Free Republic

Just because the government raises taxes, doesn’t necessarily mean it will raise more revenues. The Biden administration is discovering that the hard way. In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included a new tax on companies’ financial statement income, new IRS funding to increase audits, an excise tax on stock buybacks, and more taxes on natural gas, oil, and coal. To top it off, certain Trump administration business tax cuts simultaneously have been phasing out. On paper, that adds up to more than $60 billion in tax hikes in 2023. Yet, as...

Tanuj Deora works in the energy industry - specifically to decarbonize energy systems. That's the technical term for efforts to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. It's a vast and complex problem, but Deora and his family try to do their part. At their home in Northwest Washington, they have solar panels, LED lightbulbs and a hybrid minivan. In the kitchen, though, the issue of fossil fuel usage was more personal. Their natural gas cooktop was making Deora sick. "I would get a headache whenever the gas was running," he says, so he started looking into replacing their gas stove....

In lieu of additional revenue obtained from auditing taxpayers, how do lawmakers now propose to fund increased federal spending on roads and bridges? Through a budget gimmick.After a conservative backlash, Republican senators negotiating an infrastructure bill have objected to an increase in funding and authority for the IRS. In lieu of additional revenue obtained from auditing taxpayers, how do lawmakers now propose to fund increased federal spending allegedly on roads and bridges? Through a budget gimmick.In short, Congress now wants to repeal a rule that 1) hasn’t gone into effect and 2) likely won’t ever go into effect, so it...

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is renowned for his policy wonkery and strict Catholicism, not a cutting sense of humor. So when he took the stage a few months ago at Washington’s annual Gridiron dinner, one jab stood out in particular. “The Menendez scandal is disturbing,” Jindal said, referring to reports (later proved untrue) that Senator Robert Menendez had paid for sex in the Dominican Republic. “Soliciting prostitution is completely unacceptable. We would never put up with that in Louisiana.” The butt of the joke was obvious to everyone in the room. Six years earlier, Louisiana’s junior senator, David Vitter, confessed...

President Obama's budget released Tuesday claims to reduce deficits by trillions of dollars, but a closer look at the details reveals that the deficit reduction is dependent on a number of gimmicks.Overall, Obama's budget for fiscal year 2015 still projects deficits of $4.9 trillion between 2015 and 2024 if all of his policies are adopted. But that is about $3 trillion less than what the Congressional Budget Office is projecting for the period and $2.2 trillion less than what the White House's own Office of Management and Budget is estimating for the period if there are no changes to current...

Joseph J. Dioguardi is a former member of Congress from New York and Certified Public Accountant. Dioguardi in his book “Unaccountable Congress: It Doesn’t Add Up” lists the top twelve gimmicks Congress uses to hide the true costs of government from the people. These gimmicks have been used for decades by both Republican and Democrat administrations, Congresses under both parties and government agencies. The idea behind these gimmicks is to “[K]eep Americans in the dark (or – I should say – in the red!), writes, Dioguardi. Dioguardi calls this “plastic budgeting”. As David A. Stockman, former Director of the Office...

BETTENDORF, Iowa -- Previewing an address he will deliver Tuesday morning in Eastern Iowa, Gov. Rick Perry on Monday night promised to "uproot" the three branches of government and institute wide-reaching reforms throughout the federal apparatus. "Tomorrow I'm going to unveil a plan to uproot all three branches of government and overhaul Washington," he said in an address to the Scott County GOP, adding that his plan will "touch each branch of government, because they each have contributed to the demise of America." Perry said his reform proposal will target "lifetime federal judges who arrogantly rewrite our laws from the...

President Obama backed a proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to avert a debt-limit crisis by trimming $2.7 trillion of government spending without raising new taxes. White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement that Reid's proposal was a "reasonable approach that should receive the support of both parties." Obama, meanwhile, will address the nation at 9 p.m. EDT Monday about "avoiding default and the best approach to cutting deficits." Reid's plan, unveiled Monday, does not include any new tax revenue, as President Obama has demanded. But unlike the GOP plan, it would extend the debt ceiling into...

California's state workforce is so vast and diverse that a journalist can quickly get into trouble making blanket assertions about it.But not this time.State employees love it, love it, LOVE IT that Controller John Chiang decided a new voter-adopted law prevents him from paying legislators because they missed the June 15 deadline to pass a balanced budget. For the last few years, delayed budgets fired up talk about whether state workers would be paid full wages on time.In 2008 and again last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to hold their pay to the federal minimum wage while deadlocked budget talks...

