Free Republic

n 2010, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen called the national debt "the greatest national security threat facing our nation." At the time, the national debt was around $13 trillion. Eleven years later, the national debt exceeds $29 trillion—that's bigger than the gross domestic product of the United States! Yet almost no one in Washington is at all serious about cutting spending. The Democratic Party is so devoted to massive spending increases that those Democrats who "only" want to spend $1.75 trillion on the so-called Build Back Better Plan are considered "fiscal conservatives." Republicans may vote...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) claimed that Democrats can only get funding for “their giveaway programs,” apparently including provisions in their roughly $2 trillion social spending and climate bill, from the middle class. “The only place Democrats can get the money to fund all of their giveaway programs is from the middle class, because that's where the money is,” Johnson said Sunday in an interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM. Johnson claimed that even if taxes on corporations were raised, the middle class would ultimately end up shouldering the costs... In the interview Johnson also discussed spiking inflation in...

At some point in the near future—whether a few days or a few weeks—the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will release a complete score of the spending spree legislation Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and House leaders introduced on Nov. 3. The document will represent the first complete CBO analysis of any of the multi-trillion-dollar spending bills that Democrats have spent the fall writing, then re-writing. Two budgetary analyses suggest CBO could find the most recent version of the legislation increases the deficit. A Penn-Wharton analysis of the White House’s policy framework concluded it would spend $1.87 trillion over ten years while...

Only An Idiot Would Believe Congress’s Spending Spree Will Cost ‘Zero’ The Biden administration insists the spending bill independent experts believe could cost $5.5 trillion over a decade will actually cost 'zero.' Is this how stupid they think Americans are?In a word, hardly. Multiple elements in the history of Democrats’ last big spending bill, Obamacare, have turned it into a budget buster, suggesting that Biden’s “zero” legislation will follow the same fiscally irresponsible path.Budget Gimmicks GaloreFirst, the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress employed numerous fiscal gimmicks. While drafting the bill, they delayed implementation of the bill’s main provisions from...

Democrats rush to pass their cradle-to-grave entitlement agenda with little debate or scrutiny. .....snip..... Congress is back in session, and don’t blink or you may miss the plan to transform America in 17 days. Never mind Sen. Joe Manchin’s “strategic pause.” Democratic leaders are moving to ram into law their $3.5 trillion plan for cradle-to-grave entitlements with the narrowest of majorities before Americans figure out what they’re doing. As Nancy Pelosi famously said about ObamaCare, Congress will pass the bill so people can find out what’s in it. ......snip...... Industry lobbyists are feverishly trying to parse the hundreds of pages....

Sen. Marco Rubio is circulating a memo aimed at emboldening Republicans to fight a measure that would distribute even more taxpayer money to nonworking parents.In a sign of the times, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, is circulating a memo aimed at emboldening Republicans to fight a measure that would distribute federal money to nonworking parents, worsening “poverty traps” by extending the new child allowance through the budget reconciliation bill. Rubio’s memo also criticizes the media for characterizing Democrats’ proposal as an “expanded child tax credit” when the money “goes to parents with zero tax liability, or who are simply not working...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The mayor of Oakland, California, on Tuesday announced a privately funded program that will give low-income families of color $500 per month with no rules on how they can spend it. Oakland's project is significant because it is one of the largest efforts in the U.S. so far, targeting up to 600 families. And it is the first program to limit participation strictly to Black, Indigenous and people of color communities. The reason: White households in Oakland on average make about three times as much annually than black households, according to the Oakland Equity Index. It's...

Washington’s welfare-industrial complex both discourages work and leads people to expect that government will solve the problems government has created.Even before President Biden’s new $1.9 trillion COVID “stimulus” package goes into effect, multiple news stories make clear the flaws in its approach. Washington’s welfare-industrial complex, which the “stimulus” will bloat even further, both discourages work and leads people to expect that government will solve the problems government has created.The coronavirus pandemic caused very real economic hardship for millions of American families. But many of the well-meaning efforts to address those hardships—along with welfare expansions Democrats proposed long before COVID hit...

The Congressional Budge Office announced today that the deficit will exceed $1 trillion this year and will continue to widen each year over the coming decade: The U.S. government’s budget deficit is projected to reach $1.02 trillion in 2020, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as the federal government continues to spend much more than it collects in tax revenue.A combination of the 2017 tax cuts and a surge in new spending has pushed the deficit wider. This year would mark the first time since 2012 that the deficit breached $1 trillion, a...

On the campaign trail for the Democratic presidential nomination, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg tries to portray himself as a moderate politician. By running ads against implementing a single-payer health system, Buttigieg would have voters believe he rejects the radical leftism of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. Don’t you believe it. Buttigieg recently released an aging and retirement plan that proposed massive amounts of new entitlement spending, including a program that the Obama administration couldn’t implement in a fiscally sound manner, with very little in the way of specifics to pay for all his ideas. It’s but the latest example of...

