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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina’s president announced a $3.2 billion annual increase in cash handouts for the poor, students and pregnant women Wednesday, saying the programs will reach nearly 700,000 additional children, pay their families 35 percent more and encourage consumer spending in what is an election year. Cristina Fernandez said the total cost of the programs will rise to 41 billion pesos, or $7.8 billion a year at the official exchange rate. She called it a powerful boost to consumer demand. ... Earlier Wednesday, the government announced that a price freeze on 500 consumer goods would remain in place...

One of the problems with positive rights though, which conservatives and libertarians tend to point out, is that in order for them to mean anything in practice, someone else will inherently have to provide the means by which they are given. For example, if you have the right to health-care, then a doctor or nurse will have to at some point, render that care. Either the medical practitioner will have to be paid for his or her rendering of care, or he or she will have to be compelled to render it. This is manifestly different from a negative right...

Bill Whittle having the nerve to be logical.

With Congress increasingly unable to resolve budget disputes, federal programs on automatic pilot are consuming ever larger amounts of government resources. The trend helps older Americans, who receive the bulk of Social Security and Medicare benefits, at the expense of younger people. This generational shift draws modest public debate. But it alarms some policy advocates, who say the United States is reducing vital investments in the future. Because Democrats and Republicans can't reach a grand bargain on deficit spending — with mutually accepted spending cuts and revenue hikes — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid keep growing, largely untouched. Steady expansions...

Executive Summary Unlawful immigration and amnesty for current unlawful immigrants can pose large fiscal costs for U.S. taxpayers. Government provides four types of benefits and services that are relevant to this issue: Direct benefits. These include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation. Means-tested welfare benefits. There are over 80 of these programs which, at a cost of nearly $900 billion per year, provide cash, food, housing, medical, and other services to roughly 100 million low-income Americans. Major programs include Medicaid, food stamps, the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy...

Conservative legal group obtained Agriculture Department flyerYou need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children'Program in all 50 Mexican consulates in the U.S. helps push food stamps A Spanish-language leaflet that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided to the Mexican Embassy in Washington advises border-crossing Mexicans that they can collect taxpayer-funded food stamp benefits for their children without admitting that they're illegal immigrants. Underlined and in boldface type, the document tells immigrants who are unlawfully in the United States that, 'You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking...

Boston Bombing Could Reset National Political Debate: Although it's unclear who was responsible [UPDATE: This was written before there were suspects], the Boston bombings are likely to again place terrorism at the top of the national agenda and put President Obama to the test as a leader in a time of crisis. He has already been put to the test numerous times, and he failed them all. How many tests do you want? The reality is that Obama's response is likely to define his administration and, more important, help determine whether Americans feel safe in their own country for...

Pentagon civilian leaders, contractors and lobbyists who would like to see more predictability in the military’s budget should start looking beyond the parochial interests of the defense sector and take a broader view of the nation’s fiscal troubles, a veteran Washington insider advised. Since the president unveiled last week his $526.6 billion military budget proposal for fiscal year 2014, one of the story lines has been the administration’s refusal to lower spending in accordance with the caps set by Congress in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Another dominant topic has been the impact of automatic sequester cuts on the military...

A record breaking stock market is distorting a frightening reality: The U.S. is being eaten alive by a horrific cancer that will ultimately destroy the economy and impoverish the vast majority of its citizens. That's according to Peter Schiff, the best-selling author and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, who delivered his harsh warning to investors in a recent interview on Fox Business. "I think we are heading for a worse economic crisis than we had in 2007," Schiff said. "You're going to have a collapse in the dollar...a huge spike in interest rates... and our whole economy, which is built...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s efforts to sell liberty to a mostly minority audience at Howard University collided with the enticements of the entitlement mentality. His vision of “getting the government off your back” failed to resonate with students who expect the government to provide for them. “You say you’re working to get the government to leave us alone,” said one student during the question and answer phase of Paul’s talk. “I don’t want to be left alone. I want the government to take care of me. In your ideal world I’d be on my own. I’d have to work for...

