Free Republic

The New York City Council adopted a massive $112.4 billion spending plan Sunday in a 46-3 vote – with the dissenting votes coming from three Democratic socialist representatives. Mayor Eric Adams – who negotiated the deal with Council leadership – applauded the action, which saw the only opposition from council members Tiffany Caban, Shahana Hanif and Alexa Aviles. The new fiscal year 2025 budget runs from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. “Our administration’s mission is clear: Protect public safety, rebuild our economy, and make this city more livable — and this budget is a direct testament to that...

Michigan Democrats passed a sweeping $83 billion state budget, cutting teachers’ pensions and school-safety spending to fund ambitious new business projects — and more than $330 million for lawmakers’ pet projects. Thursday was a difficult day for Republicans, who “were given 45 minutes roughly to read the bill,” a 1,000+-page document, according to state Rep. Ann Bollin. **SNIP** With their extensive control of Michigan’s government bodies, Democrats are earmarking massive funds to specific businesses, as well. As state Rep. Mike Harris said, “The budget earmarks $17 million for zoos, $2 million for a boxing gym, $5 million for a theater,...

A record-breaking $111-plus billion budget that will reverse the majority of cuts pushed by Mayor Eric Adams in recent months has been reached in a handshake deal with City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams set to be announced Friday, sources told The Post. The two Adamses (no relation) — whose rivalry has become increasingly bitter — will shake hands on the fiscal year 2025 budget agreement during an afternoon event, sources said. The full scope of reversals had yet to be unveiled, but the $58 million funding restoration to libraries touted by the mayor and speaker Thursday night will bring seven-day...

The Congressional Budget Office has underestimated Medicaid spending by billions of dollars every year for some time now and a new law that reduced illegal immigration in Florida may explain why. Since 2000, the CBO has underestimated an average of $15 billion a year of Medicaid spending, while often overestimating Social Security and Medicare spending. The latest CBO budget outlook bumped up Medicaid spending estimates yet again, this time by another $50 billion over the next 10 years. But judging by its recent performance, the new projections will still be too low. Something in the Medicaid program is adding tens...

Just when you think things couldn’t get worse on the fiscal front, Washington once again manages to exceed expectations. One couldn’t help but get that impression from the latest update to the nation’s (poor) budget situation.The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released revised estimates of the nation’s budget and economic outlook over the coming years. While the prior version of the document, released in February, didn’t exactly show a fiscally responsible federal government, the intervening four months saw lawmakers digging taxpayers — that’s you and me — into an even deeper hole.More Spending by Congress and BidenOverall, CBO increased the...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and state legislators struck a deal this weekend to close a $47 billion budget deficit — and agreed to spend $12 million to implement proposals to provide reparations for slavery. The Sacramento Bee reported: The budget agreement California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders announced Saturday sets aside $12 million to help the state implement a series of reparations-related bills lawmakers hope will pass this year.

The Congressional Budget Office reports the 2024 budget deficit will near $2 trillion.. In 2024, the federal budget deficit is estimated to reach nearly $2 trillion, according to new projections released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week. In February, the agency predicted that the deficit would only be $1.58 trillion. However, spending increases have caused the projected deficit to increase by $400 billion, a staggering 27 percent hike. According to the CBO, 80 percent of the spike in the deficit can be blamed on four sources of government spending. The largest source, responsible for $145 billion of the...

So much for Biden’s bragging that “he” cut the US budget deficit by half. Actually, Biden regularly confuses the national debt with the national deficit. Last week, the Treasury reported that in May, the US government collected $323.6 billion in tax receipts, it spent more than double that, or some $670 billion… … resulting in a May budget deficit of $347 billion – about $100 billion more than consensus expected – and the second biggest May deficit on record, with only the Covid crisis peak of May 2020 higher. As a result of the blowout May deficit, the cumulative fiscal...

Everyone is posting that the annualized number is about $1.059 trillion. However the interest on the debt for just May 2024 was $103 billion. Debt will grow another $2 trillion or more in the next 12 months. We are already on pace for over $1.2 trillion in annualized payments on the debt. Within the next few years, interest on the debt will exceed Social Security payments and become the largest item in the budget. ... US federal interest payments now exceed the defense budget. ... We have crossed the Rubicon.. It will never be paid down! NEVER.. And this administration...

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong says we are going to have a wild close to 2024. Let’s start with Biden’s new job approval rating from Martin Armstrong’s “Socrates” program, which is now only 6% to 7%. Armstrong explains, “It’s the old story of draining the swamp, but now, the swamp is an ocean. This is completely crazy. The cases against Trump show you how desperate they are here. The reason they want Biden, and they even blocked RFK Jr. from getting on the Democrat ticket, the reason they want him is he is just a sock puppet....

