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Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) claimed on Friday that the federal budget deficit has “been cut in half” under Obama. AP Sunday Show Roundup Christiane Amanpour / AP Iranian Media Continues to Deny Rowhani Said ‘Holocaust’ Ali Mansouri, an alleged Iranian spy / AP Israeli Security Service Arrests Iranian Spy Sen. Barbara Boxer Claims Obama Cut Federal Budget Deficit in Half Barbara Boxer / AP Barbara Boxer / AP BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff September 27, 2013 3:40 pm Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) claimed on Friday that the federal budget deficit has “been cut in half” under Obama. Budget...

... When Standard & Poor's reduced the U.S.’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, it was the first time the U.S. ever suffered a downgrade to its credit rating. The S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed last week to raise the debt limit. The downgrade, S&P said, "reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics." It's those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served...

This is a blatantly false argument by Obama, no doubt a fear mongering, focus group tested argument used simply to distort reality in order to take advantage of ignorance. Is this how you run your household budget? When you are faced with mounting and rising debt, do you simply call the bank and ask them for a bigger loan? No! You figure out how to cut back on your spending and make tough choices, something that Obama stated back in 2009 that we would have to do because we simply cannot sustain a continuous out of control deficit. (see quote...

U.S. military personnel will face a disruption in pay if Congress doesn’t quickly pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling, President Barack Obama warned in his weekly address Saturday. “The government will shut down. So will many services the American people will expect,” Obama said, speaking of the consequences he says the country will suffer if Congress can’t come to an agreement on a continuing resolution bill. “Military personnel, including those deployed overseas, won’t get their paychecks on time.” On Friday, the House stripped funding for the president’s landmark healthcare law from a continuing resolution bill to fund the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is telling federal agencies to prepare for a possible government shutdown. The Office of Management and Budget sent a letter to agency heads this week ordering them to make contingency plans if Congress does not reach a deal to fund the government after Sept. 30. The letter from OMB director Sylvia Burwell says there is still enough time for Congress to prevent a lapse in funding, but "prudent management" requires that the government get ready for a shutdown. House Republicans plan to vote on a budget bill this week that withholds funding for President...

Despite opining that “a government shutdown would be the worst possible outcome in our negotiations over the budget,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) vowed he will “make no compromises to avoid it.” “We’ve got control of the narrative,” Reid boasted. “Why should we give Republicans a break? Almost half of Americans depend on the government to put money in their pockets. The other half are afraid of riots in the streets if the flow of subsidies to client populations is halted. The media are ‘all in’ for blaming the GOP if anything bad happens. When you have the winning...

With the Syrian crisis receding on Capitol Hill, Congress on Thursday plunged back into its bitter fiscal standoff as Speaker John A. Boehner appealed to the Obama administration and Democratic leaders to help him resolve divisions in the Republican ranks that could lead to a government shutdown by month’s end. In meetings with Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders on Thursday after a session with Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Wednesday, Mr. Boehner pleaded for a resumption of negotiations that could keep the government running and yield a deficit-reduction deal that would convince b>recalcitrant conservatives to raise the government’s borrowing...

Made this for my Tumblr site...

I know this comes as a complete shock to you, given the past success in passing budgets during this administration … oh, wait … The Obama administration and a group of Republican senators abandoned efforts Thursday to hammer out a budget deal and avoid a showdown over the national debt, saying they had failed to resolve their long-standing dispute over taxes.“It’s very evident that there just isn’t common ground at present and we’ve all agreed there’s no reason for these talks to continue,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said after attending the group’s final session at the White House.Asked what happens...

<p>WASHINGTON—The U.S. government is posting the strongest revenue since before the recession, buoyed by higher tax rates and a slowly improving economy, leaving the federal budget on track for its narrowest deficit in five years.</p> <p>Revenue from October to July, the first 10 months of the government's fiscal year, totaled $2.287 trillion, the Treasury Department said Monday. That is up about 14% from a year earlier and about 8.1% from the first 10 months of 2007, the next highest year for revenue. Meanwhile, government spending is down slightly, largely due to across-the-board cuts called the sequester that went into effect March 1.</p>

Since Lew sent [a] letter--announcing that he would use "extraordinary measures"--the debt has remained stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for 87 straight days. That includes all 31 days in July when Lew's Treasury says it was running a $98 billion deficit.

