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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Mick Mulvaney, a conservative Republican congressman from South Carolina who is known as a budget “hawk”, as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Donald Trump accuses China of 'unpresidented' act over US navy drone Read more In a statement issued on Saturday morning – shortly after Trump tweeted an inflammatory comment about China’s seizure of a US navy drone in the South China Sea – Trump called Mulvaney a “very high-energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and save our country from drowning in red ink”. Trump...

upporters of the health care bill were ecstatic over the finding of the Congressional Budget Office, released last week, that the federal budget deficit will come in lower over the next 10 years should the bill become law. When news of the CBO forecast came in over the airwaves, invariably the reports noted that the CBO is a “nonpartisan” institution. It’s funny that public radio and the mainstream newspapers have a reflex making them call CBO nonpartisan, because a little knowledge of the CBO’s founding and history would dispel this myth right away. The CBO began life in 1974, the...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Jim Nussle, the Iowa Republican named to run the White House budget office, rubbed more than a few Democrats the wrong way in his 16 years in Congress. But Nussle's combative style may be just what President Bush desires for a White House budget director whose tenure will be dominated by battles with the Democratic-controlled Congress over spending. Nussle, 46, left Congress last year after a failed bid for governor of Iowa. His relationship with the president dates to 1999, when Bush was seeking his first term and Nussle endorsed him for the Iowa caucuses, a key...

Bush Plan Could Imperil Tax Write-Off for New York By IAN URBINA December 27, 2004 As the Bush administration looks to revamp the tax code, New York officials say they are particularly worried about one idea being considered: eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes. If the president pursues this plan, New York State would lose about $37 billion per year in federal tax deductions, more than almost any other state, according to Internal Revenue Service data. The change would affect about 3.2 million households in New York, three-quarters of which are middle- and low-income, tax records indicate....