Free Republic

Editor's note: This column was authored by Jake Grant. We can all remember that dreaded moment in school––you just finished a test and just knew you didn’t do well. The teacher tells you that they’ll be passing back the test, and you dread that moment all day. Congress likely had that feeling leading up to the CBO’s semi-annual report, “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook.” The update includes two important factors, which likely give members that sinking feeling of failing a test: the tax cut passed in December and the massive spending deal approved in February. The outlook was...

Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama, tempers might cool and a deal could still be reached. And had President Obama himself just listened to earlier guidance from Barack Obama, his opponents might have had no cause for either a government shutdown or another debt-ceiling crisis. In 2006, Obama rightly called for an end to the Bush administration's intemperate deficit spending that had resulted in an annual deficit of $250 billion...