Free Republic

US to hike 10-year deficit forecast to nine trillion dollars Fri Aug 21, 6:06 pm ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama's administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit forecast to about nine trillion dollars, up about two trillion from the previous forecast, a US official said Friday. The 2010-2019 projection, due out in a report expected next week, will supercede the previous forecast of about 7.1 trillion dollars, according to an official with the White House's Office of Management and Budget. The OMB official requested anonymity. The figures are expected to fuel a fierce political debate over the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A White House budget official says the Obama administration expects the federal deficit over the next decade to be $2 trillion bigger than previously estimated. The projection now is for a deficit of $9 trillion. The new figure reflects a worse economic picture than expected earlier this year. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because new budget projections will not be announced until next week. Ten-year forecasts are volatile figures subject to change over time. But the higher number will likely create political difficulties ... and could create anxiety with foreign buyers of U.S. debt.

As the Cold War wound down and new military technology emerged two decades ago, Washington politicians were compelled to acknowledge two realities: It was time to shrink the nation's military establishment, and Congress couldn't bring itself to close outmoded military bases that were high-profile components of local economies. The answer to the dilemma was called the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, an independent body that would decide which military installations would be closed or merged and allow Congress only to veto an entire list, not cherry-pick it. In a sense, it was similar to the decision to make the Postal...

Chicago shuts down for a day to save money The city of Chicago has shut down all "non-essential" public services for a day in an attempt to claw back a $300m (£184m) budget deficit. Published: 8:44AM BST 18 Aug 2009 In the first of three Reduced Service days, rubbish collections were suspended and libraries and health centres were closed. Workers have been asked to take an enforced unpaid holiday in a move the authorities hope will save $8.3m. Chicago's Mayor Richard M Daley thanked state employees for their "sacrifice". "Every dollar we save from these measures helps to save jobs,...

City Government Closed For Business On Monday The City of Chicago will basically be closed for business on Aug. 17, a reduced-service day in which most city employees are off without pay, according to a release from the Office of Budget and Management. City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices will be closed. Emergency service providers including police, firefighters and paramedics will be working at full strength, but most services not directly related to public safety, including street sweeping, will not be provided, the release said. That also includes garbage pickup. Residents who receive regular collection on...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon may want to consider scaling back Lockheed Martin Corp's multinational F-35 fighter program, the costliest-ever U.S. arms-purchase plan, as part of stepped-up budget belt-tightening, an analysis by an influential research group said. The private Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, several of whose one-time experts are now serving in senior Obama administration jobs, cited the F-35 as just one example of programs ripe for review by the Department of Defense during its once-every-four-year, top-to-bottom re-assessment now under way.

In a sarcasm-laced letter, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday brusquely rebuffed DFL legislative leaders' invitation to a summit meeting that would address the state's ongoing financial crisis. Late last month, Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller and House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher invited former governors, speakers and majority leaders to a "Minnesota Leadership Summit." In Tuesday's letter to Pogemiller and Kelliher, Pawlenty declined the invitation. "The state already has a 'Minnesota Leadership Summit,'" he wrote. "It's called the legislative session and it lasts approximately five months."

Perhaps states are starting to learn the right fiscal lessons from the red-ink blowouts in high-tax California and New York. Today, the legislature in Arizona will vote on a tax reform designed to entice more employers and high-income taxpayers to the state. Sponsored by Republican Governor Jan Brewer, the plan would cut state property taxes, the corporate tax and personal income taxes, in exchange for a temporary rise in the sales tax. Most economic studies agree that states have more jobs and higher income growth when they tax consumption rather than savings, investment and business profits. This explains why most...

Twice this year, as revenues dropped and deficits widened, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators reopened and revised the state budget. In many respects, the dynamics of both exercises were similar. First, there would be a public acknowledgment of the immediate crisis, then a flurry of competing approaches, ...However, the final throes of the February and July episodes were very different. The February "solution" – the quotation marks denote its ephemeral quality – was centered on raising income, sales and automobile taxes, which put Republicans, most of whom had signed an anti-tax pledge, on the spot. Ultimately, a bare minimum of...

by Debra Medina, Republican Candidate for Governor of Texas I’m tired of being lied to. While our state leaders continue to boast about the glowing state of the Texas economy, there are some pretty dark clouds on the horizon, not just coming from Washington D.C. but right here at home. Governor Perry has offered no resistance to the doubling of Texas state debt on his watch. And what’s more, with a little research, we learn that we’ve exhausted 85% of our constitutionally mandated debt limit.1 At a time when our economy is more unstable than most have seen in our...

