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Brief and Direct: Why are Firemen Always the First To Be Laid Off? After garbage workers, that is. By: Flagstaff (Diary) | February 25th, 2013 at 08:33 Maybe because we’ll miss them the most. Because the President has forgotten he’s already been elected and he’s been campaigning across the country to defeat his own idea, there are too many sources to quote regarding the dire consequences President Obama sees if the sequester, or Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), isn’t averted. So without individual attribution here are some of the services we will lose. Local first responders–fire, police, EMS. Teachers....

The rhetoric about the sequester is mind numbing. To listen to analysts and politicians, the sequester will be like The Titanic striking an iceberg all over again. President Obama warns of thousands of teachers being laid off, beef prices skyrocketing because FDA inspectors will be laid off, etc., etc. As Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters, “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria…” Absolutely savage spending cuts. But seriously, can you spot the absolutely savage budget cuts that will cause the mass hysteria? It is almost unnoticeable among the leviathan Federal budget that only keeps growing. Another view of...

Inflation-adjusted per capita federal spending went up $822.90 from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012, according to official data from the U.S. Treasury and the Census Bureau. Real federal spending also increased $2437.64 per household between 2008 and 2012. In constant 2012 dollars, the federal government spent $3,176,376,470,000 in 2008 and $3,538,446,000,000 in 2012, according to the U.S. Treasury. (The 2008 spending number was adjusted to 2012 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.) On April 1, 2008 (the midpoint in the federal fiscal year which ends on Sept. 30), there were 303,381,938 people in the United States, according...

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ken) held a press event to announce he is returning $600,000 in unused funds to the US Treasury. The Senator said he was “proud of the fiscal prudence shown by my staff in making sure we are as efficient as possible with the taxpayers’ money.” This is the second time Paul has refunded money. Last year he returned $500,000. Representative Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) also announced his office was returning $160,000 in unspent funds. “At a time when Americans are tightening their budgets, I have made an effort to do the same with my Congressional office budget,” Mulvaney...

The Sequester is not a cut.

Nothing new here, which is the most depressing part. Scroll halfway down the page at Pew and you'll find a table tracking shifts in public opinion on various programs over the last four years. There are noticeable jumps in support for cuts from 2009 to 2011 as America got a snoutful of Obamanomics, but we've leveled off since then — and in not a single category of the 17 tested is there 50 percent in favor of decreasing spending. In fact, in only three of those 17 categories (foreign aid, unemployment aid, and the State Department) is there more support...

<p>Short CNN articles must be excerpted to 50% of content.</p>

President Obama’s over-the-top speech on the effects of sequestration made it seem like it would be the end-of-days for the economy if sequestration went into effect. Or if ANY government spending is cut … or slowed. Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum (AAF) was on CNN with Erin Burnett saying the sequestration won’t nearly be as bad as some say. The government wastes $125 billion each year, and the actual amount of the sequestration cuts is only $44 billion (not the $85 billion Obama is screeching about). Was Obama really saying that government can waste $125 billion per year,...

So what will this new plan for deficit reduction look like? Ten years of cuts get turned into ten months of tax hikes and cuts in equal measure. The tax hikes in the plan equal that gained by Barack Obama in the January standoff for the rest of this year. The cuts fall mainly in defense spending and agricultural subsidies. Will that fly? Only like the domesticated turkey that it is:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO CBS News has learned that the Senate Democrats’ long-awaited plan to avert the sequester, being announced by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, Thursday, would replace...

Fiscal Policy: President Obama now says the deficit problem is all but fixed, so we can stop all this unpleasant talk about spending cuts and get on with government spending. Maybe this is good politics, but it's reckless policy. In the run-up to his State of the Union speech, Obama was running around telling everyone how we've already "cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion," and are now "more than halfway towards the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists . .. say we need to stabilize our debt." Clearly Obama wants all the dreary talk of deficits off...

<p>Washington (CNN) - Sen. Rand Paul will call on his fellow Republicans to be more welcoming of immigrants Tuesday night in a speech where he will also sharply criticize President Barack Obama and his congressional colleagues for failing to reduce the nation's debt.</p>

One thing you won’t hear when President Obama delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday: An ambitious new plan to rein in the debt. In recent days, the White House has pressed the message that, if policymakers can agree on a strategy for replacing across-the-board spending cuts set to hit next month, the president will pretty much have achieved his debt-reduction goals. “Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit [over the next decade] by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the...

Less than one month into his second term, President Barack Obama looks to complete the outlines of an ambitious agenda in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. In his inaugural speech, the president telegraphed several initiatives he wants Congress to pursue and pass this year: gun control legislation, a bill to create a legalization process for many of the nation’s illegal immigrants, subsidiesfor renewable energy technologies and legislation to respond to climate change. Obama will likely return to those topics Tuesday night, but the White House has signaled that this speech will focusmore on the themes that dominated...

We've known this failure was forthcoming for some time, but it's still worth flagging for several reasons, which we'll get to momentarily.  First, the basics:   Monday marked the deadline set in law for President Obama to submit a budget, but he missed it — making this the fourth time in his five years in office that he's failed to submit the blueprint on time. That makes his record equal to the three previous presidents combined, who spanned 20 years in office. This year, Mr. Obama blamed the late passage of his tax increase deal early last month. "Because these issues were not...

In November 2011, President Obama lamented that “some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts” that were part of that August’s deal to raise the debt limit. “My message to them is simple: No. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off ramps on this one.” Now, it’s Obama who is looking for an off ramp. With the automatic spending cuts about to go into effect, the Associated Press reports, “President Barack Obama will ask Congress to come up with tens...

Today's report of a 0.1 percent GDP decline for the fourth quarter came as a surprise to most forecasters. But it actually masks considerable strength in the private economy. Namely, housing investment in the fourth quarter jumped 15.3 percent annually, business equipment and software spiked 12.4 percent, and real private final sales rose 2.6 percent. All in, the domestic private sector of the economy increased 3.4 percent annually -- a very respectable gain. And here's one for the record books: Working ahead of year-end tax hikes, individuals shifted so much money to the fourth quarter at the 35 percent top...

US economic output fell at a 0.1% annualized rate in the fourth quarter, adjusted for inflation. Blame spending cuts, say the Democrats. Blame Republican “austerity.” And one more thing: Stop the sequester. As the Center for American Progress put it: “The economy most certainly would have grown at a faster rate were it not for the ongoing political brinksmanship over the debt ceiling and the risk of sharp fiscal contraction in the form of the pending automatic ‘sequestration’ budget cuts.”If you break down the GDP report, you begin to see the problem with this line of argument. Private-sector GDP...

I have been observing over the past months that various indices have been nosing down. Now we have confirmation from the BEA that GDP fell by -0.1% in Q4 of 2012. Here is CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s take on the numbers. This is a big swing and a miss to expectations of +1.1% and a BIG drop from Q3′s print of +3.1%. At least Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) added 1.52% before the Fiscal Cliff surrender. Notes that PCE has been consistently lower after 2007 than before. This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile … or recovery. On the other hand, defense spending fell...

The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus.