Free Republic

President Trump on Friday signed two spending packages totaling $1.4 trillion, averting a government shutdown at midnight. The bills included all 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2020 fiscal year that started Oct. 1. They also included a slew of tax cuts, extending expiring and expired tax breaks and eliminating other taxes that amount to an additional $426 billion in lost revenue, bringing the total cost of the bill to more than $1.8 trillion. The government spent the first quarter of the fiscal year operating on stopgap funding that was set to expire on Friday. Trump reportedly signed the bill...

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry took a shot at Rep. Steny Hoyer on Tuesday, arguing that the Maryland Democrat is part of a culture in Washington that is “making a great living up there…at our expense.” In a speech in Iowa, the Texas governor outlined a plan to slash government spending in part by reducing salaries for lawmakers. Asked about the proposal earlier in the day, Hoyer suggested that Perry was pandering to the Tea Party. “When people like Steny Hoyer come out there and go, 'Is this guy being serious?' Yeah, you better believe it Steny. Americans are serious....

The big scissors of destiny are clicking and clacking their way to our national credit card. If we don't raise the debt limit, so we can borrow more money to pay the interest on the money we borrowed before, the scissors will come down like economic armageddon. And the big shiny credit card that pays for everything gets cut up in two pieces. But never fear. If worst comes to worst, then we still have options. Our government is big. Really big. So big that the 2.15 million government employees should be their own state. The population of government employees...

New figures from the Commerce Department's U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show average compensation for federal employees to be double that of private sector workers for the first time. Federal workers earned an average of $106,579 in 2005, including benefits, or about twice the average private sector compensation of $53,289 with benefits included. This marked the first time federal compensation reached this point; for 2004 the bureau's statistics put it at slightly less than double the private sector's. Without benefits, the difference for 2005 is less. Federal employees earned an average salary of $71,114 while their private sector counterparts earned...

For all Bush’s good qualities, the man can’t not spend money. This republican congress and president has spent an obscene amount of money. I find this behavior to be irresponsible during a time of war, to say the least. I know I’ve ranted about it before at length, but I’ll say it again: the federal government’s spending habits have far exceeded its constitutional mandate, and something has to be done.

My opinion of the current political situation in Washington, D.C.? There are pluses. The war on terrorism is generally going well. The Bush tax cut package. The return of common sense and sound science to environmental issues. Still, the federal government keeps growing in size and reach. Count me among those who thought, with Republicans controlling both Congress and the White House, the GOP would grab the reins of runaway government growth and spending and yell, "Whoa." Cato Institute's Ed Crane tells Human Events that at this time in President Reagan's first term, "the total increase in government spending was...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. About 20 percent fewer federal employees retired in fiscal 2002 than government officials had predicted, the second year in a row that retirements have fallen short of projections. Office of Personnel Management statistics show that 41,905 full-time permanent employees retired last year, a 2.7 percent retirement rate. Two years ago, OPM projected that 54,174 federal workers would retire in 2002. Actual retirements fell short by 23 percent. The lower retirement figures suggest that an expected bulge in retirements that threatens to sweep away much of the government´s institutional knowledge in this...

There may be a few grizzled Republicans from the Gingrich revolution who still carry next to their hearts a laminated pocket copy of the Contract With America. This was the blueprint for the 1994 revolution that swept the party into control of the House. High on the agenda was a call for term limits on politicians. But no Republican was seen waving the contract in the air in protest last week when the new Congress convened with a gavel-quick rules change quietly eliminating the four-term limit on the House speakership. The Republican speaker, Dennis Hastert, was one of the original...