Free Republic

Want to understand why our nation faces a $31 trillion national debt and few politicians willing to do something about it? A recent Politico story provides a helpful guide.While the press and the left (but I repeat myself) view catastrophic climate change as a certainty — a prism that makes leftists’ big-government solutions to the “climate crisis” plausible — it takes a far more skeptical tone toward conservative proposals for entitlement reform. In this vein, Natalie Allison’s story about conservatives supporting the “privatization” of Social Security and Medicare uses several tactics to marginalize lawmakers courageous enough to propose reforms that...

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...

This November, Proposition CC will ask Colorado voters to permanently lift the spending limits in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, but the political stakes embedded in the question are even more consequential. The ballot question represents the most significant overhaul to TABOR since voters approved the constitutional provision in 1992, and serves as a test case for a broader Democratic effort to overhaul how the state levies taxes and spends money. If voters approve Prop. CC, Democratic leaders and their allies believe it would give them momentum for a broader agenda to revamp property tax rates, increase taxes for key...

This year, Sen. Rand Paul's (R–Ky.) effort to balance the federal budget didn't even get a floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. Paul's so-called "Pennies Plan" failed a procedural vote on Monday evening when only 22 senators voted in favor of a cloture motion that would have brought the bill to a final vote. A majority of Republicans and all Democrats voted against proceeding to a floor vote on the bill. It's another sign that fiscal responsibility is all but dead in Congress, even as the national debt heads toward record highs and the budget deficit approaches $1 trillion this...

John and Ken speak to Marc Joffe of the California Policy Center (http://californiapolicycenter.org/) in regard to these recent articles on the subject of California's fiscal emergency: ➤ California’s Total State and Local Debt Totals $1.3 Trillion (http://tinyurl.com/hh8qbss) ➤ Can California’s Economy Withstand $1.3 Trillion of Government Debt? (http://tinyurl.com/znjpu9b) One aspect Marc Joffe mentioned would be a way to overcome this "debt" is to increase California's population... however, we see through some recent stories... ★ California Won't Fall Into The Sea -- It's Moving To Texas Instead (http://tinyurl.com/ztyrxae) ★ The Exodus of People Moving Away From California Is Becoming an Avalanche...

The ten most financially sound states in the country are all heavily Republican, while all but one of the ten worst states are heavily Democratic. That’s according to a ranking of states in a new report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University The report — “Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition” — used official government data to measure the states’ ability to pay short-term bills and meet longer-term obligations, such as public pensions or health care costs, using five separate measures.

Pop quiz: What do the most fiscally sound states have in common? Good weather? Oil? Blind luck? Or is it conservative policies such as keeping taxes low, regulations reasonable and spending under control?

America’s high business taxes are discouraging investment and prompting companies to move their headquarters abroad. Most policymakers say they favor cutting the corporate-tax rate to help fix the problem, but reforms are stuck in Washington gridlock. Thank goodness for the states. Many governors are championing fiscal reforms, and business tax cuts are one area of progress. We document these reforms in Cato’s new “fiscal report card,” which assigns grades of “A” to “F” to the governors based on their efforts to restrain government since 2012. This year we awarded “A” grades to four governors: Pat McCrory of North Carolina signed...

As U.S. officials and private investors become more concerned about the financial fate of Puerto Rico after nearly a decade of economic decline, attention has turned to an $8.5 billion bank, which may be the key to whether this island of 3.7 million people flourishes or self-destructs. Puerto Rico's recession is now in its eighth year. The closely watched Economic Activity Index has plummeted from 155 to 128; the unemployment rate, at 14.1%, is more than twice that of the mainland U.S., and the total number of workers has dropped from 1.3 million at its peak in December 2006 to...

David Corn of Mother Jones has assembled a number of clips from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) over the years criticizing former President Ronald Reagan for the budgets he signed into law. In some cases, Paul declared Reagan worse on budgetary issue than his predecessor, former President Jimmy Carter.