Budget Update Delayed, Health Care Plan on Back BurnerBy Christine Lin Epoch Times Staff Jul 20, 2009 By now, the nation should have received the national budget forecast for next year, but The White House has delayed the announcement until mid-August. Some analysts speculate that the release of a less-than-optimistic budget update will put a hitch in President Obama's plans to reform the nation's $2.5 trillion health industry by August. House Democrats are currently pushing for votes to pass the reform. Obama also has a global warming bill that he is trying to convince legislators to support—if the budget update...

INDIANAPOLIS -- State leaders on both side of the aisle Friday agreed that a tax increase isn't an option to make up a shocking drop of revenue, but more budget cuts could be on the way. July figures released Thursday showed state tax collections were down $76.5 million from a revised revenue forecast issued in May. That forecast already projected that revenues through June 2011 would be about $1.1 billion less than a forecast issued in April. The sales tax, the state's biggest money maker, was 11 percent less than a year ago, while the income tax was down 35...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of U.S. voters say President Obama’s policies have increased the size of the federal deficit, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Only five percent (5%) say the president’s policies have cut the deficit, and 10% say they have had no impact. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. Eighty percent (80%) of investors say Obama’s policies have driven up the deficit, a view shared by just 57% of non-investors. Not surprisingly, 88% of Republicans blame the president’s policies, compared to 52% of Democrats. But 79% of voters not affiliated with either party agree. Obama has...

HARRISBURG -- State workers will have to wait another week to be paid for days they've worked since July 1, but House Democratic lawmakers have checks in hand. They paid themselves first. Their paychecks were issued Tuesday as they voted on a $27.3 billion budget, which Gov. Ed Rendell today chopped to $11 billion through line-items vetoes. He left intact funding for items including public safety, state parks and employees' pay. Some 77,000 state workers will have to wait a week or more for their checks to be processed, while lawmakers have their money. The money was available even before...

Lawmakers pay themselves first But state workers must wait another week to get paid Thursday, August 06, 2009 By Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau HARRISBURG -- State workers will have to wait another week to be paid for days they have worked since July 1, but House Democratic lawmakers have checks in hand. They paid themselves first. Their paychecks were issued Tuesday as they voted on a $27.3 billion budget, which Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday chopped to $11 billion through line-items vetoes. He left intact funding for such items as public safety, state parks and employees' pay. Some 77,000 state...

Since the 1950's GDP has largely been used to measure the economic well being of nations. It is the arguably the foremost statistical factor that economic growth is derived from. To illustrate the idea of why GDP is a poor gauge of well being in a country consider this example for a moment. In the US, any money spent to re-develop the World Trade center in New York after September 11th has in one way or another counted towards GDP growth. The same goes for any other natural or manmade disaster throughout the country. Likewise, any money spent by the...

Most Californians know a budget crisis besets our state. But they are only now learning a state bureaucracy in San Francisco, the Administrative Office of the Courts, plans to close every county courthouse on the third Wednesday of each month. ---------- In 2003-04 the Administrative Office of the Courts had 490 employees. Today it has mushroomed to more than 900 employees, a third of them paid more than $100,000. Recently the Administrative Office of the Courts and Judicial Council spent $82,000 on dinners, San Francisco Hilton Hotel suites (including the Presidential Suite), and a professional "facilitator" at a conference called...

Nowhere to Cut? • In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. • Immediately before the current recession, Washington spent $25,000 per household. Even returning to that level (adjusted for inflation) would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes. • The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008. • Washington spends $60 billion annually on corporate welfare versus $50 billion on homeland security. • Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused...

Your license plates will cost you. Beginning in April when you renew your vehicle registration, you'll need to purchase a new set.... "Every single car, every single truck out there will pay the $25 one-time fee. If you opt to keep the same plate number, you'll see a one-time fee of an additional $20 - so upwards of $45." It stems from a little-noticed provision in the recently passed state budget driving out the current design.... it comes with even more charges. This September, there's a 25-percent increase in your registration fee. And renewing your license is going from $50...

