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A-Z Index of U.S. Government Departments and AgenciesHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Republican-led efforts to rein in government spending are pointless because there is nothing left to cut in the almost $4 trillion-a-year federal budget.“The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”September 22, 2013

And, for good measure, Microsoft has more cash at hand that Uncle Sam does. [snip] It’s a very fun number, to be sure, but it’s not quite right for a number of economic reasons. It’s true that when you look at the balance sheets then Apple, say, has $160 billion in cash available, that Microsoft MSFT has a little under $85 billion and the Treasury only has $49 billion to hand to keep the government working. But it’s not really true for a couple of reasons that we’ll get to. [snip] The first and most obvious being that the government...

Are we seeing a renaissance in public transit use by Americans? The answer is yes, if you believe a new report from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the transit industry's lobby group. In fact, APTA's report is a textbook example of how deceiving statistics can be. The report states that in 2013, the number of transit trips was nearly 10.7 billion nationally--the highest since 1956, according to APTA. Michael Melaniphy, APTA's CEO, hailed what he called "a fundamental shift" in how Americans choose to get around. But even strong supporters of public transit like Michael Manville, David King and...

DFLers, who generally frown on grandeur as part of their ideology, are going to build themselves a marvelous new office building. They have been deaf to the idea that it is wasteful and that there are countless ways to accommodate the few of them who are going to be displaced by renovation work on the Capitol. To save a few bucks -- cutting it from $94 million to $77 million -- they claim they are going to eliminate an adjoining parking ramp. But that was to have been principally for the public anyway, and the public has been ignored in...

The Obama administration wants to spend $400,000 on a camel sculpture for a new embassy building in Pakistan, according to a report Monday. BuzzFeed broke the news that the State Department has plans to commission the camel sculpture from John Baldessari, an American artist. The art is called, “Camel Contemplating Needle.” According to a government document posted by BuzzFeed, the sculpture is a “large 500lb fiberglass aluminum, stainless steel, acrylic and painted contemporary art piece.” “Public art which will be presented in the new embassy should reflect the values of a predominately Islamist country,” the document states. While the United...

Whatever objections anyone might have to various details in Rep. Paul Ryan's bold new plan to cut $5 trillion of government waste, one fact trumps all else: Unlike Democrats, he offers solutions, not denial. The one thing that stands out in the long-term budget plan unveiled Tuesday by House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan, R-Wis., is his acceptance of a fact Democrats want to hide: You can't squeeze enough extra money out of the rich to pay for our endlessly expanding entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Tax revenue over many decades has been relatively unchanging . And it...

I wish that this were just another bad April Fools' Day joke, but sadly, this story is all too real. Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office a little over five years ago, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have doubled America's publicly held debt, an increase of more than 6.3 trillion dollars: Date                   Debt Held by the Public         Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding 03/31/2014        6,307,310,739,681.66          4,319,566,309,231.42          10,626,877,048,913.08 8/19/2011          12,619,319,113,193.99 ...

"Tighten the belts" is one tired takeaway from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget proposal, released today. The budget proposes to cut $5.1 trillion from projected spending over the next 10 years, getting a lot of its savings from repealing the president's health care law and changing Medicaid. The document, titled again, "Path to Prosperity," is largely for show, as the bipartisan budget agreement authored by Ryan, R-Wisc., and his Senate counterpart, Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., already set discretionary spending levels for the 2015 fiscal year. The budget agreement passed in both the Senate and the House...

“What the hell is this, a joke?” Speaker of the House John Boehner said in reaction to news this week that yet another “deadline” in the Affordable Care Act had been unilaterally delayed by the Obama administration. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is yes, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the joke is on the American taxpayer. Late Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services – which has taken to bragging about “enrollment” numbers that fall millions short of their original goals – announced that the March 31st deadline for open enrollment had become more of a guideline....

