Free Republic

The White House on Monday will unveil its long-awaited $1.5 trillion infrastructure package aimed at overhauling U.S. public works. The plan is structured around four goals: generate $1.5 trillion for an infrastructure proposal, streamline the permitting process down to two years, invest in rural infrastructure projects and advance workforce training. The current system is fundamentally broken and it’s broken in two different ways,” a senior administration official told reporters in a Saturday phone call. “We are underinvesting in our infrastructure, and we have a permitting process that takes so long that even when funds are adequate, it can take a...

Warning: This post contains numbers that may upset anyone who dreams of a smaller government. With the Senate budget deal announced yesterday, congressional Republicans have proved that they aren't merely big spenders: They bear primary responsibility for Washington's complete lack of fiscal responsibility. At the same time, they have reaffirmed the fact that bipartisanship means a determination to spend us into oblivion. The bipartisan budget deal that the senators proclaimed so proudly yesterday would add $300 billion over two years to discretionary spending, not counting emergency funds and other add-ons. It would yet again burst the budget caps that Republicans...

WASHINGTON — Just add cash. That was the ingredient Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill needed to strike and pass a long-term budget deal after months of bitter fighting across and within party lines about how to spend funds that had been limited by budget caps. An $89 billion injection "changes a lot of votes," explained North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of Republicans' arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and an opponent of the bill, hours before it passed. And that figure, an important factor in securing the support of lawmakers from the Republican-heavy states of Texas and Florida, only...

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That’s a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017—our gross domestic product—totaled about $19 trillion. If the Congress spent $4 trillion of the $19 trillion that we produced, unless you believe in Santa Claus, you know that Congress must force us to spend $4 trillion less privately. Taxing us is one way that Congress...

The budget agreement reached by the Republican House and Republican Senate would increase spending over $500 billion over the next two years. It does not appear to cut a penny from domestic spending; in fact, along with military increases, it increases domestic spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. Basically, what happened is that the Democrats held military spending hostage so that they not only protected all their favorite spending programs but got huge increases for them. According to outlines of the budget plan circulated by congressional aides, existing spending caps would be raised by a combined $296 billion through...

House conservatives on Wednesday revolted against a massive bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and bust spending caps, complaining that the GOP could no longer lay claim to being the party of fiscal responsibility. “I’m not only a ‘no.’ I’m a ‘hell no,’ ” quipped Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), one of many members of the Tea Party-aligned Freedom Caucus who left a closed-door meeting of Republicans saying they would vote against the deal. It’s a “Christmas tree on steroids,” lamented one of the Freedom Caucus leaders, Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.). “This spending proposal is disgusting and reckless — the...

NEW DELHI: A turf battle for national highways has erupted with the department of economic affairs (DEA) seeking to take control of the funding for the highway construction programme. After unsuccessfully pushing for corporatisation of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the DEA has proposed changes in the Central Road Fund (CRF) Act to take control of the allotment of fuel cess for infrastructure projects and to decide the priority of expenditure. So far, the road transport and highways ministry is entitled to get the largest share of the CRF, estimated at 41%. The proposal to use 2.5% of...

Top Senate leaders were working Tuesday to finalize a sweeping long-term budget deal that would include a defense spending boost President Trump has long demanded alongside an increase in domestic programs championed by Democrats. As negotiations for the long-term deal continued, the House passed a short-term measure that would fund the government past a midnight Thursday deadline and avert a second partial shutdown in less than a month.

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 — our gross domestic product — totaled about $19 trillion. If the Congress spent $4 trillion of the $19 trillion that we produced, unless you believe in Santa Claus, you know that Congress must force us to spend $4 trillion less privately. Taxing us is...

One of the Defense Department's largest agencies confirmed Monday that it could not account for more than $800 million that had been earmarked for various construction projects.... The results of the audit for the 2016 fiscal year were first reported by Politico. The firm Ernst & Young found that the DLA had erroneously accounted for $465 million worth of projects it financed for the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. The audit found that the DLA had little or no documentation for another $384 million in spending projects....

A Republican congressman says the U.S. government should significantly raise the gas tax in order to fund President Donald Trump's ambitious infrastructure plan. Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania told Bloomberg TV that the tax should be increased by 15 cents per gallon of gasoline. The current rate is 18.4 cents, and hasn't seen a hike since 1993. Shuster said Thursday at a Republican congressional retreat in West Virginia that for the average American, a 15-cent increase would equal the cost of 'a cup of coffee a week that they might have to forgo.' 'Or if you're a Starbucks person, half...