Now law is the $750 million in tax increases to fund Illinois’ largest spending plan in state history. But so is a measure increasing the state’s debt by $8 billion while giving schools more taxing authority. Pritzker signed the $53.1 billion budget Wednesday. Friday, he signed the tax measure that includes capping the credit businesses can get for claiming net operating losses and capping the discount retailers get for collecting and remitting sales taxes. Hours later, Pritzker defended another tax increase, the tiered tax on sports betting companies. “In fact, if you look at what we did, really our focus...

Rampant inflation and President Joe Biden’s favoring of left-wing policies are contributing to a lack of progress on his landmark infrastructure law, analysts told the Daily Caller. Two and a half years after Congress ratified the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November of 2021, there has been very little concrete progress on new roads or bridges. The trillions of federal dollars the Biden administration has poured into the economy may actually be hindering the completion of the infrastructure that Biden promised to build, analysts told the Caller.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., proposed slashing budgets regarding public safety, such as prisons and law enforcement, as the state simultaneously grapples with a crippling deficit and doubles down on climate goals relating to equity. The California Democrat's proposed budget, released in May, notes that "difficult decisions" are necessary to address the estimated $27.6 billion deficit, which is projected to continue for years to come. It includes a $97 million cut to trial court operations, $10 million to the Department of Justice's Division of Law Enforcement and more than $80 million to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A Newsom spokesperson...

School systems complain about the rising costs of handling illegal immigrants. Here’s a spotlight on two cities, one in Massachusetts, the other Colorado.In Stoughton, Mass., students arrive with traumatic pasts and little English. The same is happening in Denver.The Wall Street Journal comments on The Massive Immigration Wave Hitting America’s ClassroomsMillions of migrants, most seeking asylum, have crossed the border in recent years and have been allowed to settle in the U.S. until a federal immigration judge decides their fate, a process that can take years. Among the record numbers, federal data suggest, are as many as one million children...

The United States has long had the world’s biggest defense budget, with spending this year set to approach $900 billion. Yet this spending is rapidly being eclipsed by the fastest-growing portion of federal outflows: interest payments on the national debt. For the first seven months of fiscal year 2024, which began last October, net interest payments totaled $514 billion, outpacing defense by $20 billion. Budget analysts think that trend will continue, making 2024 the first year ever that the United States will spend more on interest payments than on national defense. ... Just two years ago, interest payments were the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has turned to climate change to explain how the state went from a $100 billion surplus two years ago to a $28 billion deficit, which would have been even higher prior to drastic actions last month. As CalMatters noted, deficit estimates ranged from $38 billion to $73 billion: That prompted Newsom and the Legislature to take “early action” last month to reduce the deficit by more than $17 billion ahead of the regular budget process. Their plan included some program cuts, but mostly relied on new revenue, internal borrowing and funding delays and shifts for...

On May 6th, the 2024 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund was released. It’s a very long title for a report that simply tells us the financial state of Medicare and project the future financial solvency of the program. One claim of the report is Medicare solvency has been extended 5 more years than the 2023 projection, and won’t go broke until 2036. But as with all things involving the Biden Administration, that isn’t the entire story.The 261-page report should be a purely factual...

Voters by a wide margin seek action against National Public Radio (NPR) after a whistleblower last month came forward and accused the station of liberal-biased news coverage, a poll shows. Fully 44 percent of respondents to a DailyMail.com/TIPP survey said the broadcaster should lose its taxpayer cashflows over its political leaning. Another 26 percent of more than 1,400 US adults said it should keep its government support; and 31 percent said they were not sure.

As House Republicans consider new legislation to guard against the threat of non-citizens voting in elections, urgent action is also needed to stop the federal government from raiding Americans’ pocketbooks to fund welfare and other programs for illegal aliens. While estimates vary widely, there are likely at least 15 million individuals illegally residing in the United States following four years of the worst border crisis in history under Joe Biden. According to some calculations, the number of illegal aliens in the country has already more than doubled under Biden, and could double again if he wins another term. The tragic...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday announced a $44.9 billion deficit in his revised proposal for the 2024-2025 state budget, while proposing a series of cuts to close the spending gap. The shortfall includes $27.6 billion detailed in his proposal, plus $17.3 billion in cuts that the State Legislature proactively instituted a few weeks ago. The governor proposed a $288.1 billion topline budget figure, down from Newsom’s initial January proposal for a $291.5 billion budget. Although the total $44.9 billion deficit is higher than the $37.9 figure projected in January, Newsom’s revision involves withdrawing $4.2 billion from the state’s...