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The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday raised its estimate of the federal government’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year as it slashed its growth forecast, and warned red ink was due to rise in coming years if Washington doesn’t change current laws. In an update of budget and economic projections for 2014 to 2024, the nonpartisan CBO said the U.S. government’s deficit for fiscal 2014 will be $506 billion, or 2.9% of gross domestic product. The new estimate is $14 billion more than the agency’s prior estimate for the year, issued in April. The agency lowered its projection of...

The U.S. budget deficit was $95 billion at the end of July, down 3 percent from the same period last year, according to data released by the Treasury Department on Tuesday. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a $96 billion deficit for last month. The deficit was $98 billion in July of 2013. The fiscal year-to-date deficit at the end of July was $460 billion, the lowest level since the same period in fiscal year 2008, compared with a deficit of $607 billion for the same period in fiscal year 2013, according to Treasury's monthly budget statement.

Barack Obama has raised the deficit by more than 7 trillion in six years. Let me repeat: Barack Obama has accrued a 7 trillion dollar deficit in only six years of office! And the man still has two years remaining! It’s nearly beyond comprehension and more than the first 42 Presidents combined; nearly twice as much George W. Bush who presided over the economic fallout from 9/11, a war on two fronts, the credit collapse and subsequently was besieged by Democrats as “unpatriotic” and “incompetent” for wasting taxpayer money. So why isn’t anyone being held accountable for such reckless incompetence?...

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the nationÂ’s debt has skyrocketed during President Barack ObamaÂ’s tenure. In a little over five and a half years, the Obama administration has added more than $7 trillion to the total, a number that represents more debt accumulation than the administrations of George Washington through Bill Clinton combined. At the close of business on July 31, the nationÂ’s debt was $17.6 trillion, with $7.06 trillion of it accumulated since Obama was inaugurated in 2009. CNS News offers some gut-wrenching perspective regarding the numbers: As of June, there were 115,097,000 households in the United...

On July 3, 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama infamously called President George W. Bush “unpatriotic,” and his polices “irresponsible” for adding $4 Trillion to the country's "credit card." This was almost more than all other US presidents combined, he argued, and therefore was putting America on a dangerous path to fiscal insolvency. Less than six years into his own administration, however, the president has failed to reverse the untenable course set by his predecessor; and, indeed, is making America's heavy debt burden even worse. CNS News reports: The total federal debt of the U.S. government has now increased more than...

The pro-life movement often talks of the science behind life in the womb, the fact that abortion leaves emotional, psychological and physical scars on women and the inherent beauty of every life. What we don’t often talk about, though, is money.After all, doesn’t it seem somewhat crass to couch pro-life arguments in terms of economic benefit? The reality, though, is that abortion hasn’t impacted our society only in emotional, social, and cultural ways. It’s also impacted our society economically. And one political scientist is now claiming this very thing.Mark A. Olson, a former liberal community organizer turned pro-life consultant, has...

Buy now, pay later. That will be the epitaph on the tombstone of the Obama administration. The Congressional Budget Office, a research outfit that justifies government spending, is warning that while deficit may appear tame now-- comparatively speaking-- the budget path we are on is unsustainable. “The extended baseline projections show a substantial imbalance in the federal budget over the long term,” says the new CBO report, “with revenues falling well short of spending. As a result, budget deficits are projected to rise steadily and, by 2039, to push federal debt held by the public up to a percentage of...

The Congressional Budget Office has looked into its crystal ball and sees the deficit getting much worse in a few years, rising to 106% of GDP by 2039.The Obama administration has been celebrating a reduction in the budget deficit to $583 billion dollars for this fiscal year. I suppose that's better than trillion dollar deficits but I see no cause for triumphalism, especially when you consider the government is taking in a record amount of revenue. But CBO says that deficit reduction won't last and that we can expect rising deficits to begin again in a few years. Politico: In...

The $2.8 trillion Social Security Trust Fund is on track to be totally spent by 2030, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. That's one year earlier than projected in 2013 and a decade earlier than the CBO estimated as recently as 2011. The CBO delivered the warning in a gloomy long-term budget outlook that shows federal debt reaching 106% of GDP in 25 years, up from 74% now.

Congress’s nonpartisan budget watchdog warned Tuesday that U.S. entitlement programs would drive the country’s debt to unsustainable levels in the coming years. The federal debt is now 74 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in its latest long-term budget outlook, a product of the outsized budget deficits the U.S. recorded following the 2008 fiscal crash. That figure is already twice the debt level held in 2008, and matched in U.S. history only by a brief span after World War II. But CBO also projects that the public's share of debt will increase...

WASHINGTON - Republicans have a wealth of political issues that will dominate the 2014 midterm election races and determine their outcome. The national news media has done its best to try to bury these issues, play them down or sugar coat them, but the American people know better. They have persistently put these issues at or near the top of every voter poll in the last six years of Barack Obama's scandal-ridden, trouble-plagued administration. It's hard to break through and overcome the power of the Washington news media that has worked hard to cover up the Obama White House's blunders....

One of the Obama administration's major selling points in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was a Congressional Budget Office forecast that the controversial legislation would reduce the deficit by more than $120 billion over the coming decade. The CBO has consistently projected that President Obama's overhaul will reduce the deficit, and the agency estimated that the Republicans’ 2011 effort to repeal the legislation would increase deficits by $210 billion from 2010 to 2021. In April, the agency quietly signaled that it can no longer make that projection; that the law had been changed and delayed so much that...

The Democratic chairwoman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee moved aggressively Thursday to use gimmicks to fill in an unexpected $4 billion gap in the budget. Mikulski's maneuver came after congressional scorekeepers surprised lawmakers by predicting that the Federal Housing Administration will produce $4 billion less in revenues from the mortgages it insures than the administration believes. Sen. Richard Shelby said Mikulski's maneuvering amounted to an end run around a December budget pact between Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and House Budget Chair Paul Ryan, R-Wis. that replaced some automatic cuts to agency operating budgets with new fees...

American history has been profoundly shaped by citizen-driven grass-roots movements that spontaneously combust into seismic political change. This is the story of the Founding Fathers, the abolitionists, the progressives, the civil-rights movement, the 1970s tax revolt and ... it's time to add to that list the oft-maligned tea party movement. We don't fully recognize the earthquake change brought about by these millions of military veterans, housewives, nurses, schoolteachers, construction workers, senior citizens, investment bankers and clergy who saw the recklessness and immorality of debt, redistribution, Washington waste, federal bailouts and ObamaCare. Nancy Pelosi couldn't have gotten it more wrong when...

Federal budget season is well underway in Washington, and the White House’s latest talking point is that the deficit is shrinking. “[The] deficit has been cut in half at a record pace, or been cut at a record pace,“ Press Secretary Jay Carney commented at a recent press briefing. Looking past the politically-charged posturing coming from the White House, we see that “shrinking deficits” is smoke and mirrors. Not to be confused with the national debt, the deficit is the difference between the amount that the government taxes in as revenue and the amount that it spends in a...

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...