Free Republic

Months in the making, Gov. Mark Dayton's two-year state budget plan is set to be released Tuesday, Jan. 22, and will likely rely heavily on tax increases to solve a projected $1.1 billion deficit and boost spending on his other priority programs. His plan is the starting point in a tax-and-spending debate that will reach well into spring. With fellow Democrats now in charge of the Legislature, Dayton's plan carries tremendous weight and a high likelihood that much of it will be enacted. Lawmakers must approve a budget by July 1 to avoid service interruptions. Barring unexpectedly deep spending cuts,...

Comments on 2012 Financial Statements of the U.S. Government- By: Larry Walker II -The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is required to audit financial statements for the U.S. government each year. What the GAO found in its Fiscal Year 2012 Audit published on January 17, 2013 is clearly unacceptable. If you take a few moments to read the report, what you’ll discover is that not only has the U.S. government been operating without a budget for the last three years, but even worse its books and records are so out of order that financial auditors were unable to render an opinion....

Okay, it’s official. According to the Treasury Department, the U.S. debt jumped to $16.1 trillion in 2012 from $14.8 trillion in 2011. That’s a $1.3 trillion deficit for the last year. Remarkable. During President Obama’s first term, the federal debt rose by roughly $6 trillion. Now, if they are bold, House Republicans will take advantage of these dismal numbers. Bold means bold spending cuts, as in cut spending like there’s no tomorrow. Bold means implementing the $1.2 trillion spending sequester. Bold means an absolute rock-solid commitment to spending cuts. A new Rasmussen survey shows that 62 percent of Americans favor...

At his press conference this week, President Obama made it seem as though the job of getting the government's deficits under control is nearly done. "The consensus is we need about $4 trillion to stabilize our debt and our deficit," he told reporters, "which means we need about $1.5 trillion more." [snip] But a closer look at the numbers shows that Obama is exaggerating how much deficit reduction he's actually achieved, and is being decidedly Pollyannaish about the nation's still massive long-term budget gap and what will be needed to close it.

“Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize more spending. It simply allows the country to pay for spending that Congress has already committed to.” ~ POTUS :: :: By: Larry Walker II ::Wow, that was enlightening. I really had no idea. Now I get it. He must be talking about last year, when Congress voted unanimously in favor of the president’s budget, then walked it over to the Senate, which also unanimously approved. That’s when Congress committed to another trillion dollars of deficit spending, right? Too bad that never happened. In reality, the president’s budget failed to attain a...

Would you like to save $20,000 this year? Of course you would. Here’s how: Plan a month-long vacation to Disneyland, and budget $20,000 for the trip. Then don’t go. Presto! You just “cut” your family budget by 20 grand. This sounds absurd—because it is. Yet that is precisely how Washington operates. A couple of weeks ago, President Obama claimed on national TV that “I cut spending by over a trillion dollars in 2011.” But as many people quickly pointed out, in fiscal 2011 federal spending rose from $3.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. Nevertheless, the President repeated the claim on Jan....

Bill Clinton is a multimillionaire, but you’re paying for the Cinemax in his office. That’s just one eyebrow-raising expense a former occupant of the White House has been allowed to put on the taxpayer tab every year, even though every living ex-president is quite wealthy. In an attempt to shed light on this little-known perk of being a former commander in chief, The Daily Caller — through a Freedom of Information Act request filed last year — has obtained thousands of pages of emails and documents from the government detailing how taxpayer money is spent on former presidents each year....

We have once again reached the debt limit and most legislators want to blast right through as usual. Obama says he doesn’t even want to discuss it. Those who want some spending cuts are threatening to block continued spending unless there are real cuts. That brings us to two ploys that are being considered by the big spenders. First, some are saying the President doesn’t need Congress for spending authority. They say the 14th Amendment would allow Obama to spend without regard to the limit, even though the constitutions says all spending must be authorized by Congress. Second, some say...

President Obama kicked off the final news conference of his first term by renewing his call for Congress to approve a “balanced” deficit-reduction package that includes both spending cuts and new revenues. Republican leaders have said repeatedly that the Jan. 1 fiscal cliff agreement ended any discussion of raising new revenue and that in upcoming negotiations they would deal only in spending cuts. Obama made clear that he does not agree. He reiterated that he is “open to making modest adjustments to programs like Medicare.” “The fact is, though, we can’t finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts...

