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House Democrats have unveiled a $3.7 trillion budget plan for next year. It mirrors President Barack Obama’s call for $1.8 trillion in tax increases on wealthier people and corporations over the coming decade but would add almost $6 trillion to the national debt over that time. […] The plan calls for a wave of new spending for infrastructure like roads and bridges and additional funding for education and medical research. It would make modest curbs on the rapid growth of the popular Medicare program. …

Interest rates will skyrocket, instability will roil the financial markets, the federal deficit will soar and the resulting "catastrophic" harm will last years. That is how Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew describes a debt-ceiling breach certain to cause a government default. Uncle Sam will be bankrupt. All national government operations will seize-up. All checks for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, contractors and vendors will bounce. At the stroke of midnight, March 16, 2015, the debt ceiling was again breached. The Treasury Department has begun "extraordinary measures" to forestall the certain default. Jack Lew must rob Peter to pay Paul. He...

resident Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2016 budget Monday, a proposal that would spend $3.99 trillion while running a $474 billion deficit. The document will serve as a blueprint for White House policy for upcoming fights with Republicans on immigration, health care, infrastructure, and tax reform. Highlights every conservative should know include:1. Higher SpendingObama's budget would increase spending by $74 billion in 2016 compared to current law, and by $322 billion over the next five years. Federal government spending as a percentage of GDP would rise from 20.3 percent in 2014 to 22.2 percent in 2025.The biggest spending increase items in Obama's budget...

President Barack Obama claimed on Monday that without a comprehensive budget covering the Department of Homeland Security, more than 130,000 mission-critical employees will be forced to work without pay by the end of the month. They include 40,000 employed by Customs and Border Protection, 50,000 Transportation Security Administration screeners, 13,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 40,000 Coast Guard personnel. Pay would be restored at the end of any withholding period. 'I know how vital you are, and I want to make sure more Americans know how vital you are,' Obama told an auditorium full of DHS employees Monday the...

On Jan. 8, 1835, the U.S. national debt stood at zero, the first and only time in its history. It was a remarkable turnabout from Jan. 1, 1791, when the federal government was in debt to the tune of $75,463,476.52. But that wasn’t the peak amount of indebtedness for the new nation ($120 million), which occurred at the end of the three-year War of 1812. To be sure, President Andrew Jackson, under whose watch the no-debt day was achieved, was jubilant, and a big Washington party overflowed with superlatives, as illustrated by Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton’s remarks: “The apparition,...

A wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. This is what Obama, with his fiscal cliff plan, threatens us with. For many years now we have heard chilling tales about that elusive, powerful and manipulative entity conspiracy theorists have called “The New World Order”. Not only have the members of this group managed for the most part to remain anonymous, but their agenda has remained mysterious and obscure. So much so that many good people have been perfectly fine with ignoring its existence or viability. Whether or not this New World Order is in lockstep with World Communism...

Taco Tuesdays, anyone?

So here's a positively eye-watering number: America's national debt (not its deficit, which is something different entirely, so stop confusing them, please) is now a gobsmacking $18 trillion or $7 trillion higher than when President Barack Obama took office in 2008, The Washington Post reports.According to the right-leaning Powerline blog, "41 percent of the national debt of the United States, from George Washington to the present, has accrued during the Obama administration."(In case you were wondering, the 2014 budget deficit came in at a comparably smaller $483 billion, which "[represented] the smallest deficit as a percentage of GDP since the George...

The problem of pain, to borrow a title from C.S. Lewis, is that with regard to our enormous national debt, there is none. As great an impending disaster as it’s alleged to be, you’d think there’d be signs of suffering. No less a luminary than Rush Limbaugh speaks of his Dad’s warning when Rush was a kid that this immense obligation, only $1 trillion at the time, would be our undoing. Yet now at 17 times that size, it appears just a calamity without a consequence. But the reason for this is simple: we’re engaged in the biggest can-kicking endeavor in...