California's state government has managed to add thousands of jobs during this past year, defying a mammoth budget deficit and a brutal recession. The job growth for state workers contrasts with the loss of 759,000 jobs in California's private industry in the past 12 months. "I don't know how this can happen," said David Kline, a spokesman for the California Taxpayers Association. "A lot of people are having trouble keeping their jobs, paying their bills, and feeding their families. Most taxpayers would be incredulous if they see these numbers." During the 12 months that ended in June, state government added...

The city today scrapped plans to take down some of its 60 odd flags after the mayor and city council members received a barrage of angry emails and telephone calls over the weekend, some of them from veterans. City Manager Bill Horne's staff had recommended slightly more than a dozen flags – out of 59 – be removed to save the city money. Some flags were on property no longer maintained by the city. Others were at maintenance buildings or the like that were far out of the public eye. Mayor Frank Hibbard and city council members were rankled that...

California is just one of three states that require supermajority votes to enact state budgets, and while that constitutional provision has been in effect for nearly eight decades, only in the past quarter-century has it become a major political impediment. The state's socioeconomic evolution, term limits, gerrymandered legislative districts, volatility in the state's revenue and the concentration of fiscal power in Sacramento have made the budget process infinitely more complex and, in turn, turned the two-thirds budget vote, once a formality, into a major factor. Much of last month's machinations over overhauling the deficit-ridden budget stemmed from the legal requirement...

City Manager Bill Horne didn't think taking down Old Glory at a few city properties would be a big deal. He was wrong. Several weeks ago, city workers started removing American flags from city properties. In all, 13 of the city's 50 flags came down, according to Mayor Frank Hibbard. But the cost-cutting measure has sparked outrage, especially among veterans groups, prompting city leaders to revisit the decision at a workshop this morning. "It's a knock at our country," said John Smith, canteen manager at the Hercules VFW Post 2473. "It's the only city in the United States that has...

California has avoided fiscal reality for so long it’s fitting that the state legislature reverted to subterfuge last week while voting for its third budget deal in nine months. Part of the latest deal—which depends in equal part on real cuts and accounting gimmicks to close a $26 billion gap—was a proposal to raise revenue by allowing new oil drilling off of existing platforms near Santa Barbara. It was a move that had been endorsed by that county’s own board of supervisors last year. But environmentalists and 43% of voters remain fiercely opposed, according to a new poll by the...

CLEARWATER — Here's probably the most bizarre casualty of shrinking government budgets you'll hear. The city of Clearwater can no longer afford to fly the American flag. Clearwater's parks and recreation director ordered the removal of 13 flagpoles from across the city this week saying budget cuts have made it impossible to properly care for the flags. "Over the last three years, the parks and recreation staff has been reduced by 25 percent,'' explained director Kevin Dunbar. "When you have a flagpole, you have certain responsibilities. The flag has to be lit at night, if a flag has a rip...

Four of the most powerful business leaders in America arrived at the White House one day last month for lunch with President Barack Obama, sitting down in his private dining room just steps from the Oval Office. But even for powerful CEOs, there’s no such thing as a free lunch: White House staffers collected credit card numbers for each executive and carefully billed them for the cost of the meal with the president. The White House defended the unusual move as a way to avoid conflicts of interest. But the Bush administration didn’t charge presidential guests for meals, one former...

Like Jennifer, I too found the Wall Street Journal’s story on latter-day federal penny-pinching fascinating. I have two comments: 1) Here is the perfect example of why the government should never run anything it doesn’t absolutely have to. Because corporations are wealth-creation machines and Benjamin Franklin was right (”A penny saved is a penny earned”), corporate management spends much of its time looking for ways to save money. The most famous example of this cost-scavenging attitude, perhaps, is the story of John D. Rockefeller and the drops of solder. He was at a Standard Oil factory where kerosene was being...