Federal spending programs that are "designed to transfer income ... to individuals or families" are set to hit a record $3,223,943,000,000 in fiscal 2020, according to projections published by the Office of Management and Budget. These so-called "payments for individuals" (as the OMB calls them) are projected to account for 67.9% of all federal spending this fiscal year and consume 14.4% of the nation's gross domestic product. In its Historical Table 6.1, Composition of Outlays, the OMB reports the annual amounts spent on "payments for individuals" going back to fiscal 1940 in both current year and constant fiscal 2012 dollars....

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday unveiled a proposal to overhaul and expand Social Security, beefing up benefits with a hike in payroll and investment incomes taxes on some of the country's wealthiest households. The Massachusetts Democrat's plan would make major changes to the popular entitlement program, which currently provides monthly payments to roughly 64 million Americans. Most significantly, it would immediately boost benefits by $200 a month for every Social Security recipient. If the plan were implemented next year, the typical beneficiary would receive $1,595 a month, rather than $1,395. It would also increase monthly payments by $200 for certain...

To the Editor: As a Representative in New Hampshire’s legislature, I hear from my neighbors every day about the challenges their families face. The time for us to elect a new president is fast approaching, and with this in mind, I believe no candidate is better qualified to address the concerns of the nation and New Hampshire than Elizabeth Warren. I am endorsing Elizabeth for many reasons, but especially because of her Universal Child Care plan. Child care and education have always been important to me, and I know firsthand that the scarcity and cost of high-quality child care is...

Who doesn’t love a pay rise? Or a windfall. Or a boost in the return of your savings or investments? Sometimes, however, depending on your circumstances, a marginal pay rise can cost you more than you might think. Take a €5,000 pay rise, for example. The net return to you of this is just €2,400, or €216 a month, if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer. And yet it could put you out of reach of getting a grant for third level, which could be worth about €72,000 for three children; from getting a medical card in your senescence, and discounted childcare....

A proposal to repeal Obamacare entitlements and replace them with grants to states would reduce premiums for individual coverage by as much as 32 percent, according to an analysis by the Center for Health and Economy.The Health Care Choices Proposal also would modestly reduce the deficit, increase the number of people with private health insurance, and cut Medicaid spending, according to Center for Health and Economy.The proposal, the product of national and state think tanks, policy analysts, and others in the conservative community, embarks on a new path to empower consumers and return authority to the states to provide people...

President Donald Trump's top economic advisor has given Democrats fresh ammunition for one of their most used midterm attacks. Asked Monday if the Trump administration would address "entitlement reform," White House chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow said it will "probably" look at "larger entitlements" next year. Entitlement reform generally refers to changes or cuts to large government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or food stamps.

Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced legislation to establish a modest federally funded family-leave program. Mr. Rubio proposes to finance the benefit by requiring recipients to forgo their first three to six months’ Social Security checks. Mr. Rubio’s well-intentioned plan begins by promising a small, carefully targeted benefit and assuring us that it won’t add to the long-run public debt. But history demonstrates that is how costly entitlement programs begin. The pattern of expansion is remarkably common. New programs initially target benefits to a group of individuals deemed particularly worthy at the time. Eventually the excluded come forth to assert that...

( Full Title )While Everyone Was Focused on SCOTUS Pick, US Judge ELIMINATED Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Over the last month or so, people have been wondering who Trump would appoint to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Obviously, that’s an incredibly important news story to follow and it’s nice to know that Trump ultimately picked a solid conservative in Brett Kavanaugh. However, there’s still a lot of other stuff going on that Americans should be paying attention to. For example, an Obama appointed judge recently ruled against work requirements for welfare programs. Here’s more on that. From...

As I watched a woman walking on the narrow shoulder of a busy highway with triplets in a stroller, looking annoyed that she has to deal with all this danger and traffic, I asked myself once again, “Whatever happened to common sense?” Then the question we never ask occurred to me: “WHY has common sense died?” In order to answer it, you first have to ask yourself: What IS common sense? Common sense is basically the application of simple reasoning to everyday life. Common sense is not enough for a complex area of specialization. You can’t use common sense to...

Here are two recent events you might have missed: In March, House speaker Paul Ryan was widely quoted as saying, “The last thing we want to do is pass historic tax relief and then undo that, so we are not going to raise gas taxes.”The next month, in California, Republicans submitted 54 percent more than the required signatures to put on the November ballot a measure that would repeal the 2017 state law increasing gasoline and diesel taxes. Meanwhile, roads in Los Angeles are in such bad shape that it costs the average driver $892 a year in additional vehicle...