The tributes to Margaret Thatcher in this country upon her passing were nice. But what America really needs is its own Margaret Thatcher. In Republican circles there’s great nostalgia for Ronald Reagan. Thatcher is seen as sort of Reagan’s sidekick, an ally in promoting democratic capitalism and taking a firm stance against Soviet expansionism. Not to diminish Reagan, who transformed American politics in ways that reverberate today, Thatcher actually had the tougher task. Reagan had to restore the health of the American economy, which was plagued by high inflation and sluggish growth. But he had some fiscal headroom within which...

President Barack Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say. In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John Boehner late last year, before Boehner abandoned negotiations...

Were California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits. The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state's negative status -- all of its assets minus all of its liabilities -- increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue. During the 2011-12 fiscal year, the state's general fund spent $1.7 billion more than it received in revenues and wound...

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-friends/index.html#http://video.foxnews.com/v/2268918971001/immigration-reform-is-guest-worker-program-a-good-idea/?playlist_id=86912

<p>The proposition that entitlement curbs are the key to maintaining national solvency is widely accepted, though not by many congressional Democrats. President Obama, however, has endorsed it on various occasions. And he could make it happen.</p> <p>If he wants. I remain skeptical that he does. But national solvency is important enough to test this proposition at least once more. The obstacle is Obama’s current position that entitlement cuts must be “balanced” with new revenue from closing loopholes.</p>

<p>WOONSOCKET, R.I. – The economy of Woonsocket was about to stir to life. Delivery trucks were moving down river roads, and stores were extending their hours. The bus company was warning riders to anticipate “heavy traffic.” A community bank, soon to experience a surge in deposits, was rolling a message across its electronic marquee on the night of Feb. 28: “Happy shopping! Enjoy the 1st.”</p>

How out of control is government spending? I have three children who pay taxes, so the 5 of us each owe $1.087 million for the insane entitlements promised by the Federal government. And then there is the debt on top of that: another $147,500 per taxpayer. Of course, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Harry Reid (D-NV) and President Obama (D-IL) refuse to cut back on anything, except defense. Let’s start with government spending. As a percentage of GDP, government expenditures have been rising starting for decades, but started to slow after the Republicans reclaimed The House in 2011....

The Great Society Is Dead Politics / US PoliticsMarch 15, 2013 - 02:07 PM GMT By: Michael T Bucci The complicity by both US political parties in a collaborative zeal to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is now "on the table" for all to view after each group unveiled their budget plans during the week of March 11. As a senior citizen, once an executive making three figures per hour and now living below the poverty line, constricted by multiple sclerosis in a US state run by a Tea Party Express Governor, Mr. "X" says he feels like someone...

I Was a Danged Fool! For twenty-two or so years before my retirement I had chronic back pain -- sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. When the pain was enough to take my breath away, I’d swallow a few ibuprofens, acetaminophens, or whatever over-the-counter pain relief I had on hand and carefully hobble off to work. Once or twice I self-prescribed bed rest for a day. But generally, if I could make it to the breakfast table, I could make it to work, figuring that the pain would subside as the day wore on. It NEVER ONCE occurred to me...

Liberal Democrats challenged President Obama on Tuesday over his willingness to cut Social Security benefits. At a meeting that lasted just less than 90 minutes, Obama was peppered by questions from Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), among others, who challenged Obama on adopting “chained CPI” — a less generous formula for adjusting benefits under Social Security and other programs for inflation. Obama has said he is open to chained CPI as part of a “grand bargain” that would include spending cuts as well as new revenue. And he didn’t back down from that support during a closed-door...

The debate over reform of Social Security and Medicare is taking place in a vacuum, without adequate consideration of fundamental facts. These facts include the following: Two-thirds of Americans who are over the age of 65 depend on an average annual Social Security benefit of $15,168.36 for at least half of their income. (snip) So why don’t we talk about raising or eliminating the cap – a measure that has strong popular, though not elite, support? When asked by the National Academy of Social Insurance whether Social Security taxes for better-off Americans should be increased, 71 percent of Republicans and...

President Barack Obama, unable to persuade Republicans to accept higher taxes, is attempting to cobble together what he calls a "common-sense caucus" among lawmakers to help resolve U.S. budget woes and push his legislative agenda. On Monday and in recent days, Obama has made individual phone calls to a number of senators in a search for common ground on $85 billion in budget cuts that went into effect last week, as well as his top priorities like deficit reduction, gun control and an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws. Gene Sperling, the White House senior economic official, said on the...