What a hoot. The Chinese Communists invaded Washington on Monday demanding not that we sacrifice our freedoms but rather that we balance our budget. Creditors get to make that kind of call. And the Marxists of Beijing, who have turned out to be the world's most prudent bankers, are worried about their assets invested in our banana republic. "China has a huge amount of investment in the United States, mainly in the form of Treasury bonds. We are concerned about the security of our financial assets" was the way China's assistant finance minister put it. Briefing reporters at the US-China...

Are proponents of a robust American military seeing their worst nightmares come true? The military will need to come up with $60 billion in savings over the next five years to pay for new priorities to be set by the Defense secretary, a top Pentagon official said Tuesday. The order from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is based on an assumption that there will be no real growth in defense budgets over the next five years, a radical departure for a department whose budgets have increased more than 80 percent since 2001. […] One of the driving factors so far...

As for the dollar, our president and his accomplice congress are well along the way of destroying the dollar. I expect a collapse within the year. Our government has accelerated deficit spending to the extent that the debt cannot ever be repaid. When including all spending already committed to by the government, we have already reached the crossover point where people will never earn enough to pay the taxes to even pay the interest on the national debt. Whenever that point has been reached in history the currency collapses as the government just simply prints more fiat currency just to...

I am one of the thousands of state employees who are being victimized by our state legislators' inability to perform their jobs and pass a budget. I and my fellow state workers are expected to show up at work as if nothing is wrong and perform our jobs knowing that we will not see our paychecks until our inept legislators do their jobs and end the state budget impasse. It is cruel to use state employees as pawns in budget negotiations. The hardships endured due to "payless paydays" are many -- mortgages and rent need to be paid, utilities and...

Lawmakers have outstanding budget issues to resolve when they return in mid-August, not the least of which is how to cut prison spending by at least $1.2 billion. Lawmakers on Friday reduced the corrections budget by that amount, with a wink and a nod that Democrats probably would pass the most controversial cuts having to do with reducing the inmate population on their own with a majority vote. But other issues are cropping up. Redevelopment agencies already are threatening to sue the state for taking $1.7 billion, so expect a court battle over that. Advocacy groups are carefully eyeing the...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a package of budget bills Tuesday he said contained "the good, the bad and the ugly," including no new tax increases and deep cuts in education and health care. He said he was forced to make additional cuts in parks and child welfare services because lawmakers sent him a package that was $156 million in the red. "We are not out of the troubled waters yet," he said."We are ready if our revenues drop further to make the necessary cuts to again live within our means." Line items totaled $656 million, including cuts in the Office...

http://www.kmj580.com/pages/landing_news?Governor-Signs-Compromise-Budget-Plan=1&blockID=66129&feedID=806

The most recent........

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Human services advocates say more cuts to health and welfare programs are likely this week when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issues line-item vetoes before signing California's revised budget. State officials also are analyzing the plan passed by the Legislature to see if it will be sufficient to allow the state to get short-term loans and stop issuing IOUs.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

Methinks Wisconsin State Senator Jim Holperin doth protest too much. In his attempts to rebut a critique by Tom Tiffany of his first six months in the Democrat-controlled Wisconsin Senate, Senator Holperin parrots the Democrat talking point that the Democrats “eliminated a $6.6 billion deficit, and left the state with a $270 million surplus.” Two observations here: If there’s going to be a $270 million surplus, that means Wisconsin taxpayers will be paying $270 million more in taxes than it will take to pay for Democrat spending. I don’t suppose the taxpayers will get any of that surplus money back,...

Don't look now, but post-partisanship is making a comeback. Nobody is celebrating, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers have just demonstrated again that it's possible to bridge the deep partisan divide that has frozen California's Legislature in a condition of near perpetual gridlock. Last week, for the second time in five months, Schwarzenegger cobbled together a difficult budget plan and joined lawmakers from both parties to support the compromises necessary to pull the state back from the brink of insolvency. In February, he got fellow Republicans to raise taxes temporarily. And now he has persuaded Democrats to make deep...

Passage of the state budget fix will allow California to sell short-term debt to refill the general fund and stop issuing IOUs.Given how low the state's credit ratings have fallen, that could be a tough sell. The state might have to rely heavily on individual investors like it did when it sold revenue anticipation notes last fall.RANs are short-term loans that must be repaid by the end of the fiscal year in which they are issued. California gets most of its tax revenues in clumps but has to pay bills all year long. To smooth out cash flows, it typically...

