Free Republic

It has become a congressional slush fund, in which almost half the money is ladled out through the corrupt system of congressional earmarks. The next time you drive on a highway which is named after a politician, think corruption. Time to shut it down. The proceeds of the tax should be automatically remitted to state governments, or better yet, regional planning agencies. And regulatory barriers to privatization strategies should be repealed. We’re broke. We can no longer afford to be stupid.

Original Title:Pelosi Assists in Holy Week Foot-Washing Ritual To "honor the dignity and work of immigrants," Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helps Bishop Marc Andrus wash the feet of two children Thursday at Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Pelosi also used the occasion to talk about passing HR15 - bipartisan immigration legislation that her office says would "reduce the deficit by nearly $1 trillion, secure our borders, unite our families, protect our workers and provide an earned pathway to citizenship." The Democratic leader's ceremony coincides with Pope Francis' similar ceremony in Rome to mark Holy...

The rich are not the problem, the greedy are not the problem, the crooked are not the problem - the problem is the system that brings them about. If the system is ours, the system means by the people, of the people, for the people, then now it is time to take it back. Now it is time to demand that it would be changed.

Recent weeks have led to a fairly significant drop in stock valuations, with many expert analysts struggling to figure out exactly why it’s happening. You’ll hear them cite the weather, or market overreaction, or any number of reasons for why stocks have seen their share prices reduced and why they’ll be rebounding in the near-term. What they won’t show you on mainstream financial channels is what’s really happening behind the scenes. Forget about all the minute-by-minute noise for a moment and take a look at the following chart. It gives a very simple overview of earnings growth trends for stocks...

And, for good measure, Microsoft has more cash at hand that Uncle Sam does. [snip] It’s a very fun number, to be sure, but it’s not quite right for a number of economic reasons. It’s true that when you look at the balance sheets then Apple, say, has $160 billion in cash available, that Microsoft MSFT has a little under $85 billion and the Treasury only has $49 billion to hand to keep the government working. But it’s not really true for a couple of reasons that we’ll get to. [snip] The first and most obvious being that the government...

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When it comes to federal government spending, we are almost back to normal.  According to the Office of Management and Budget, the federal government spent 20.8% of GDP in fiscal 2013.  That is not a rosy-scenario, computer-generated prediction, but an actual count of dollars already spent.That is the lowest level since President Obama was inaugurated, and down from the peak of 24.4% in 2009 – a drop of over $600 billion in today’s dollars.  It is almost back to the pre-Obama level of 20.2% of GDP in 2008.  And it matches the 24-year average from 1975 through 1998. It is...

Budget hawks and free-marketeers very badly need to retool their rhetoric on the dangers of government borrowing and America’s ever-deepening national debt — last clocked at $17.4 trillion. “How dare we pass along our bills to our children and grandchildren . . . yadda, yadda, yadda . . . ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . ” Such ubiquitous references to indebted youngsters have grown hackneyed. These proverbial little boys and girls have zero practical impact on and limited emotional appeal to Americans who do not have and perhaps do not want offspring. Despite the widespread assumption that “everyone has kids,” tens...

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 latest budget proposal paints a troubling picture of America's fiscal future. Here's a startling snapshot: -- By 2024, the total national debt would rise from $17.4 trillion to nearly $25 trillion. -- By 2020, U.S. taxpayers would be paying more in interest on the debt than they would on the entire Defense budget. -- By 2017, those interest payments would be bigger than the budget for Medicaid. Despite Democratic claims that President Obama has tackled the deficit, the numbers give a sense of what fiscal hawks -- who have not given up their fight despite an election-year aversion...

In Fiscal Year 2013, the official federal deficit was $680 billion. Liberals have cheered this drop while subsequently ignoring how this deficit is both larger than all of Bush’s pre-recession deficits and is expected to grow dramatically over the next several decades.However, the Treasury Department’s annual report on the finances of the U.S. federal government shows that not only is $680 billion an incomplete measure of the federal government’s finances, it’s off by nearly a factor of five.From Just Facts Daily: The U.S. Treasury has just released its annual “Financial Report of the United States Government,” which provides an account...

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...