Free Republic

The interest burden of the public debt of the U.S. government has topped $1 trillion already this year, the first time interest costs have crossed the trillion dollar threshold. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, interest payments totaled $1.05 trillion, up 30 percent from a year ago, the Treasury Department said Thursday. This is the first time interest payments have ever climbed about $1 trillion. Despite claims by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to have addressed the U.S. budget deficit, the deficit is up 24 percent in the first 11 months of this fiscal...

The U.S. government for the first time has spent more than $1 trillion this year on interest payments for its $35.3 trillion national debt, the Treasury Department reported Thursday. With the Federal Reserve holding benchmark rates at their highest in 23 years, the government has laid out $1.049 trillion on debt service, up 30% from the same period a year ago and part of a projected $1.158 trillion in payments for the full year. Subtracting the interest the government earns on its investments, net interest payments have totaled $843 billion, higher than any other category except Social Security and Medicare....

We just passed a level of debt-service costs scarcely before even imagined. First, we hit a level of debt years ago that seemed astonishing at the time when the national debt topped one-trillion dollars for the first time in over 200 years of being a nation. Recently, we hit the insane level where just the deficit that adds to the debt each year hit one-trillion dollars a year. We, then, soared almost immediately right past that to where we had a trillion-dollar deficit more than twice a year. And now, today, we finally hit the outer limits where just the...

Unsustainable. The country is going bankrupt. Trump is the only path forward. CBO: Federal Interest Payments Now Exceed Defense Spending... Federal Debt: The Ticking Bomb in Your Wallet.. Grab your pay stub .. and see how much you paid in federal income tax…over 75% of that was effectively your contribution to interest on the debt .. This is where our federal government is today. It has spent so much more than it has taken in that it has racked up a $35 trillion debt. ... over 75% of that was effectively your contribution to interest on the debt last month....

The Democrats let President Joe Biden back into the wild this week after he disappeared during the Democratic National Convention, hid in California and then napped on the beach in Delaware. It was a nearly three-week absence, and his latest appearance in a key swing state proves why they’re happy to have him missing in action. During an event in Wisconsin, Biden finally admitted that the “Inflation Reduction Act” was deceptively named and didn’t actually reduce inflation. In fact, it increased prices through excess spending and was a giant, corrupt handout to the so-called “green” energy industry. It’s why I’ve...

A federal judge in Georgia on Thursday temporarily blocked the Biden administration's proposal to forgive federal student loans for nearly 30 million borrowers after a group of seven state sued. According to the ruling from U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall, the seven states that sued the Biden administration have established a valid case that's likely to prove the Department of Education lacks the constitutional authority to implement the student loan cancellation proposal.

Ramstein Air Base, Germany — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rarely attends the security summits organized by his Western partners in person, but on Friday, he paid his first visit to the sprawling Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in his opening remarks of the latest such meeting that "it is a critical moment" in the war ignited by Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion. The gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group comes days after Zelenskyy's nation suffered its single worst attack of the year, when two ballistic missiles slammed into a military academy in...

Seven Republican-led states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to challenge the Biden administration's latest student debt forgiveness plan, saying the U.S. Department of Education was taking steps to start canceling loans as soon as this week. The lawsuit came less than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration's bid to revive a different student debt relief plan that was designed to lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers and speed up loan forgiveness for some.

Brandon Miller, the high-profile New York real estate developer who took his own life last month, was in even more dire financial straits than was initially revealed at the time of his death. Miller, 43, who flaunted a high-flying Hamptons lifestyle bankrolled by millions of dollars in secret debt along with his influencer wife, Candace, was nearly $34 million in the red, with just $8,000 in his bank account, TheRealDeal reports. Through Candace’s now-defunct lifestyle blog Mama + Tata, Miller presented a fairy-tale life for the world to see, playing the role of the lucky and affectionate head of an...

POTTERVILLE, Mich. — Former President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday that if he is elected, his administration would not only protect access to in-vitro fertilization but would also have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost of the expensive service for American women who need it. "We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment," Trump said before adding, "We're going to be mandating that the insurance company pay." Asked to clarify whether the government would pay for IVF services or whether insurance...