Could things get any worse for California's economy? State unemployment in June jumped to 11.6 percent -- the highest rate on record, and among the top six nationally. Frantic negotiations between Governor Schwarzenegger and Sacramento lawmakers have yielded a deal to meet the government's $26-billion budget shortfall, but as of this writing it is not certain that the required two-thirds of legislators will approve the threatened prisoner releases and accounting gimmicks. There will be no rescue from Washington, either, as pleas from state officials for federal bailout money have so far been met with the cold shoulder by the Obama...

Many Californians are probably feeling relieved now that legislative leaders from both parties and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have reached agreement on a plan to address the state's persistent budget shortfall, estimated at $26 billion and growing. The agreement, if ratified by two-thirds of the members in each house of the Legislature, might ease the state's cash-flow crisis and end the issuance of IOUs to pay the bills, closing a not-unprecedented but still embarrassing chapter in the state's fiscal history. And the simple act of resolution, regardless of the details, will bring a welcome break from an endless stream of stories...

In addition, the disclosure must involve information that the employee believes is evidence of: -gross mismanagement of an agency contract or grant relating to recovery funds; -a gross waste of recovery funds; -a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety related to the implementation or use of recovery funds; -an abuse of authority related to the implementation or use of recovery funds; or -a violation of law, rule, or regulation related to an agency contract or grant awarded or issued relating to recovery funds.

With economic recovery nowhere in sight and its fiscal policies increasingly called into question, the Obama administration yesterday revealed that it would not be releasing its expected mid-year budget review until next month. Although the administration insisted this was a mere bureaucratic formality, critics were quick to note that the delay would help bury some politically unpalatable news about the budget, including its projected rise of the 2009 deficit. Concern about the administration's budget has already been stoked by the Congressional Budget Office, whose reports in recent months have read like an unending barrage of bad news. The CBO's latest,...

ABC: The 27-second video message was posted on Governor Arnold Schwarzeneger's Twitter page. In the video, the governor joked about autographing state cars slated for the auction block as a way to raise more money for cash-strapped California.

One of the more insidious – and corrosive – aspects of the state's perpetual budget crisis is the inclination of Capitol politicians to enact major policy changes on the fly.Desperate to "score" revenues or savings on paper and claim to have balanced the chronically imbalanced budget, they often draft decrees that are slammed into law without any thought of long-term consequences.The latest dead-of-night budget deal, reached Monday night by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders, offers multiple examples of desperation-tinged policymaking, but four illustrate the syndrome: • The "Big 5" agreed to include a $1.2 billion "unallocated" cut in state...

The deal to close California's $26 billion budget deficit included a plan to drill for offshore oil, drawing allegations that the fiscal crisis was used for a backroom deal following rejection of the idea by state regulators earlier this year. Democrats agreed to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request to expand drilling from an existing platform off Santa Barbara to generate a one-time $100 million advance royalty payment this fiscal year and an estimated $1.8 billion in royalties over 14 years. It would be the first new offshore oil drilling on state lands in four decades since a blowout on a...

California's newly minted budget deal was threatened late today after the Assembly Republican leader said he would withhold GOP votes because of an emerging Democratic proposal to release thousands of prisoners to home detention and county jails and create a commission to review criminal sentences. In an e-mail to his colleagues titled "Budget Double-Cross?" GOP leader Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo said the budget agreement with Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger clearly ruled out "early prisoner releases." Moreover, he said leaders had agreed to tackle the prison issue in August after the main budget bills had been approved. Votes...

Reporting from Sacramento -- The state budget deal negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders would reduce the population of California prisons by nearly 27,000 inmates in the current fiscal year. That would be done with a combination of new measures, including allowing some inmates to finish their sentences on home detention, creating new incentives for completion of rehabilitation programs and scaling back parole supervision for the least serious offenders.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior administration official says billions of dollars to raise fees for doctors treating Medicare patients are not covered by President Barack Obama's pledge to pay for health care legislation. Budget Director Peter Orszag said Tuesday that's because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to prevent a cut of more than 20 percent in doctor fees.