Did not Moodys say they would downgrade our credit rating again if there are not significant spending cuts? Why aren't the Republicans shouting that from the rooftops?

Conservatives are forgetting their most important lever: Voters logically must support raising taxes if they believe that every dollar of Federal spending is needed. But if some spending is unnecessary, cutting spending is correct. America is divided by assumptions about whether the Federal budget includes a lot of lard or is completely necessary. Conservatives need to return to what built the conservative movement, to return to what works. We need to stop talking as if helping rich people become richer is our main priority. Despite years of effort in the past, conservatives must now explain all over again to today's...

Well, the trillion-dollar-coin thing — deal with the debt ceiling by exploiting a legal loophole to have the Treasury mint one or more large-denomination coins, deposit them at the Fed, and use the cash in the new account to pay bills — has really taken off. Last month I spoke with a senior Fed official who had never heard of the idea; these days it’s all over. There seem to be two kinds of objections. One is that it would be undignified. Here’s how to think about that: we have a situation in which a terrorist may be about to...

<p>Having completed yet another deficit-reduction agreement that somehow managed to increase the deficit, Congress and the Obama administration are now laying the groundwork for upcoming fights over the debt ceiling, the sequester, and the continuing resolution that will fund the government given continued refusal by Senate Democrats to pass a budget.</p>

Deficits: Apparently, President Obama never got around to reading the final report of his own deficit commission. How else to explain his belief that federal spending isn't the cause of the nation's debt crisis? That's apparently what Obama told House Speaker John Boehner during their recent "fiscal cliff" negotiations. "At one point several weeks ago," Boehner told the Wall Street Journal, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.'" [snip] When it comes to federal spending, Obama is like the alcoholic who says that the only drinking problem he has is when he can't get a drink.

In an interview with Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, newly re-elected House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) opened up about President Obama’s utter unwillingness to cut a single dollar from federal spending. In a stunning admission, Obama reportedly told Boehner, “We don’t have a spending problem.” Boehner added that President Obama continues to maintain that America’s federal deficit is caused not by governmental overspending but by “a health-care problem.” Said Boehner, “They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system.” Boehner told Obama, “Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with Obamacare....

When lawmakers delivered a long-delayed, last-minute agreement on the budget, Wall Street celebrated. And it would be easy to think that the surge in the Dow the following day meant that investors had put their concerns about Washington's political gridlock behind them. The Dow Jones industrial average surged on the news, but that doesn't mean the volatility is over. In fact, there could be more turmoil in the market soon because decisions on cutting the federal budget deficit have been put off until March, when the government will reach its borrowing limit. Republicans have already said they will demand cuts...

President Barack Obama has signed into law a $9.7 billion bill to pay flood insurance claims from Superstorm Sandy. … The House has yet to act on a larger, more comprehensive Sandy aid package. Republican leaders did not bring the bill to the floor before the last session of Congress adjourned. …

Jodie Miller of NewsBusted has a great clip where she points out that it costs 2 cents to produce 1 cent. And by government standards, that’s a bargain. This brings me to the inane calls for manufacturing trillion dollar coins made of platinum. As I have discussed before, this would send a signal of fear throughout the world that the USA has no intention of cutting spending, lowering its trillion dollar plus debt and escalating its $16 trillion debt. But for the sake of discussion, platinum is currently trading at $1,560 an ounce. In order to produce a trillion dollar...

Michelle Obama recently revealed that she and President Obama don’t give Christmas gifts to each other. They merely say, “We’re in Hawaii,” and that’s Christmas gift enough. But actually the present is from taxpayers, and it’s an expensive one. The total cost to taxpayers of Obama’s vacations to Hawaii since becoming president is likely in excess of $20 million, and possibly much, much more. During a time of budget deficits that threaten the nation’s security and its future, the Obamas have chosen to maintain a “family tradition” and vacation halfway around the world instead of finding far cheaper alternatives closer...

I said this after Hurricane Sandy and I'll say it again. Chris Christie has started to grow on me. And no, that's not meant as a joke. Christie's straight talk of late may be just more bullying by a master politician, but it sure does ring true to me. In a parched partisan landscape where every move is done for political gain - "It's why the American people hate Congress," he said - Christie's tell-it-like-it-is rhetoric serves as needed refreshment for the masses. In case you missed it, the enraged New Jersey governor went off on his fellow Republicans Wednesday...