Free Republic

Our Demander-in-Chief has once again put together a budget so mind boggling stupid, so bereft of credibility that it will spontaneously abort somewhere between the White House and the desk of Senator Harry Reid (D-Who Me?). You can think of Obama’s newest budget as the “legitimate rape” of America. All you really need to know about the budget is this headline from the Washington Post’s Wonk Blog: “Obama budget seeks new spending, new taxes to boost economy, tame debt”. Ha, ha, ha. Stop me if you heard that one before. If we gave the government a buck for every time...

Federal spending and debt are out of control If America does not change course, the future will be dramatically worse. Now more than ever, it is crucial that Americans understand what our nation's spending, taxes, and debt mean for them and their families. The Heritage Foundation's Federal Budget in Pictures offers a unique tool to learn about the federal budget in a clear and compelling way.

A mere eight weeks from the December budget deal, House Republicans on Tuesday bowed to the inevitable and allowed a vote on a "clean" debt-ceiling increase that Democrats promptly passed—no reform strings attached. Perhaps as a follow-up the GOP could repeal the debt ceiling altogether and finally end this periodic self-torture. Before it created the debt ceiling in 1917, Congress had to vote to approve each new government bond issue, specifying the amount to be borrowed and the terms. This is in stark contrast to today's practice, when Treasury is generally free to borrow at will until it hits the...

Most people accept the notion that politicians don't always tell the truth. Some lies are harmless enough; others more consequential. Lyndon Johnson skirted the truth when he promised during the 1964 presidential campaign not to send any more American troops to fight a land war in Southeast Asia. He knew then that American intervention would eventually be necessary, but the lie helped him win the election. After the election, Johnson sent additional troops, more American lives were lost and the war escalated. Richard Nixon claimed he knew nothing about Watergate. "I am not a crook," he said. Lies. In 1976,...

The Pentagon’s “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” symposium In 2012, we issued a report titled “Department of Everything” that showed how the Department of Defense could make cuts in “non-defense” spending – spending in DOD that has nothing to do with our national defense, which we’ve estimated totals almost $68 billion. In the report, we highlighted surprising spending on beef jerky and a smartphone add to gauge caffeine intake. Our eyebrows were also raised by a strategy planning workshop for which nearly $100,000 was allocated. One of the sessions at the symposium explored the relationship between Jesus and Klingons,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. budget deficit is set to fall to $514 billion this year, down substantially from last year and the lowest level by far since President Barack Obama took office five years ago, a congressional report said Tuesday. The Congressional Budget Office credits higher tax revenues from the rebounding economy and sharp curbs on agency spending as the chief reason for the deficit's short-term decline. But the budget experts see the long-term deficit picture worsening by about $100 billion a year through the end of the decade because of slower growth in the economy than they had...

Obama Adds Over $500 Billion In New Debt in Just Three Months Under McConnell’s Blank Check Debt Ceiling Deal Half a Trillion in Just Three Months President Barack Obama has blown through more than $500 billion in deficit spending in the three months since passage of the deal proposed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on easing the debt ceiling battles that gave Obama virtually unlimited borrowing authority from October 17, 2013 through this February 7th. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter to Congress today imploring the debt ceiling be raised by February 7th, or the end of...

The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks’ balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused...

More bad news for Gov. Chris Christie: New Jersey is dead last in the nation in terms of its fiscal solvency, according to a new report. The study, released this week by the free-market Mercatus Center at George Mason University, ranked each state's financial health based on a variety of measures, such as cash on hand to pay its current bills, budget surpluses or deficits, unfunded liabilities and ability to provide adequate public services. The Mercatus study used 2012 data. New Jersey came in last on two of those measures — budget and long-term solvency — and finished in the...

Sequester, we hardly knew ye. The omnibus budget deal slithering its way toward President Barack Obama’s desk for signing abandons the automatic spending cuts that resulted from an earlier fiscal compromise. Why was the sequester abandoned? Like the Gramm-Rudman Act a generation earlier, the sequester had to be stopped for one fundamental, undeniable, bipartisan reason. It worked. It did not work perfectly, and it did not balance the budget or put us on course for a balanced budget. But it did play a critical role in nudging the deficit away from “catastrophic existential threat” territory and toward “terrifying money-suck.” It...