Postal employees have spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on gambling, bills and other personal expenses, according to a series of reports by the U.S. Postal Service inspector general. Federal employees may use government credit cards for official travel expenses, but some used theirs to withdraw cash before hitting casinos. Nearly a dozen reports on closed travel card theft investigations were obtained by the Washington Examiner in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records ‘bad behavior’ by debt collectors without investigating complaints The Obama administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) uses subjective criteria for analyzing complaints against debt collectors that ties collectors to “bad behavior” — without actually investigating for realmisconduct, according to a leading trade group. CFPB, an agency created by the Obama administration with the guidance of now-Senator Elizabeth Warren, presented an annual report Thursday that “seeks to justify the CFPB’s existence” but leaves errors unaccounted for, according to ACA International, the country’s largest third-person debt collection industry trade group. CFPB, which prevented Republican Rep. Sean...

Democrats and many in the media routinely complain about money spent in politics, and they regularly lash out at conservatives and big business. Turns out, unions are the top spenders in politics. Twelve of the top 20 political donors from 1989 to 2014 have been unions, which overwhelmingly support Democratic causes, according to an analysis done by OpenSecrets.org's Center for Responsive Politics. Seven of the top 10 donors overall give almost exclusively to politicians or groups on the left. ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for Democrats and progressive causes and features Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer...

I was a fan of 30 Rock, even though it totally had a liberal bent to it I was impressed that they did make an effort to mock both sides and be funny about it.

The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to spend over one trillion dollars in 2015 — but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has never once testified before the Senate’s Budget Committee on either Obamacare’s costs or the president’s budget at large. “The Department of Health and Human Services is projected to spend over $1 trillion in FY2015 under the president’s budget, and health care costs — which today comprise nearly 30 percent of all federal spending — are growing more rapidly than other areas of the budget, especially over the long-term. It would be good for members of the...

As part of its campaign to step up efforts to address climate change, the White House on Wednesday announced the creation of a new website to serve as a one-stop location for the enormous amount of climate data housed at different federal agencies. In the administration’s most high-profile effort, the Environmental Protection Agency in September proposed rules to cut greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. The president also plans to ask Congress for $1 billion in his 2015 budget to establish a “climate resiliency fund” that would finance research, preparation and infrastructure to adapt to extreme weather driven by...

When it comes to federal government spending, we are almost back to normal.  According to the Office of Management and Budget, the federal government spent 20.8% of GDP in fiscal 2013.  That is not a rosy-scenario, computer-generated prediction, but an actual count of dollars already spent.That is the lowest level since President Obama was inaugurated, and down from the peak of 24.4% in 2009 – a drop of over $600 billion in today’s dollars.  It is almost back to the pre-Obama level of 20.2% of GDP in 2008.  And it matches the 24-year average from 1975 through 1998. It is...

Ugghhh. Via The Hill: President Obama on Thursday urged Congress to “do even more” on conservation projects after signing legislation protecting a 35-mile stretch of Lake Michigan’s coastline.“There are currently dozens of conservation proposals before Congress — many supported by Democrats and Republicans — that would protect important lands across the country and help grow our economy,” Obama said in a statement.The Sleeping Bear Dunes conservation law was the first public lands designation by Congress in more than five years — the longest lawmakers had gone without making a wilderness designation in nearly 50 years.While urging lawmakers to take up...

President Dad-Jeans #Normcore is in town this afternoon ahead of an exclusive $32,400-a-head fund-raiser, and he's spending the intervening hours as a man (from out of town) of the people. At the Gap. On 42nd Street. Basically, Obama is channeling The Office's Michael Scott, who once said, "I always like to come to New York a little bit early and hit some of my favorite haunts," like Sbarro for "a New York slice." According to the White House pool report, "President Obama is doing a little shopping for his wife and daughters." But also, politics: In his State of the...

The Health and Human Services inspector general (IG) will launch an investigation into the failed ObamaCare exchange in Maryland, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) announced Monday. “Maryland officials ignored early warning signs and chose to waste and abuse federal taxpayer money by opening up what they knew was a flawed exchange to the public,” he wrote in a statement. “I have confidence that the nonpartisan and independent HHS Inspector General will thoroughly investigate and bring to light how hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on one of the worst exchange roll outs in the country,” he added. An official with...

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz grilled Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on his department's budget during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: "The Department of Defense continues to spend billions of dollars unnecessarily on alternative energy research programs at DoD. The Navy recently spent $170 Million on algae fuel, that costs four times as much as regular fuel," Cruz said. He continued by describing other similar projects in contrast to cuts in the funding for additional combat troops in the United States' armed services.