The Supreme Court declined on Wednesday to lift a sweeping block on President Joe Biden’s student loan repayment plan that aims to slash monthly payments and quicken the path to loan forgiveness. The high court turned down a request from the Biden administration to put the plan back in play after lower courts blocked it this summer in a legal challenge to the plan brought by GOP-led states. There were no noted dissents in the brief order

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision to not reinstate President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan. In a brief order, the High Court denied an emergency request filed by the Biden administration to lift a nationwide injunction on the plan that was put in place by a federal appeals court this year. BREAKING: The Supreme Court just ruled against Biden on his plan to unilaterally use tax dollars to cancel student loan debt ... Again pic.twitter.com/jzQsjzORZC — Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 28, 2024 According to several outlets, there were no noted dissents. The Saving...

The Supreme Court declined Wednesday to unblock President Joe Biden’s income-driven student loan repayment program. In a brief order, the Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration’s request to reinstate the program after it was paused by a federal appeals court. The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which lowers monthly loan payments based on income and creates a faster path to loan forgiveness, was challenged by a group of red states. “The Court expects that the Court of Appeals will render its decision with appropriate dispatch,” the Wednesday order states. The Biden administration argued the appeals court’s injunction “severely...

Amazingly, the United States GDP is $16 trillion per year, and our national debt is now $35 trillion. Our biggest national expense is interest service on the debt. But we don’t all know that $36.8 trillion represents all the money in the world. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. A few weeks ago, I looked up how much money there is in the whole world. I did this because I was making the point that if a person is sick enough and close enough to death, then all the money in the world poured into medical care will...

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced Wednesday the state would cancel $100 million in medical debt for nearly 50,000 residents. “Medical debt can follow someone for decades. We are wiping the slate clean for thousands and making a real impact on their lives,” Murphy posted on the social platform X. New Jersey is working with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, which said in a release it is working with the state to leverage more than $550,000 in American Rescue Plan federal funds. Nearly 18,000 New Jersey residents owned $61.6 million to Prime Healthcare hospitals, and more than 31,000 people...

He finally ran out of other people’s money. Disgraced Rep. Jamaal Bowman is begging for cash and painting himself as the victim in the wake of his bruising — and losing June primary fight against Westchester County Executive George Latimer. The race was the most expensive in House history, and Bowman — who campaigned with surrogates who publicly celebrated Hamas terrorism –whined to donors about American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent $14.5 million to help unseat him. “AIPAC spent more money against us than any other House primary – ever. I was public enemy number one and they spent...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is zeroing in on the policy goals closest to his heart now that he’s no longer seeking a second term and will visit New Orleans on Tuesday to promote his administration’s “moonshot” initiative aiming at dramatically reducing cancer deaths. The president and first lady Jill Biden will tour medical facilities, then, at Tulane University, will help announce $150 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Those will support eight teams of researchers around the country working on ways to help surgeons more successfully remove tumors for people facing cancer. The...

Based on data from a U.S. Treasury report, the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. This staggering figure equals 93 percent of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion. Unlike other measures of federal red ink that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government resources, the figure of $142 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and includes the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the financial burden that today’s Americans are leaving to...

Legal battles over President Biden’s various schemes to forgive student debt continue. In July, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals indefinitely blocked the administration’s ultra-generous new student-loan repayment plan, which could have cost taxpayers $475 billion. Additional loan-cancelation initiatives—also certain to face legal challenges—are in the works. But the high drama of loan cancelation has drawn attention away from a more pressing issue in the student-loan system. After the pandemic-induced student-loan payment pause ended last year, the Education Department implemented a one-year transition period to allow borrowers time to ease back into the habit of paying their loans. That so-called...

President Donald Trump’s favorability and approval ratings approached their highest mark on record, according to RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight. The high watermarks suggest Trump is cruising into the November election with increasing momentum. Trump’s favorability rating in the RealClearPolitics average is less than one point below his highest approval rating, marked in April: [cut] Trump’s approval rating in FiveThirtyEight average is also less than one point behind his greatest approval rating, notched in February: FiveThirtyEight Approval Average February 28, 2024: 44.0 percent August 8, 2024: 43.3 percent Trump’s popularity comes on the back of several federal legal battles, a conviction in...