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President Trump has done what has seemed like an impossible task for recent administrations, and that is to actually curb government spending and reduce the national debt by $12 Billion during his first month in office. Trump announced his achievement of reducing the national debt by sending out a tweet, which quickly caused the media to scramble for stories that could diminish this financial victory. The day before Trump was sworn into office, January 20, 2017, the national debt was $19,947 billion. A month later on February 21, 2017, the US debt was reduced to $19,935 billion, a decrease of...

The U.S. Senate passed legislation recently cutting funding for NASA’s global warming research. The House is expected to pass the bill, and President Trump will likely sign it. Supporters say it “re-balances” NASA’s budget back toward space exploration and away from global warming and earth science research. Republicans plan to end the more than $2 billion NASA spends on its Earth Science Mission Directorate. “By rebalancing, I’d like for more funds to go into space exploration; we’re not going to zero out earth sciences,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told...

A taxpayer-funded study set to find out if people can smell their own "asparagus pee." Researchers at Harvard on two active studies that received over $3 million last year surveyed nearly 7,000 people to determine if their urine smelled funny after eating the vegetable. The results were published in the BMJ scientific journal . . . The results concluded a "large proportion of individuals of European-American descent cannot smell ‘asparagus pee'—the unpleasant odor present in urine after people eat asparagus," according to the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The Washington region’s prospects aren’t all bad under the Trump administration. A top local economist joked at a recent business conference that demonstrators flocking to rallies in the District will drop bundles of cash, spurring growth from “protest tourism.” But the area is bracing for shock at the hands of a reinvent-the-rules president who routinely insults the city and a Republican-led Congress that for years has sought to shrink the federal government that is the area’s principal employer. Officials and analysts expect sharp cuts in federal nondefense spending, which would strain local budgets nationwide and pose a particular threat to...

The former head of President Donald Trump’s transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he expects the new administration to seek significant budget and staff cuts. Myron Ebell said in an interview with The Associated Press that Trump is likely to seek significant reductions to the agency’s workforce — currently about 15,000 employees nationwide. Ebell, who left the transition team last week, declined to discuss specific numbers of EPA staff that could be targeted for pink slips. Asked what he would personally like to see, however, Ebell said slashing the agency’s size by about half would be a...

Donald Trump may be headed into a big fight with Republican lawmakers with his plans for dramatic cuts to federal spending. Trump transition officials are combing through conservative budgets to find ways to save money in an effort to get rid of the “tremendous waste, fraud and abuse” that Trump pledged to eliminate during the campaign. Many of the proposals that Trump’s team are reviewing would gain support from a majority of conservative House Republicans, who have sought to cut the federal deficit by scrapping government programs they view as unnecessary. But some of Trump’s targets have fans in the...

Donald Trump is ready to take an ax to government spending. Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned. The changes they propose are dramatic. The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the...

Barack Obama was the first president of the United States to spend more on “means-tested entitlements”—AKA welfare—than on national defense, according to data published by his own Office of Management and Budget. Historical tables that the OMB posted on the Obama White House website, include annual totals for both “national defense” spending and “means-tested entitlement” spending going back to fiscal 1962—which is three years before President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating the Medicaid program, a means-tested entitlement that together with the Children’s Health Insurance Program enrolled 74,407,191 beneficiaries as of November 2016. In every year from fiscal 1962 through fiscal...

The rest of the title.....until the resolution is reversed! Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted on Saturday that he would oppose funding for the United Nations until the UN Security Council reversed an anti-Israel resolution that it approved on Friday, with the acquiescence of the Obama administration.The resolution not only describes the Israeli presence across the 1949 armistice line as illegal — including in the Old City of Jerusalem — but also encourages countries to target Israeli settlements for boycotts. The Obama administration had vetoed a similar resolution five years ago, taking the traditional U.S. position that the dispute between Israelis...

A rare point of agreement between President-Elect Trump and Congressional Democrats is that America has an infrastructure deficit: The nation’s transportation, power, water and sewerage facilities are too often outdated and unable to reliably serve a growing population. But while the diagnosis crosses party lines, solutions are more controversial. Democrats may not be too worried about the recent increase in federal deficits, but Republicans who have made an issue of the national debt will be reluctant to produce more red ink. Likewise, tax increases to pay for new federal construction spending are off the table under Trump and a Republican-controlled...

