Free Republic

The statement said the automatic spending cuts, known in Washington as "sequestration," had hurt the U.S. economy and its military. Obama, the White House said, will seek to "fully reverse" cuts in domestic spending while providing equal spending boosts for military and national security programs.

Moves in Washington may curtail the availability of workplace “flexible spending accounts” for medical and child-care expenses. FSAs can allow families to set aside thousands of dollars of their salaries each year to pay qualifying expenses without that pay ever being subject to federal income tax. If a family in the 33% marginal tax rate sets aside $5,000, for instance, it could save $1,650 in U.S. tax. Still, many families have a love-hate relationship with these benefit programs. Creating anxiety are the “use it or lose it” terms: Employees often have to guess at future expenses, and they forfeit some...

Federal deficits may have been falling since the end of the recent recession, but thanks to spending increases in major health care programs, including Obamacare, deficits are set to explode in 2017, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office. Thanks to the recent recession and President Obama's trillion dollar stimulus, the federal budget deficit reached an all time $1.4 trillion high in 2009. Then, as the economy slowly improved and Obama's stimulus trickled to end, the deficit began to fall. According to the CBO, the deficit will continue to fall to $467 billion in 2016. Immediately...

President Obama's budget for next year will call for a $68 billion boost in spending. It's just another in a line of fiscally irresponsible plans that have been the hallmark of this administration. Obama's official budget plan won't come out until Feb. 2, but he's already leaked the fact that he wants a 7% boost in discretionary programs above the spending caps he agreed to in exchange for getting his tax hikes. He'd split the money evenly between national security and domestic programs. In Obama's mind, more spending only makes sense, since deficits have been tumbling in recent years —...

Conservatives in Congress are reviving the push for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution now that Republicans control both houses of Congress. GOP lawmakers in both chambers have filed several amendment proposals in the early days of the congressional session, breathing new life into an issue that had faded somewhat from the agenda. “I came here with a clear mission: work to get a balanced budget and do my best to reduce the size and scope of government, so that our small businesses and farm families can grow and create jobs,” said Freshman Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) in a recent...

A new project from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is using computer simulated training sessions to teach doctors in Minnesota how to talk to fat kids.The nearly $500,000 study using “virtual role play” to coach doctors is the latest attempt by the federal government to combat obesity.“Obesity in the United States is at historically high levels and is an important health problem,” the grant for the project states. “Interventions targeting children are a high priority because children bear the greatest lifetime health risk from overweight and obesity.”“Health professionals in primary care settings are influential in the lives of families,”...

President Obama wants to toss the sequestration agreement he made with Republcians in 2011 and is proposing an increase of at least $68 billion in the FY 2016 budget. As imperfect as it is, sequestration has been partly successful in reigning in government spending. It could have worked better if Congress wasn't always carving out exemptions. But there's no doubt that there are tens of billions of dollars that would have been spent without it. With tax receipts at an all time high, rather than applying that money to reducing the deficit, the president - as every Democratic president...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said Thursday that he’s still “seriously considering” a run for president but admitted that he was rattled when voters rejected his hand-picked Democratic successor in favor of Republican Larry Hogan. “I can tell you my feelings were hurt,” Mr. O'Malley said in a speech at the University of Chicago, CNN reported. “We had done a lot of really good things in Maryland and in the end, you did not hear much about it during the campaign,” Still, he acknowledged, “I was on the ballot.” Mr. Hogan won a stunning upset victory over Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown,...

The revision which helped create last quarters incredible growth was the forced mandatory costs incurred by the American people from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which accounted for two-thirds of the entire boost in consumer spending. Consumer spending, as opposed to the recording of revenues from actual production and industry which used to be the primary components of economic growth in America, on average accounts for more than 70% of the entire Gross Domestic Product. And if you took out payments made by the American people towards mandatory government healthcare, GDP may have been in negative growth for last quarter,...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) will not be the incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He has been pushed aside in favor of Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo) despite having served as the top Republican on the committee for the past four years. “It came down to a simple question of who was acceptable to President Obama,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken) said. “While Senator Sessions has served competently while our Party was in the minority, the President has made it clear that someone more agreeable must man this vital post going forward.” “The time for contesting the priorities of...