Anyone over the age of 30 has lived through a rather profound shift in federal priorities. A half-century ago, defense accounted for 45 percent of federal outlays at $405 billion. Medicare and health, combining for $45 billion, constituted five percent of the budget. Granted, the budget disparity occurred at the peak of the Vietnam War. But a review of federal budgets during non-war postwar years generally shows defense dwarfing health-related expenses. The entity eating up the largest portion of the federal budget remains the well-fed Department of Health and Human Services, which devours roughly $1.1 trillion. Social Security ($1 trillion),...

California is reeling from its most destructive wildfire season ever, exacerbated Governor Jerry Brown says, by the effects of climate change. Brown says the fires show President Trump is making a mistake by ignoring the facts of global warming. Governor Brown speaks to Bill Whitaker for a report to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Dec. 10, at 7:00 p.m., ET/PT. Brown told Whitaker that President Trump is wrong to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and misguided for calling it a bad deal for America. "That's a preposterous idea, not even a shred of truth in that...

At a measly 17 cents a gallon, Missouri’s fuel tax is woefully inadequate to fund the state’s growing need for transportation-infrastructure improvements. The more the system deteriorates, the worse our state’s business climate will become. Gov. Eric Greitens could put some muscle into his determination to attract business and generate more jobs by embracing a long-overdue fuel tax increase. The Missouri 21st Century Transportation Task Force, created by the Legislature and approved by the governor last year, proposes to boost the tax by a dime, and by 12 cents for diesel, which is only about half of what’s needed to...

Just after the end of World War I, a young Army officer who was born in Denison, Texas, was assigned to accompany an expedition of military vehicles driving across America. The mission was to determine the difficulties the nation might face moving an entire army across the continent. Lucky thing the country was no longer at war. The convoy constantly ground to a halt on unpaved roads, sinking into mud, slipping into ditches and sliding into quicksand. The cross-country journey took 62 days, averaging about six miles an hour, something close to the speed of a leisurely walk. The lessons...

A leaked six-page memo that purportedly outlines some of the key principles of the Trump administration’s long-awaited infrastructure plan is drawing fire from several corners of the trucking industry – especially regarding plans to allow states to broaden interstate tolling efforts and commercialize rest stops.“Our primary concern is that the memo talks about giving states the ‘flexibility’ to toll existing interstates and ‘reconcile the grandfathered restrictions on the use of highway toll revenues with current law.’ We’re gearing up for a big fight over that,” Stephanie Kane, spokesperson for the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates, told Fleet Owner.Related: ATRI: Fuel tax...

SOUTHINGTON, CT — In alphabetical order, a majority of Democratic and one unaffiliated candidates for governor endorsed the idea of installing electronic tolls on Connecticut’s highways and received applause for it. The nine candidates participated in a forum Friday sponsored by the Connecticut Construction Industries Association. The same group sponsored a similar forum in December for the Republican gubernatorial candidates as well. None of the candidates who are still in the “exploratory” phase of their campaigns for governor were invited to either forum — only the declared candidates. The problem: Connecticut’s special transportation fund will start running a deficit in...

Southington — Oz Griebel, a petitioning candidate for governor who once led the state Transportation Strategy Board, told an audience of construction executives and union members Friday that Connecticut must embrace electronic tolling and higher gasoline taxes to preserve and improve its transportation infrastructure.At a transportation forum for Democratic and unaffiliated candidates, Griebel offered the broadest prescription for how to stabilize and grow a special transportation fund now projected to hit insolvency by 2022, leaving the state unable to borrow money to address a growing backlog of transportation needs.Many of the Democrats, unlike the Republican field at a similar event...

WASHINGTON — Expanding and extending Beltway toll lanes over the Potomac River sooner, delays and changes to D.C. Streetcar plans, and changes to widening plans for a number of roads across the region. Those are some of the transportation projects that moved forward to be part of long-range plans that can actually be constructed in coming years. Other projects accepted Wednesday as having the funding to move forward include an additional lane by 2025 on Interstate 95 south just across the Occoquan River to exit 160, and a plan to widen Route 15 from Battlefield Parkway to Montresor Road near...

The United States is effectively bankrupt, but that doesn’t matter to the GOP. Once evangelists of fiscal responsibility and scourges of deficit spending, Republicans today glory in spilling red ink. The national debt is now $20.6 trillion, greater than the annual GDP of about $19.5 trillion. Alas, with Republicans at the helm, deficits are set to continue racing upwards, apparently without end. This flood of red ink will increase. Last year the Congressional Budget Office figured the U.S. was going to again run trillion dollar deficits around 2022. An extra $10 trillion would be added to the deficit over the...