Joel B. PollakDecember 25, 2016 Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted on Saturday that he would oppose funding for the United Nations until the UN Security Council reversed an anti-Israel resolution that it approved on Friday, with the acquiescence of the Obama administration. The resolution not only describes the Israeli presence across the 1949 armistice line as illegal — including in the Old City of Jerusalem — but also encourages countries to target Israeli settlements for boycotts. The Obama administration had vetoed a similar resolution five years ago, taking the traditional U.S. position that the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians is...

SCHUMER, GILLIBRAND ANNOUNCE MORE THAN $60 MILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDS FOR 38 UPSTATE NEW YORK COUNTIES WORKING TO END HOMELESSNESS SCHUMER, GILLIBRAND ANNOUNCE MORE THAN $60 MILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDS FOR 38 UPSTATE NEW YORK COUNTIES WORKING TO END HOMELESSNESS  Funding Will Be Used to Help Non-Profits, Local Governments Relocate Homeless Individuals & Families, Promote Self-Sufficiency Programs U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand today announced $60,177,796 in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for 38 counties across Upstate NY that promote the goal of ending homelessness. The funding was allocated through HUD’s Continuum of...

What makes the Air Force One program so costly? The CEO of Boeing told President-elect Donald Trump Wednesday that his company can build a new Air Force One for less than originally quoted -- after Trump complained about the cost. Earlier this month, Trump made headlines for blasting the company on Twitter for alleged cost overruns with the new fleet of Air Force One planes. Trump called on the government to cancel the contract and called the supposed $4 billion price tag out of control.

Donald Trump’s presidential transition team has asked State Department officials to disclose how much money it provides each year to international environmental groups. It’s the latest example of how the incoming administration is reassessing the U.S. government’s approach to tackling climate change and other environmental priorities. As part of a list of questions posed last week to the department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, the Trump landing team asked, “How much does the Department of State contribute annually to international environmental organizations in which the department participates?” The...

Game changer Of all the excellent cabinet and staff picks Donald Trump has announced thus far, there may be none bigger than the choice of U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-South Carolina) as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The federal government faces no more urgent challenge than $20 trillion in debt and no existing plan but to add more of it through deficits as far as they eye can see. Mulvaney is not just a fiscal conservative in word. He was a fierce critic of former House Speaker John Boehner over Boehner’s unwillingness to stand up to Barack...

Unlike professors who haven’t read the federal budget, scholars who actually have can’t find any cuts. The Heritage Foundation hosted a panel discussion on how to improve agency performance with fiscal discipline, and two professors commented on its feasibility. Marcus Peacock, a research professor at George Washington University, and Jason Fichtner, who works at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, shared their thoughts on this subject. Peacock pointed out that federal government spending has rarely decreased, in fact, "discretionary spending, over any five year period, has increased" in the federal government. Discretionary spending is non-entitlement (Social Security and Medicare)...

Ukraine's Antonov aircraft maker suggested US President-elect Donald Trump should order Air Force One from Ukraine, a message on the official Twitter page of the company said, TASS reports. "Maybe it would be better to consider an Antonov aircraft as Air Force One?" the tweet said. The state-run Antonov aircraft building plant is Ukraine's only developer and manufacturer of cargo and passenger aircraft. The company is best known for such aircraft as AN-32, AN-148, AN-158, AN-74, AN-124, AN-70 and AN-225. The company did not specify which aircraft exactly they would like to propose to the new President of the United...

Hours after Donald Trump promised to kill the Air Force One procurement program, Boeing Chief Executive Dennis A. Muilenburg spoke with the president-elect on Tuesday, promising to work with the new administration and to keep the costs of the program down, according to a person with knowledge of the matter...

Six weeks from taking office, Donald Trump says he wants the government to cut some costs by canceling its order for a new Air Force One, the plane that carries presidents around the globe. The government has contracted with Boeing to build two or more new planes, which would go into service around 2024. That means Trump wouldn’t fly on the new planes unless he pursued and won a second term. But the Air Force has pressed for a faster schedule, saying the current planes are becoming too expensive to repair and keep in good flying shape. The contract for...

2m2 minutes ago...@realDonaldTrump feed: Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!