During the month of February—as President Barack Obama was warning Americans they would see dramatic effects in their lives if “sequestration” of some planned federal spending kicked in—the federal government’s debt climbed by $253.5 billion. That one-month increase in the debt was nearly six times as much as the $44 billion in spending cuts the Congressional Budget Office estimates will take place in all of fiscal 2013 as a result of sequestration. …

“Sequester.” It’s a word that used to come up rarely. And it nearly always referred to a jury being locked away to deliberate a verdict. Now it’s all over the news, a stand-in for the automatic spending cuts that hit the federal budget on March 1. And the only jury is an American public that has grown all too accustomed to seeing politicians dodge the tough choices necessary to finally bring spending under control. “There will be no easy off ramps on this one,” said one senior statesman as he defended sequestration in November 2011. “We need to keep the...

Many argue the coalition that elected and re-elected Barack Obama represents a long-term shift in the electorate that will determine elections and public policies for generations. Some of commentators think conservatives have lost their relevance, and the Republicans are about to go the way of the Whigs. It's an interesting theory, but of course it's wrong. Politics, like much in life, tends to move like a pendulum, shifting back and forth around equilibrium. While the liberal Democratic coalition is ascendant now, a few decades ago people were speaking about the decline of the Democrats. More recently, leftists took to calling...

America’s food stamp epidemic is well-documented. At the government level, the focus is obviously on creating programs that help feed humans — but what about pets? What happens to those animals with owners who simply can’t afford to pay for expensive cuisine? Alas, there’s a solution. A new program called Pet Food Stamps has launched, an initiative aimed at using private donations to help those who cannot afford nutrients for their furry friends. The organization assists low-income Americans who are already struggling and potentially relying upon government assistance to put food on their tables. Naturally, many would argue that those...

Sequestration is the series of blunt, across the board cuts that go into effect March 1 and will shrink the size of the federal government over the next ten years. Several states will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs, the price of groceries could jump following USDA inspector furloughs, and the Congressional Budget Office reported that the austerity measures could initiate a recession. What's more, sequestration accomplishes a pathetic amount over ten years, all things considered. It was designed to cut spending on things that constitute core government functions — money for infrastructure, schools and national defense. Social Security, Medicaid...

Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline? Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Reasons run from inflation and excessive spending to resource depletion and enemy invasion, as historians attempt to understand the sudden collapse of the Mycenaeans, the Aztecs and, apparently, the modern Greeks. In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure -- and who gets the most of both -- more often than poverty and exhaustion implode civilization. One recurring theme seems consistent in Athenian literature on the eve of the city's...

After a year that can only be described as “stupid,� the Chevy Volt is gearing up to make 2013 even stupider still. I know, I know. You find it hard to believe that a mostly-owned subsidiary of the United States government and the Obama administration- like GM is- could get any stupider than say Fannie Mae, or Federal Reserve Bank. Yes, that’s tough competition, but in the “idiocy� category GM seems to be the ruling champion.   Not only have they lost substantial amounts of taxpayer dollars, they have managed to do it while generating record profits even though they still...

Families provide the sure foundation undergirding Western Civilization. No laws or economic remedy can arrest social breakdown if the family structure fractures. Yet, progressives have commandeered the political realm to overhaul culture. Marriage withers under easy divorce, subsidized illegitimacy, and the desire among progressives to make it anything and everything. The only liberties the Left touts grant license to repudiate traditional morality. Economics writer Warren Brookes foresaw, “So the continuing, ever-mounting assault on traditional family values may well be more destructive to our economic well-being as a nation than any of our faulty fiscal or monetary policies.” An effete or...

With all feel-good talk about immigration reform, fans of conflict and dysfunction may fear the arrival of genuine bipartisanship in Washington. Not to worry! Another budget crisis is almost upon us! This time it’s not the dread fiscal cliff or the debt ceiling, but rather the “sequester”—the extremely crude cutting mechanism that essentially nobody favors but that seems likely to happen anyway. It’ll drag down the economy, impair the functioning of the government across the board, and do nothing to improve America’s fiscal sustainability over the long run. Here’s what you need to know. What is it? Sequestration is broad,...