On June 17, Barack Obama had one of his most awesome reality TV events of the year when he fired central bank chairman Ben Bernanke on PBS with liberal mope and host Charlie Rose moderating. “He essentially fired Ben Bernanke on the spot and gave him a fairly tepid testimonial afterward,” said former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, in an interview on CNBC the next day. And the bankers have been in revolt ever since. The government, meanwhile, has revised the economy’s performance downward. The newest do-over by government economists comes three months after they gave the economy one of the...

This past Friday's jobs report showed continued strength in jobs numbers for state and local governments, led by the latter. This year, local governments have added 45,000 jobs, which may not sound like much, but municipalities had lost jobs in nearly every preceding month going back to the summer of 2008. (Total US nonfarm employment, by contrast, has been growing since February 2010).   But just as stability has returned to the state and local employment picture, borrowing costs have started to climb.  Ben Bernanke's June speech that the Fed is considering taking its thumb off the scales of...

After two full election cycles where Americans debated the need to reign in spending, debt and the dubious future of entitlement programs and our nation’s fiscal viability, has the bloom started to come off the rose? A new poll from Gallup has some potentially worrying portents in the top lines. Forty-one percent of Americans now characterize their economic views as “conservative,” or “very conservative,” the lowest since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and on par with where views were in May 2008. This year’s downtick in the percentage of Americans identifying as economically conservative has been accompanied by...

In recent days, I have learned of some people who voted for Barack Obama. These are people whom I know personally, but would have thought they would have never fallen for the feel good "hope and change" Obama was selling in 2008. I was wrong in that assumption, but knowing these people as I know them, I can not help but wonder how they were taken in by the man currently living in the White House. Be that as it may, we now have a task in front of us. We need to show everyone how badly Barack Obama...

Here is the rub. As mentioned, the FOMC sets monetary policy for the nation, for all 50 states—its influence is uniform across America. The same rate of interest is charged on bank loans to businesses and individuals in Texas as is charged New Yorkers or the good people of Illinois or Californians; Texans pay the same rates on mortgages and so on. Why is it that the Texas economy has radically outperformed the rest of the states? A cheap answer is to revert to the hackneyed argument that Texas has oil and gas. It is true that we produce as...

Last Sunday, Greece and France held national elections. Both would determine the countries’ future fiscal course of action. In Greece, voters rejected the two ruling parties that had voiced support for the European Union austerity program. That program was instituted in an effort to keep the EU solvent after Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, known as the PIGS, incurred massive debt as the result of their “cradle to grave” social programs. Since Greece was one of the EU’s original “problem children,” this could probably have been expected. In France, socialist Francois Hollande was ushered in, while right-of-center Nikolas Sarkozy was...

Economists are rightly starting to warn that the United States faces a worrisome “fiscal cliff” at year’s end. The blunt spending cuts mandated by the 2011 compromise on the debt ceiling — and the failure of the “supercommittee” that followed — along with across-the-board tax increases would derail the U.S. recovery and undermine the well-being of the global economy. We should be avoiding the edge of this cliff — and politicians should not believe that they have until the end of this year to act. In the next few months, possibly within weeks, markets here and abroad will be looking...

PORTLAND, Maine - President Barack Obama accused Republicans of clinging to economic policies that preceded the Great Depression and the more recent economic downturn, saying his rivals are showing signs of "madness." Raising campaign cash in Maine on Friday, March 30, Obama said Republicans want to return to economic policies that would let Wall Street play by its own set of rules and allow insurance companies to roll back health coverage.

Santorum has arguably claimed the mantle of GOP front-runner by virtue of winning the most primaries and polling at or near the front of the pack in Michigan and Arizona, where the next contests take place. So his rivals are taking aim at his record, mainly by attacking his fiscal policies. Ron Paul has gone perhaps furthest in this regard with his latest ad, which suggests the former senator supports ruthless dictators and abortion services. The video only mentions spending, but it’s actually a two- or maybe three-for-one for all intents and purposes, since it questions the candidate’s social and...