Free Republic

I just thought I'd point out, amidst all the other things going on, that the US Debt to GDP ratio is now greater than it was for Greece back when they had their major financial crisis around 2008. This is what the Biden admin will be starting with and, as all commies do, they will likely massively increase this burden. And since it's a new administration, there's going to be, as usual, the "payback" for any supporters. This occurs with the massive "infrastructure bill" that ALWAYS occurs in the first 100 days of a new crew, and is simply a...

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said Americans need more economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic now and that he will deliver a plan costing “trillions” of dollars next week. He said the proposal includes relief for state and local governments grappling with the pandemic, as well as new support for people who lost their jobs or cannot afford rent. Biden also called for raising the minimum wage to $15, a campaign promise, and for sending out $2,000 in direct cash payments. “We need more direct relief flowing to families, small businesses, including finishing the job of getting people that $2,000 relief...

Congressional leaders passed a new stimulus package meant to alleviate the financial pain of the coronavirus, but it won’t cure all that ails PennDOT’s pocketbook. PennDOT press secretary Alexis Campbell said Monday afternoon it wasn’t clear if the relief plan will cover the $600 million funding gap plaguing PennDOT. Early media reports indicate that $10 billion of financial relief could be distributed to the 50 states’ highway systems, though it’s unclear how much would come Pennsylvania’s way. State Sen. Pat Browne, a Lehigh County Republican and longtime chairperson of the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that transportation-specific wording included in the...

( Waters opening first 8 minutes of this video is a good listen)

California’s fiscal squeeze tightened up Sunday when congressional leaders reached agreement on a $900 billion COVID-19 relief package that did not include direct aid to state and local governments. It means that Gov. Gavin Newsom faces fewer choices in fashioning a 2021-22 fiscal year budget that he must propose to legislators by Jan. 10 and that California cities struggling with budget deficits won’t be getting help from Washington. However, Newsom, et al, have since gotten some good news from California taxpayers. Administration forecasts that revenues would plummet into the abyss as pandemic-spawned recession struck the state proved to be too...

Congress will approve $1.375 billion for a wall along the southern border as part of the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill for the next fiscal year, according to GOP sources. Congress is expected to pass the measure on Monday along with a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill. The White House signaled Sunday evening that President Trump would sign it... Budget law requires the government to spend appropriated funds, but it is unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden will seek a way to circumvent the law or whether Congress would take action to enforce the law. The funding for the wall in...

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan plans to sign a new city budget that will reduce the police budget by 18% despite homicides reaching record highs not seen in a decade. Council members overwhelmingly voted last week to cut funds for police training and overtime and to eliminate dozens of vacant positions within the Seattle Police Department after months of contentious talks. The reductions fall short of the 50% that local activists demanded amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice. The council also decided to transfer parking enforcement officers, mental health workers and 911 dispatchers out of the police department....

Four freshman city council members in Philadelphia vowed to seek budget cuts to the city police department during a week where more than 200 stores were looted in connection with the shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr. The four council members — Isaiah Thomas, Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Jamie Gauthier, and Kendra Brooks — pledged their support for cutting funding to the police during an online call with political activists in the area, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed for a comprehensive COVID-19 relief package, saying he would accept a deal worth more than $2.2 trillion despite opposition to large spending measures among his fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate. “I want to do it even bigger than the Democrats,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News, as talks between House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin approached a Tuesday deadline for reaching a bipartisan deal that could pass Congress before Election Day on Nov. 3. The White House has proposed $1.8 trillion in coronavirus relief, while Pelosi...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is considering a $94 million property tax increase, layoffs for more than 300 city workers and a gas tax hike as part of her plan to close a $1.2 billion budget deficit, sources told the Tribune. Lightfoot also is considering about $500 million in refinancing city debt to help close the deficit, sources said.

California is unlikely to get money to offset budget cuts worth billions of dollars with new coronavirus aid talks stalled in Congress. But those cuts would vanish if the federal government sent the state more money by Oct. 15, which is Thursday. California’s public schools, colleges, universities and state workers’ salaries all stand to be hit.

... The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania a number of years ago developed a comprehensive and substantive platform for evaluating the federal budget. This model was built so that those who govern and those who are governed could have an accurate and reasonably unbiased analysis of federal fiscal activities. It is one of the most useful and effective tools around for figuring out just what the federal government and the various players who lead it in the Democratic and Republican parties are really up to. The conclusion, after reviewing the opening bids put forward by Biden and his...

Nearly 500 mayoral staffers, including Bill de Blasio himself, will be placed on a weeklong furlough in the coming months, as the city attempts to chip away at a $9 billion revenue gap sparked by the pandemic.

His proposal—aside from spending on financial crisis, pandemic—would represent the biggest increase in decades Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination running as a moderate, rejecting the big-government plans of progressive rivals as unaffordable. In the general election campaign, he has rolled out his own multi-trillion-dollar platform that a new study finds would push long-term Washington spending to its highest level in decades. The former vice president has proposed a total of $5.4 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years, according to an analysis published Monday by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan group at the University...

Last week, the U.S. passed a milestone — US federal debt in private hands exceeded 100% of GDP. But does all this debt matter, or is worrying about debt passé? This debate has been going on among economists for a while. One does not need to go to the incoherence of "modern monetary theory" to find support for the view that debt has few consequences. Olivier Blanchard, of MIT and the IMF, in his Presidential Address to the American Economic Association, (excellent summary here) declared that “there may be no fiscal costs” of additional debt. The core of his argument...

Full disclosure: I am a disgruntled U.S. taxpayer whose Venezuelan nephew and niece are in U.S. universities. My wife and I pay everything for their education. Our nephew tried studying chemical engineering in Venezuela but with the on again, off again system under the Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro dictatorships, it was chaotic at best. We brought both kids (young adults) to the U.S. on student visas; enrolled them in English classes; then watched them as they went into community college then the university. Both kids are great students and make their Tia and Tio proud. Even in community college,...

Some Illinois statewide officers are sounding the alarm about potential budget cuts amid the COVID-19 pandemic if the federal government doesn't provide additional money to states, but a public finance watchdog said it’s an opportune time for reforms to shore up spending in the state. ... “There certainly will be significant cuts that will have to be made to life safety, to education, to so many things that I care really deeply about,” Pritzker said. “But this is going to be up to Congress. They're the ones who have the ability to help us.”

We live in a test tube of democracy right now where the age-old adage “deficits don’t matter” is being examined. Back in 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney was reported to have said that phrase to Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill when he worried that budget deficits posted a threat to the economy. Cheney shot back, according to a Chicago Tribune story from 2004, "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the midterms [congressional elections]. This is our due." Debt has become a threat to democracy, because elected politicians are spending us into a potential debt crisis.We are seeing record...

In one of the first signs that a backlash has begun against police protests, a growing number of people are voicing their support for law enforcement, especially in their neighborhood, and shifting away from the “defund” effort sparked by the Black Lives Matter marches. 66% of adults said they oppose cutting the police budget in their community to channel money to social services, the scheme pushed by many liberals. That is up from 59% just last month. 57% of black people oppose defunding police in their home community. For whites, it's 69%, and for other minorities, it is 62%. The...

Austin’s city council voted this afternoon to slash $11.3 million from the city’s police budget. Note the tone in this piece, which is supposed to be a news story from local station KVUE: The proposed budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year of $4.2 billion – the same size as last year’s – adjusts to new fiscal constraints and community expectations, with focused investments in core programs and City infrastructure, according to the city manager’s office. The proposed $1.1 billion general fund budget supports re-imagining public safety through a reallocation of police funding to health, housing, and other critical social services....