House Republicans were wise to suspend the debt ceiling until the middle of May, effectively resequencing the series of upcoming fights over the federal budget. They are now poised to make their stand in March, using pressure points provided by the sequester - the across-the-board cuts to defense and non-defense discretionary spending - and the expiration of the stopgap measure currently used to fund the government. Both fights are much preferable to a battle over the debt ceiling - the House Republicans would have erred in using the threat of government default as leverage to enact spending cuts. But the...

**SNIP** Social Security: 'Chained CPI' Savings: $112 billion The idea is to change the way the government figures out how much more seniors should get in Social Security benefits each year to account for changes in their cost of living. This new formula — a tweak to the consumer price index — would assume that people switch their buying habits when prices rise, rather than just buying the same things over and over. So, for example, if the price of ground beef goes up, someone might buy chicken or fish instead. The result: Social Security benefits will rise more slowly.

President Obama defended the idea of entitlements like Medicare and Social Security in his second inaugural address Monday, arguing that these programs strengthen the nation and free Americans to "take the risks that make this country great." "We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future," Obama said. "For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn." He continued: "We do not believe that...

ABOARD A MILITARY AIRCRAFT, Jan. 17, 2013 – The across-the-board spending cuts that would result if a “sequestration” mechanism in budget law kicks in March 1 will hollow out U.S. military forces faster than most Americans imagine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said during a recent news briefing that if sequestration happens, the American military “will be less prepared in months and unprepared in a year.” During an interview today on his return trip from NATO meetings in Brussels, the general said the cuts would quickly bring about a new...

In the fights over the fiscal cliff and now the debt ceiling, many conservatives were adamant: Republicans should reach an agreement with President Obama only in exchange for serious cuts in entitlement spending. It is the entitlements — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security — that will drive future deficits, the conservatives argued, and without real cuts, the nation’s debt will spiral out of control in the not-too-distant future. Some Republican lawmakers have been stressing that point for weeks and demanding that the president agree to “real cuts” before any deal could be struck. But what has emerged from the House GOP...

Praise government! Just hours after the federal bureaucracy went over the “fiscal cliff” on New Year’s Day, President Obama voiced approval for an emergency Congressional bill to save us all. Yes, ailing American families and businesses will pay more in taxes. But that’s what it takes for big government to avoid real budget cuts, for now. As soon as the beltway bandits raise the federal debt ceiling above $16.4 trillion in February, runaway deficit spending can continue unabated. Hallelujah! All sarcasm aside, American taxpayers are holding the brown end of the stick again. The media wants us to believe this...

Connoisseurs of democratic decadence can savor a variety of contemporary dystopias. Because familiarity breeds banality, Greece has become a boring horror. Japan, however, in its second generation of stagnation, is fascinating. Once, Japan bestrode the world, jauntily buying Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach. Now Japanese buy more adult diapers than those for infants. America has its lowest birth rate since at least 1920 — family formation and workforce participation (which last year hit a 30-year low) have declined in tandem. But it has an energy surplus, the government-produced overhang of housing inventory is shrinking and the average age of Americans'...

<p>All at once, a “fiscal cliff” deal seems to be coming together. Speaker John Boehner’s latest offer doesn’t go quite far enough for the White House to agree, but it goes far enough that many think they can see the agreement taking shape.</p>

SINGAPORE -- While the U.S. unemployment rate "dropped" to 7.7 percent last month -- a figure even the Washington Post acknowledged was due "in large part because the labor force fell by 350,000" -- here in this modern and prosperous city-state of slightly more than 5 million people, unemployment is practically nonexistent at 1.9 percent. In part, this is due to a work ethic that seems to be in the genes here. But there is something else at work that should astound Washington politicians struggling with expensive "entitlement" programs and with those who receive them. The Economist wrote about it...

