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The International Monetary Fund sounded the alarm on the Biden administration’s rampant spending as “out of line with what is needed for long-term fiscal stability.” The latest forecast from the IMF — a Washington-based group tasked with fighting financial crises worldwide — warned that the ballooning national debt and the fiscal deficit threatened to exacerbate sky-high levels of inflation while posing a long-term risk to the global economy. The IMF noted in its forecast that the US federal budget deficit grew from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2022 to $1.7 trillion last year. ... The debt held by the public, which...

In many ways, Speaker Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he did his own Republican members.The outline of the spending agreement House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cut with Democratic leaders sounds bad on its face. But the underlying reasons for that agreement seem far worse.As I wrote last week, “Speaker Johnson and Republican ‘leadership’ … bailed the Democrats out of the predicament they put themselves in last May.” To which I should make an important addition: In many ways, Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he...

CNN — The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to about $2 trillion for fiscal year 2023, roughly double what it was in the previous fiscal year, according to a government watchdog group. The surge stems largely from a sharp decline in tax revenues, coupled with an increase in mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and interest payments, as well as in other areas. It follows a sharp drop in the budget shortfall in fiscal year 2022 after two years of giant deficits swollen by record government spending on Covid-19 pandemic relief measures.

See Jul '23 in the excel sheet, Figure 2 and other tabs

With record inflation and out-of-control government spending, the notion of a fiscally responsible government seems like an afterthought. Both parties have not provided even the slightest hint at curbing expenditures in any way. The more members from both parties speak, the more money they seemingly want to spend. Fortunately, our country has at least one member of Congress concerned with our national debt: Sen. Rand Paul. On Monday, Paul introduced his "Six Penny Plan," which he says will balance the federal budget within five years. With numerous financial troubles on the horizon, his plan is the legitimate solution our country...

The analysis exposed the inherently gimmicky nature of using permanent tax increases to pass temporary increases in spending.In the second installment of news the Biden administration didn’t want to hear about Friday (the first being the record-breaking inflation report), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis of making permanent the programs in Democrats’ Build Back Bankrupt spending spree. Democrats immediately claimed the bill they want to pass through Congress doesn’t resemble the CBO’s parameters in the slightest. In that case, Republicans should respond by bringing a legislative proposal resembling those parameters to the Senate floor, and forcing Democrats to...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is frog-marching her vulnerable members to a political suicide vote on a bill that’s likely dead on arrival in the Senate.On November 2, five House Democrats—enough to block the passage of the spending spree that the party hopes to enact via the budget reconciliation process—wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, urging her “to only bring a bill to the floor for which we have a strong level of confidence…will be ruled in order by the Senate parliamentarian and earn passage in the U.S. Senate.”The lawmakers have justifiable reason for concern. Major pieces of the 2,135-page...

At some point in the near future—whether a few days or a few weeks—the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will release a complete score of the spending spree legislation Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and House leaders introduced on Nov. 3. The document will represent the first complete CBO analysis of any of the multi-trillion-dollar spending bills that Democrats have spent the fall writing, then re-writing. Two budgetary analyses suggest CBO could find the most recent version of the legislation increases the deficit. A Penn-Wharton analysis of the White House’s policy framework concluded it would spend $1.87 trillion over ten years while...

By this year’s standards, the process that led to Obamacare seems like a veritable exercise in transparency and open government.How quickly Democrats forget. A dozen years ago, President Barack Obama faced strong and justified criticism for backtracking on his promise, made numerous times during the 2008 presidential campaign, to televise health-care negotiations on C-SPAN:By this year’s standards, however, the process that led to Obamacare—the law that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said we had to pass in order to find out what’s in it—seems like a veritable exercise in transparency and open government. It’s gotten so bad that press reports...

If Congress follows the president’s lead and does not renew the Hyde Amendment, court precedents may require state Medicaid programs to cover abortions in most if not all cases.If Congress enacts them into law, the legislative concepts outlined in President Biden’s first budget will have far-reaching effects on American debt, deficits, and taxation. One specific policy may have an effect even as a proposal. By suggesting a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, the president gave conservative states another reason not to expand Medicaid. While coverage of the Biden budget has focused on its support of taxpayer funding for abortion, fewer...

Biden's American Family Plan would dole out free college, free child care, free meals, and more. But does the math add up? Nope.President Biden released the provisions of his American Family Plan last week, and just like with his American Jobs Plan, the details are scant and the price tag is high.Even given the limited details, the plans ought to give everyone pause — and by “everyone” I don’t just mean conservatives who oppose massive welfare state expansions, but also those who agree with the objective of an increase in the social insurance system in America. There are some serious...