Two days before the state budget deadline and with no sign of a deal, Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday he would consider using accounting gimmicks to balance California's budget deficit, despite his longstanding promise not to. His changing rhetoric, following months of failed talks with Republicans, comes as Brown braces for the Legislature to send him a budget that does not include the tax revenue he is seeking. "I will take a very hard look at it," Brown told reporters at the Capitol. "We've had discussions with the leadership, and I've told them the way I see things, and we'll...

Brown’s decision to sell, among other state properties, the 24-acre multiple-home estate Ms. Streisand donated to the State of California and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in November, 1993: “While I had hoped that the Ramirez Canyon property I donated to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy would have been used for a state-of-the-art Environmental Conference and Study Center as was originally intended, I understand Governor Brown’s tough decision given the severe budget shortfalls that California is facing. I only hope that there is little disruption to the residents of Ramirez Canyon through this potential transition and that whatever entity does...

I can't remember a more depressing week in Washington. The Republicans boasted a heroic accomplishment: slashing $38.5 billion from the budget, purportedly the largest cuts in history. But strip away the gimmicks and shine a light on the shadows, and it turns out the real cuts amounted to $352 million, or less than 1 percent of what was promised. America borrows $4 billion a day. So we likely borrowed more than we cut in the amount of time the GOP leadership spent bragging about its "victory." It is a dismal, dreary, mope-inducing performance that makes one wonder what the point...

This is Bernie Madoff Accounting. And the same fate that befell Madoff's investors will one day befall the American people. The Democrats only count the costs they want to count, and simply pretend the rest don't exist, or assure that they somehow shouldn't be counted. Positive numbers from unrealistic expectations show up on one side of the ledger, while negative numbers representing massive government and personal spending are ignored. This article will demonstrate the REAL cost of ObamaCare. And what we will find is that it will sneeze chunks bigger than the $940 billion that the CBO score pitches. It's...

Congressman Eric Cantor, R-Richmond, said the Senate healthcare bill is full of gimmicks and that Democrats are attempting to “ram” it through by bending the rules and confusing the American people. The House Minority Whip, Culpeper’s congressman, issued the following statement Monday afternoon: “There is no doubt that Americans want health care reform, they just don’t want the trillion dollar health care overhaul complete with kickbacks that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve, which is why Speaker Pelosi is having such trouble securing the votes needed to pass it. Americans have made it abundantly clear that they prefer incremental health...

Don't buy the claim that the Sen ate health-care bill is substantially more moderate than the House measure. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi's legislation is even more onerous than the package created by Sen. Max Baucus and now championed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the larger story is how similar the two Democratic bills are. First, we need to get past the misleading accounting games. Each bill is routinely "scored" for its 10-year costs from 2010-19. Yet this includes several years when the spending wouldn't yet have kicked in. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully 99.9 percent of the...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to completely eliminate the state’s welfare program for families, medical insurance for low-income children and Cal Grants cash assistance to college and university students.

A year ago, California voters grew resentful enough of the state's fiscal condition to toss out Gov. Gray Davis. Arnold Schwarzenegger stormed into office on a promise to cure the state's fiscal ills. He did so in his first budget by proposing $15 billion in borrowing to cover the general fund deficit, which the voters approved, and with other budget practices that have become part of the budget-balancing process by his predecessors, such as taking from other, dedicated state funds. After considerable sound and fury, the current budget was enacted, and the state breathed a bit easier. Now comes the...

Same old game, just new players. Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised during last fall's recall election to end the smoke and mirror state budgeting game, the plan he released last week includes many of the gimmicks he vehemently criticized. He described former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' recent budgets as "shell games" that depended on borrowing and shaky financial assumptions. Guess what? So does Schwarzenegger's $99 billion budget. The largest chunk of proposed borrowing will come in March, when voters will be asked to approve a $15 billion bond measure to keep California from toppling over the brink of bankruptcy. Like...

<p>Carried into office by voter disgust with fiscal flim-flam, Gov. Schwarzenegger vowed to look the state's budget deficit squarely in the eye and take the steps needed to tame it within his first 100 days.</p> <p>He offered a budget proposal Friday that he said delivered on that promise.</p>

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.WASHINGTON - (KRT) - The star of the 2004 presidential campaign may not be a Vermont peacenik or a four-star general. It could turn out to be a small-town, blue-collar guy who loves family, God, country and very fast cars. Meet the NASCAR Dad, the successor to the Soccer Mom, the well-off suburban woman whom politicians chased in 2000. Political strategists think he's holding the key to victory next year, although many people who know both politics and NASCAR find the concept a bit daft. The term NASCAR Dad was coined last...