Anyone who believes that the president’s proposed tax hikes on “the rich� will save our country from insolvency is grossly mistaken, and should begin to educate themselves by examining the graph below. Whoa: This isn’t the least bit surprising, of course. We’ve seen this coming for a very long time. Barring major cuts to entitlement spending the country will go bankrupt. It’s not a possibility -- it’s an absolute certainty. Which is why I find all the “negotiations� surrounding raising taxes on “the rich� so reprehensible. The revenue generated from such a proposal -- as the graph above demonstrates --...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on the house floor "I believe it should be pronounced here today, that the reform of the entitlements based upon slipshod, reckless, deliberations or should I say actions are a non-starter. There is no way, Mr. Speaker, that we should raise the eligability age for Medicare, that we should not think carefully about how we approach the reform of Medicaid. And that we don't the American people that Social Security is solvent. So, I would say move quickly to pass the middle class tax cuts that would be for all Americans, 100 % up to...

Even if President Obama succeeds in getting Republicans to agree to tax hikes on the wealthy as part of a “fiscal cliff” deal, the country’s grim budget realities will still cast a long shadow — limiting his ambitions as he begins plotting a second-term agenda. Any agreement is likely to result in less than the $1.6 trillion in new taxes over the next decade that Obama requested in his initial offer to House Republicans, and White House aides are signaling to allies that any new money from taxes would be used almost entirely for deficit reduction — not for ambitious,...

Ever since Election Day, the left has been riding high. Not only did President Obama and Democrats across the country win big on Nov. 6, the president has gratified his base with his tough talk on the fiscal cliff negotiations, and the new Congress looks to be substantially more progressive than the last. But how long will the second honeymoon last for President Obama and the Democrats? Chances are, it won't be long until the left's hopes are dashed. Here are four possible letdowns on the horizon. 1. Entitlements: Obama has talked very tough on tax rates for income over...

Believing a free press to be a vital safeguard of liberty, Thomas Jefferson said, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” Many believe the inverse of Jefferson's maxim — the people are uninformed, and therefore the government can't be trusted. After all, what well-informed American would knowingly allow politicians to lead us to the monumental economic and budgetary “cliffs” we face? Despite a proliferation of new media, it's increasingly difficult to separate fact from narrative. Combined with rancorous political discourse in which opponents are demonized in order to delegitimize competing arguments and render unnecessary...

The fiscal cliff negotiations seem to be foundering on Barack Obama's insistence on higher tax rates on high earners and House Republican leaders' insistence on opposing them. The president believes he has a mandate from voters for his position, and House Republicans believe they have a mandate from voters for theirs. The real argument here is over the size and scope of government. Under Barack Obama, federal outlays -- the technical term for federal spending -- have increased to 24 and 25 percent of gross domestic product. That's a higher level of federal spending than in any year since 1946,...

(Washington, D.C.) U.S. Congressman Paul Broun, M.D. (GA-10) today released the following statement in reaction to President Obama’s dismissal of Republican efforts to provide a solution to the looming fiscal cliff: “Democrats have basically told Republicans to either raise taxes, or go to hell,” said Broun. “Forcing us to choose between hurting families and small businesses or going off the fiscal cliff is not only counter-productive – it simply doesn’t make sense for righting our nation’s fiscal crisis. The Democrats’ math just doesn’t add up; there is no way to tax our way out of this mess. Even if they...

When President Obama put forth his first offer on the fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said, “You can’t be serious.” We could say the same thing to the Speaker after his counteroffer yesterday. In a letter signed by House Republican leadership, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Boehner offered to raise taxes by $800 billion and cut spending by $1.4 trillion, with no substantive reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving U.S. spending and debt. Heritage’s Alison Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and J.D. Foster,...

When President Obama put forth his first offer on the fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said, “You can’t be serious.� We could say the same thing to the Speaker after his counteroffer yesterday. In a letter signed by House Republican leadership, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Boehner offered to raise taxes by $800 billion and cut spending by $1.2 trillion, with no substantive reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving U.S. spending and debt. Heritage’s Alison Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and J.D. Foster,...

President Obama just sent Mrs. Geithner's little boy Timmy out to insult the GOP with his LSD inspired plan to avoid the so-called 'fiscal cliff', so I thought I would offer up my own plan since the Republicans don't seem to feel the need. My plan consists of two parts, one for raising taxes, and the other for entitlement reform. 1. Taxes The President is bound and determined to "raise taxes on the rich", despite the fact that doing so will a. not do anything to address the deficit problem, and b. hurt the economy thus reducing tax revenue coming...