President Trump's block-grant plan is a bold call to congressional Republicans to not squander their next opportunity to relieve U.S. education of bureaucracy like they did in his first two years of office. President Trump has become the first president to incorporate into his budget one of the few good federal education policy ideas: Sending Americans’ money back to their states to decide how to use it.Federal education programs have wasted trillions, enriching contractors and bureaucrats who lobby for open taps while arm-twisting Americans into trusting them with their dollars and children against all evidence that trust is deserved. Even...

INDIANOLA, Iowa -- Rep. Ilhan Omar, speaking at an event for Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday, made the shockingly dishonest claim that siphoning away just $20 billion from the defense budget would allow the federal government to provide health coverage for “every single uninsured American.” The real number is not isn’t even close. In a speech warming up the crowd for Sanders, Omar explained, “I believe, like Bernie, our foreign policy is domestic policy. We currently spend $700 billion in funding endless wars, and wasteful Pentagon spending, which is more than half of all discretionary spending. Do you know what...

President Trump on Monday will propose major spending cuts across a range of domestic government programs while seeking a large increase for the Pentagon, a budget plan that’s already encountering withering opposition from Democrats who control the House, as well as some Republicans. The budget has little chance of becoming law because of bipartisan resistance to many of its elements, but it sets forth the White House’s vision ahead of what is expected to be a fierce battle over government spending later this year. . . . . .The proposal is Trump’s first comprehensive budget blueprint since Democrats took control...

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy claimed on “Face the Nation” Sunday that the money requested by President Donald Trump to fund a border wall is equal to “1/10th of 1 percent of the federal budget.” Verdict: True The $5.7 billion requested for Trump’s border wall amounts to 0.13 percent of the $4.5 trillion in projected federal outlays for fiscal year 2019. It equals 0.42 percent of projected discretionary spending. Fact Check: McCarthy made the claim while discussing the partial government shutdown with CBS host Margaret Brennan. “If we cannot do this together, what else can we not do in the...

I am asking all Freepers to contact their federal elected officials, especially if the officials are Democrats and insist that they end the partial federal shutdown right now. After listening to Rush L today, I got fed up with the shutdown and all the media nonsense going on. I agree that the Dem's are starting to weaken. It is time to turn up the heat to HIGH on them. That is why today I contacted "my" entire federal delegation and told them in no uncertain terms to end the shutdown. We all need to participate in the democratic process and...

There's going to be a delay in the final Senate vote on confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. President Trump has gone along with the desire of Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake, one of his most outspoken critics, for an FBI investigation.... Yesterday President Trump signed an 854 billion dollar spending plan.... Over 380 are now reported dead on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi following an earthquake and a resulting tsunami... A stabbing attack injured three people in Ravensburg, Germany Friday. Police arrested a teenage suspect identified as a migrant... Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson isn't ruling...

The president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) warned Monday of the negative effects that President Trump's proposed budget cuts could have on public broadcasting. Trump's budget proposes eliminating federal funding for the CPB over a two-year period. The budget has to be approved by Congress before it can take effect. In a statement released Monday, Patricia Harrison said that the "elimination of funding to CPB would at first devastate, and then ultimately destroy public media's ability to provide early childhood content, life-saving emergency alerts, and public affairs programs." "Public media benefits all Americans — whether they...

RUSH: Here’s Chuck You Schumer. And Chuck You was in Louisville at the University of Louisville, and he spoke a Q&A period after his remarks. It was this morning. And a member of the audience said, “There’s been talk of a blue wave of Democrats winning seats in the midterms. If this is to happen, what are the biggest obstacles that Democrats must overcome in order to win big in November?” SCHUMER: People will make their own decisions about Donald Trump. Our mistake, I think, you cannot just run against Donald Trump. And it is the job of we Democrats...

The budget that President Trump proposed Monday takes a hard whack at the poorest Americans, slashing billions of dollars from food stamps, public health insurance and federal housing vouchers, while trying to tilt the programs in more conservative directions. The spending plan reaches beyond the White House’s own power over the government social safety net and presumes lawmakers will overhaul long-standing entitlement programs for the poor in ways beyond what Congress so far has been willing to do. The changes call on lawmakers to eliminate the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and transform the rest of that...