen. Vice President Mike Pence and Sean Spicer put the best lipstick on this pig they could, pointing to the gains in defense spending, the abandonment of the dollar-for-dollar...