Free Republic

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged a first ever $1 trillion defense budget proposal on Monday, a record sum for the military. Trump, during a press event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the upcoming budget would be “in the vicinity” of $1 trillion Hegseth went further in an X post on Monday evening, saying Trump “is rebuilding our military — and FAST.” “COMING SOON: the first TRILLION dollar @DeptofDefense budget,” Hegseth posted from his personal account. “(PS: we intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely — on lethality and readiness).” The number would be a...

Then-Gov. Pete Wilson coined, or at least adopted, the phrase "autopilot spending" in the early 1990s as he struggled to close an immense state budget gap and confronted political and legal barriers that made it nearly impossible to reduce spending even when revenues had plummeted. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has voiced the same complaints, most recently this week when he proposed a budget for the 2006-07 fiscal year. But an exchange with reporters also underscored that while Schwarzenegger complains about automatic spending, he's also an ardent advocate of it. At one point, he renewed his pitch for gaining unilateral authority to...

Demolition of the old Carquinez Bridge will cost more than three times as much as the state estimated, the latest example of a huge Caltrans cost overrun on a Bay Area bridge project. A committee of the Bay Area Toll Authority reluctantly agreed Wednesday to allot $49.7 million for the demolition and removal of the original span of the bridge, a job that state engineers had said would cost $16 million. The 1927-vintage span, considered too fragile for seismic strengthening, was replaced in November 2003 by the Al Zampa Bridge.