I thought you’d like to know: with the release of the greatly anticipated White House feature, “2013 – YEAR IN REVIEW”Yes: the White House really did title this image “Hero”the WhiteHouse.Gov site has officially been recognized as the most thorough, reliable and verifiable propaganda machine in the nation! It readily beat out all of its close competitors at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Ms.NBC and the New York Times for the title Propagandist of the Year.You can see why, with “highlights” from each and every month of the year that includes a vast array of fun facts:@ 1:34: “Here’s where it...

The financial position of the U.S. is not just troubled; it is artificially created to fool the people. The nation's budget deficit and debt are exponentially higher than what our politicians say they are. None of the headline figures used as the basis of public discourse have any relevance to the true state of U.S. finances. The government's financial reporting is misleading because our political leaders have subverted the democratic process to advance their personal interests. Adding all of the costs associated with the nation's social-insurance programs to the amounts reflected in the Financial Report shows that over the past...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday she’ll push for a vote for more unemployment benefits and said the additional $25 billion cost should be tacked onto the deficit rather than paid for by cuts elsewhere. On a conference call with fellow House Democratic women, the California lawmaker said Republicans acted “cruelly” when they went home for a three-week vacation earlier this month without approving more weeks of unemployment payments for the long-term jobless. As many as 1.3 million people will lose benefits on Saturday, when enhanced benefits expire. Republicans have said they would consider taking up a bill, but...

Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud Beytenu) had harsh words for Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) on Saturday night. Speaking on Channel 2’s “Meet the Press”, Steinitz, who served as Finance Minister before Lapid, said that his successor misled the public and created unnecessary panic about the state of the Israeli economy. Steinitz claimed that the deficit, which is expected to be released in January, will stand at about 3%, in contrast to Lapid’s earlier predictions. "By doing this, he caused severe damage,” he charged. “No top official in the Treasury or in the Bank of Israel ever told...

"The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland; a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were...

The White House reiterated Monday that administration officials would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said over the weekend that Republicans would seek concessions in exchange for extending the limit on borrowing. "The president's position has not changed," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. Carney said officials were skeptical that Republicans would actually pursue the strategy after the polling hit the party took during the government shutdown earlier this year. "We do not expect Republicans to walk that path again, precisely because it proved so disastrous," Carney said. But Ryan on...

Senate Democrats are on the cusp of securing enough GOP votes to break a filibuster next week on the bipartisan budget, temporarily ending the fiscal crises that have dominated Washington for the past several years. With 53 Democrats and two independents expected to back the measure, four Republicans — John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Richard Burr of North Carolina — said that they would vote to cut off debate on the budget, putting proponents just one vote shy of advancing the measure to final passage. Several additional GOP senators signaled Friday that...

While American babies are born with 54,320 debt on each citizen, PLUS a $149,947.00 per taxpayer on their shoulders, Australia’s national debt is a half-a-trillion only. The amounts are simply staggering. And, as the National Debt Clock keeps turning, numbers are at 17,224,121,XXX,XXX trillion. The clock’s mechanism is so accurate and runs at such speed that a naked eye can barely catch changes at the infinitesimal seconds at which it turns. As American citizens at large need to understand the methodology of a debt and the way to recovery, we repeat here the economic formula, courtesy of Investopedia: GDP =...

The House Budget Committee filed the text of the new Ryan-Murray budget deal before midnight on Tuesday and the Rules Committee announced an emergency meeting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday to prepare a House floor vote on the package. The text of the $85 billion deal is here. [77 page PDF] The deal sets spending levels for 2014 and 2015, allowing appropriators to create a fully detailed omnibus spending package before the government shutdown deadline of Jan. 15. The spending panel will also now have the chance to do all 12 individual appropriations bills for 2015 before the Oct. 1...

Some 1.6 million Americans have registered for Obamacare, but more than nine-out-of-10 of them actually signed up for Medicaid, a trend that could end up slamming federal and state government budgets. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security already account for 48 percent of federal spending, writes economist Michael Tanner, a senior fellow for the Cato Institute, in an article for The New York Post. But with Obamacare adding to the Medicaid costs, "we are picking up speed on the road to insolvency," Tanner writes. The Medicaid program is already the third-largest government program in the United States, coming in only behind...