Free Republic

Apparently, the shrikage is largely the result of a big hit in defense spending. Other one time factors also played a role. From Associated Press: _____________________ The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That's a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter and the first contraction since the second quarter of 2009. Economists said the surprise decrease in the nation's gross domestic product wasn't as bad as it looked. The weakness was primarily the result of one-time factors. Government spending cuts and...

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...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has argued clearly and consistently over the past five years that U.S. government spending is critical to our economic recovery and that cutting spending now to reduce the deficit would be a disastrous mistake. For taking this position, Krugman has been castigated by those who blame the depression on fiscal irresponsibility and runaway government spending. The way to fix the economy, those folks argue, is to immediately slash government spending, reduce the deficit, and restore "confidence" among the country's business leaders. In the early years of the recovery, there was widespread support for the latter...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three months after Superstorm Sandy ravaged coastal areas in much of the Northeast, Congress on Monday sent a $50.5 billion emergency relief measure for storm victims to President Barack Obama for his signature. "I commend Congress for giving families and businesses the help they deserve, and I will sign this bill into law as soon as it hits my desk," Obama said in a statement late Monday. Despite opposition from conservatives concerned about adding billions of dollars more to the nation's debt, the Senate cleared the long-delayed bill, 62-36, after House Republicans had stripped it earlier this...

Prominent economists, politicians, and pundits throw around the term “austerity” as if policies by that name always take the same form. They usually use the term to criticize the concept and its effects by pointing to Europe’s stagnation at the hands of “savage” cuts in government spending. But this mindset ignores the question: Austerity for whom? The answer is especially important if the United States, which has continued to follow in Western Europe’s footsteps with this month’s fiscal-cliff deal, is to learn from the Old World’s mistakes. Raising taxes on the private sector while government continues to gorge itself on...

That's the plan announced by John Boehner this week, as House Republicans broke huddle and the RNC went into another. The previous House budget plans balanced the federal budget on a much longer time frame, at some point in the third decade out, and it triggered grumbling from the fiscal conservatives in the Tea Party movement, who want an end to escalating debt and looming disasters in unfunded entitlement liabilities. It's a tall order, and so far more aspirational than concrete: House Speaker John Boehner's promise on Wednesday to balance the federal budget "over the next 10 years" was aimed...

Remember all those mainstream news reports before the election about how President Obama's expansive spending plans would require massive tax hikes on everyone, not just millionaires and billionaires? Neither do we. But somehow after the election, reporters are finally admitting that Obama's budget numbers simply don't add up and that new taxes on the middle class — including a European-style value added tax — are "inevitable."

House Republicans on Wednesday are hoping to present a united front and jump-start the next several months’ worth of budget negotiations by approving a short-term debt-limit extension with near-unanimous GOP support. Members will vote on a “limited suspension” of the federal debt limit through May 19, which would temporarily allow the Treasury Department to issue new debt to cover obligations incurred during that period, along with a measure that would withhold Senators’ pay if they fail to pass a budget. “All we’re saying is: If the president and the Senate, if this country needs to incur more debt — Senate,...

Obama's First Term by the Numbers Last week, the RNC Research arm released a list of how much President Obama's first four years cost in terms of deficits, regulations, stimulus spending, and the underemployed and unemployed individuals. The following are a few of those figures:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This afternoon, Sen. Rand Paul introduced the Default Prevention Act, which would require the President to prioritize federal revenue to interest on the national debt. Since the current debt limit was reached on Dec. 31, 2012, it is expected that the extraordinary measures the U.S. Treasury has taken to continue funding the government will be exhausted before March. In order to remove any chance of government default, Sen. Paul’s legislation spells out which government-funded programs should be held at the highest priority to continue funding, while paying down the interest and principal on debt held by the...

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?