The federal debt this year will be double what it was before the financial crisis, Congress’ official budget scorekeeper projected Wednesday morning. The debt is on pace to reach 74 percent of the country’s economic output by the end of the year, double what it was in 2007 and the highest percentage since 1950, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In its update to its projections for the budget and economy, the agency slightly upped its estimate for the 2014 deficit, which it now expects to total $506 billion, a $170 billion decline from 2013. The federal debt this year...

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...

During last year's budget negotiation meetings, President Barack Obama told House Speaker John Boehner, "We don't have a spending problem." When Boehner responded with "But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem," Obama replied, "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." In one sense, the president is right. What's being called a spending problem is really a symptom of an unappreciated deep-seated national moral rot. Let's examine it with a few questions. Is it moral for Congress to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another? I believe that most Americans would pretend that...

Argentina's president has said that she would refuse to comply with a U.S. judge's order to pay $1.5 billion to winners of a decade-long legal battle over defaulted debt after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her government's final appeal. Delivering a nationally broadcast address Monday night, Cristina Fernandez expressed willingness to negotiate with the winners, but said there is simply no way that Argentina can pay the amount in cash, in full, starting just two weeks from now, which is what the U.S. courts have ordered. Under the U.S. court orders, Argentina must hand over $907 million to...

Forty thousand dollars. That’s roughly your share of the U.S. national debt. That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared to the debt the government’s going to be racking up in the years ahead thanks mainly to America’s old-age welfare programs. As the Baby Boomers retire, the bill for Social Security and Medicare will grow fast, setting off a debt tsunami. Economists can estimate the difference between how much government is on track to spend and how much it will raise from taxes. They call this “the fiscal gap.” That number is astronomical: $205 trillion dollars, or more than half a million...

The biggest fallacy in politics is that we need "another Reagan" or more "Tea Partiers" in Congress if we want to save the country. Granted, either would certainly help, but America's structural problems are much bigger than any personnel issues we have in D.C. Even if you're an extremely talented craftsman, you're going to have trouble building a house if the only materials you're allowed to work with are sand and straw. It wouldn't matter if Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant were all on the same basketball team if they were only allowed to put three players...

If the news from the past few days hasn't been enough to dampen your fire, try this on for size. Tis the season for budget proposals in Washington. President Obama is the first to reveal what he wants to spend our money on, with Paul Ryan soon to follow. I'll try to take a look at Mr. Ryan's, when he turns it loose, but for now, all we have to go on is what the President has listed as his priorities. My friends, it is not pretty. It's more of the same, really. He wants more infrastructure spending, more education...

(CNSNews.com) - While discussing federal spending and transportation funding last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said “there is absolutely no way we’re going to cut spending.” Boxer was discussing the Highway Trust Fund with members of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) in Washington on Feb. 26, when she addressed various tax increases that may be used to raise money for the program. - See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/eric-scheiner/boxer-absolutely-no-way-were-going-cut-spending#sthash.bgvFVlLs.dpuf

This week's spending-bill fight revealed deepening fractures within the GOP, spelling trouble for 2016. Imagine the ground is splitting open beneath your feet. The rocking plates of earth slowly spread apart, and you're left straddling both sides to keep from falling in. That is how some of the most publicly visible GOP lawmakers are feeling right now. They must choose whose side they're on: establishment Republicans or the far-right flank. Ultraconservative groups are furious over the omnibus appropriations package that coasted through the Republican-led House on Wednesday. The bill, which would fund the government for the rest of the...

WASHINGTON — The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday, 359 to 67, to approve a $1.1 trillion spending bill for the current fiscal year, shrugging off the angry threats of Tea Party activists and conservative groups whose power has ebbed as Congress has moved toward fiscal cooperation. The legislation, 1,582 pages in length and unveiled only two nights ago, embodies precisely what many House Republicans have railed against since the Tea Party movement began, a huge bill dropped in the cover of darkness and voted on before lawmakers could possibly have read it. The conservative political action committee Club for Growth...