The United States ran a budget deficit in July, although government revenues increased from a year earlier due to tax hikes and a strengthening economy, a report from the Treasury showed on Monday. The U.S. government spent $98 billion more than it took in last month, with the deficit driven by spending on healthcare programs, pensions for the elderly and the military. One major reason is that Washington ratcheted austerity efforts by raising tax rates, which has helped tax receipts. It has also slashed the federal budget, although in July total spending rose to $298 billion from $254 billion in...

Detroit, you're not alone. Across the nation, cities and states are watching Detroit's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy filing with great trepidation. Years of underfunded retirement promises to public sector workers, which helped lay Detroit low, could plunge them into a similar and terrifying financial hole. A CNBC.com analysis of more than 120 of the nation's largest state and local pension plans finds they face a wide range of burdens as their aging workforces near retirement. Thanks to a patchwork of accounting practices and rosy investment assumptions, it's not even clear just how big a financial hole many states and cities have...

The UK national debt at the end of the first quarter of 2013 amounted to £1 trillion and 377.4 billion, or 90.7% of total GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Considering that Britain is the sixth richest country in the world, this is an astonishing figure. Could it have to do with how the economy is managed by our government? The government is spending more money than it can tax, so it needs to sell bonds (called "gilts") to domestic and foreign investors. Gilts must be repaid in full, with interest. Unpaid loans form the UK's national debt. That debt is...

Top Republicans woke up Tuesday morning to the news that President Obama was offering what he described as a “grand bargain,” offering lower tax rates in exchange for closing certain loopholes for big business. GOP leaders view Obama’s proposal as a regression from previous negotiations, however, and are working to swat down early press reports that describe it as a significant conciliatory gesture. “Not a ‘bargain,’ let alone ‘grand,’” read the first GOP press release at 9:24 a.m. from Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell followed about an hour later on the Senate floor, ripping the proposal...

For all of the panicky rhetoric coming out of Chicago, one would think the school district is on the verge of financial collapse. Indeed, the Chicago Tribune recently published an editorial announcing that the financial emergency for CPS has arrived. That may very well be, but one would never know it from the proposed increase in spending of nearly 10 percent. Chicago Public Schools recently released a proposed budget of $5.6 billion for the 2013-14 school year. That’s up from $5.1 billion the previous year. The dramatic increase in spending is largely due to a $405 million employee pension payment...

There is a new genre of journalism in full flower, the “there is no debt problem” column, a recent example of which can be found under the byline of Matthew O’Brien of The Atlantic here, headlined: “Sorry, deficit hawks, the debt crisis ended before it could begin.” The species deserves to go extinct. Arguing that the debt has been brought to heel for the next decade, Mr. O’Brien writes: The debate is over, and the deficit hawks lost. After years of warnings about trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye could see, it turns out they just couldn’t see...

White House talks with centrist Senate Republicans on a deficit grand bargain are alive but on life support, according to several participants. “It’s not even limping along,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said of the talks. “For that you would have to have a process in place.” Corker acknowledged he talked with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about raising the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling as recently as Saturday night, but said discussions have yet to get beyond the big picture. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) likewise said it would be a mistake to think the talks are over. “The talks...

Remember when President Obama was flying around the country this year, warning that the budget-cutting sequester would destroy life as we know it in America? The President was hyperbolic about it, preaching doom and gloom across the land if we didn't turn away from the disastrous path Congress put us on. And Obama, too. He signed the bill that would send us over the sequester cliff if a new budget wasn't approved. The Pentagon wouldn't be able to pay its bills, he said. Federal food assistance would be denied to 600,000 low income women and children. Teachers would be laid...

Jerry Brown, soon to be California’s longest-serving Governor, is obsessed with his legacy. Legacies, however, are judged retrospectively. For now, Brown has been receiving much credit nationally for “balancing” the budget. In truth, the budget is not really balanced and Brown is setting California up to fall like a house of cards. Jerry Brown certainly is having a good year in the media. This year, PBS told us: “Gov. Jerry Brown Makes Tough Choices to Balance State Budget.” The Atlantic recently heralded: “California’s New ‘Problem’: Jerry Brown on the Sudden Surplus.” Even BusinessWeek proclaimed that Jerry Brown had “Scared California...