Barring any last-minute glitches — admittedly, no small concern — the House of Representatives will vote sometime Thursday on an omnibus spending bill that takes the place of 11 out of the 12 appropriations bills that Congress, were it working under regular order, would have produced this year. The 1,603-page bill, which was only made public late Tuesday, will fund the majority of the government through the end of this fiscal year in September. The exception is the Department of Homeland Security, which will be funded by a temporary continuing resolution (CR) so that Republicans, when they have control of...

After hours of debate on the massive government spending package, the Senate adjourned until Saturday, pushing a fight that dominated Congress for days into the weekend. The Senate is expected to vote Monday on the $1.1 trillion package, which has already passed the House, Sens. Mitch McConnell and Barbara Mikulski said late Friday. Members from both parties in the Senate are trying to make last-minute changes to the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a procedural move Friday that would set up a vote on final passage in the Senate no later than Monday. In a surprise development, the...

A Nov. 12 memo by State Board of Education President John Austin cited a report issued by a liberal think tank to support the claim that Michigan schools are receiving less money. Austin now says he will "take a look at” the report he cited, which fails to account for billions of dollars that Michigan schools receive. The analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities failed to include about $10 billion of the $19.6 billion from different revenue sources that comprise the annual public school budget. The report also ignores several billion dollars directly from state sources. In...

In a rare break from President Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted the White House on Thursday for putting its weight behind the $1.1 trillion government funding package. In a speech decrying the “cromnibus” on the House floor, Pelosi, the minority leader, noted that Republican defections have given the Democrats significant leverage in the debate and wondered why the White House wouldn't use that power to fight the conservative policy riders that have sparked the Democrats' outcry. “I'm enormously disappointed that the White House feels that the only way they can get a bill is to go along with this,”...

Liberal House Democrats are fighting tooth and nail against President Obama over the fate of an enormous year-end government spending bill. With just hours to go before a scheduled government shutdown, the Democrats launched a lobbying blitz to counter calls made by Obama and other White House officials urging passage of the bill. Leading the charge was Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, who is up in arms over the face that Obama has agreed to accept a GOP rider to undo parts of the 2010 Wall Street reform law as part of...

The House narrowly approved a vital spending bill Thursday night despite deep misgivings among liberals and conservatives alike, sending the measure to the Senate as a funding deadline looms. The bill passed on a 219-206 vote, following an intense lobbying effort by House Republican leaders and the White House. Current government funding technically runs out at midnight Thursday, and lawmakers still are expected to move a stopgap measure to buy time as the Senate considers the main $1.1 trillion spending package. That debate could last through the weekend and potentially into Monday. Passage in the House followed hours of urgent...

The Obama administration made a last-ditch attempt on Thursday to drum up Democratic support to salvage a faltering $1.1 trillion spending bill, just hours ahead of a midnight U.S. government shutdown deadline. Administration officials from President Barack Obama down to staff at the Department of Education were phoning Democrats in the House of Representatives to ask them to set aside objections to a financial provision and pass the measure to fund most of the government through September.

<p>Congressional leaders unveiled a massive $1.01 trillion spending bill Tuesday night that will keep most of the federal government funded through September.</p> <p>The legislation is expected to pass in the coming days and will allow the new Republican- controlled Congress to clear the decks of lingering spending issues, while setting the stage for a prolonged fight with President Obama over immigration policy.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional negotiators resolved policy disputes to reach a deal for a $1.1 trillion spending bill on Tuesday but still expected to need a stop-gap extension to avoid a U.S. government shutdown at midnight on Thursday. House of Representatives Republicans were preparing to pass a short-term funding extension of one to two days to allow the Senate more time to clear procedural hurdles that could drag final passage past the deadline. The snags added some drama to a spending bill that appeared to be cruising toward passage, despite demands from conservative Republicans to withhold spending from President Barack...

The goal is to have the massive measure ready by late Monday