Free Republic

In 2023, the federal government spent $658 billion on net interest costs on the national debt. That total, which grew by 38 percent from $476 billion in 2022, was the largest amount ever spent on interest in the budget and totaled 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Interest costs are on track to become the largest category of spending in the federal budget... In the late 1970s, the increasing national debt and higher interest rates led to a boost in interest costs, which reached a historic high of 3.2 percent of GDP in 1991 (looking at interest costs as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Thursday that the COVID-19 public health emergency will continue through Jan. 11 as officials brace for a spike in cases this winter. The decision comes as the pandemic has faded from the forefront of many people’s minds. Daily deaths and infections are dropping and people — many of them maskless — are returning to schools, work and grocery stores as normal. The public health emergency, first declared in January 2020 and renewed every 90 days since, has dramatically changed how health services are delivered. The declaration enabled the emergency authorization of COVID vaccines,...

Democratic National Committee adviser Cedric Richmond argued Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that President Joe Biden canceling student debt was about “bringing this country together.” Richmond said, “We as a country tell people all the time, education is the best way to lift yourself out of poverty. Then the cost of education is so high that it bars so many people from getting there. Then when they get it, we say that home ownership is the best way to transfer wealth from generation to generation, but they can’t, in fact, buy homes because they’re saddled with student loan debt....

As the summer rolls on, the American economy is staying hot. That’s the main takeaway from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ reports on Friday, which shows that the economy added 164,000 jobs in July. That lined up for the most part with expert predictions. The economy is showing signs of resiliency economy due to sound policies like deregulation and tax cuts. Nonetheless, it’s time to get real about the negative impacts that tariffs and out-of-control spending will have on long-term growth. In July, we saw that the historically low unemployment rate went unchanged, hovering at 3.7%, while the labor force...

I said this after Hurricane Sandy and I'll say it again. Chris Christie has started to grow on me. And no, that's not meant as a joke. Christie's straight talk of late may be just more bullying by a master politician, but it sure does ring true to me. In a parched partisan landscape where every move is done for political gain - "It's why the American people hate Congress," he said - Christie's tell-it-like-it-is rhetoric serves as needed refreshment for the masses. In case you missed it, the enraged New Jersey governor went off on his fellow Republicans Wednesday...

The Federal Pay Gap (Government pay vs. Private Sector)An excellent video from Rightchange.com

Solano Family and Children Services hurting without state budget deal By Melissa Murphy / The Reporter Posted: 09/28/2010 01:03:04 AM PDT Photo --> Kristi Zieska of Suisun City (SEWER SOON CITY) secures her 11-month-old son Bearen Brookshire into a car seat following day care Monday at Solano Community College. (Rick Roach / The Reporter) Lacking a state budget, child care in Solano County is on the brink. Solano Family and Children's Services announced Monday they would no longer be able to pay child care providers in the community because of the long delay in passing a state budget. Children's Network...

Americas: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has gone off the deep end again, claiming the U.S. engineered the Haiti earthquake. It's a laughable malevolence, of course. But given the spectacular U.S. aid effort, it's also a threat. Right now, the dictator's No. 1 foreign policy aim is to discredit the U.S. aid effort in Haiti. Shortly after Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake, Chavez, trying to whip up paranoia, accused America of seeking a "military occupation" there. When that didn't work and U.S. aircraft carriers and hospital ships steamed in to rescue ravaged Port-au-Prince, Chavez told Spanish newspaper ABC that the earthquake was the...

(I posted this a few days ago, but it is a funny distraction from all of the doom and gloom being reported). The Heaviest Element Known to Science Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.z Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected,...

Human nature has a blind spot. We often detect external flaws faster than internal ones—seeing the speck in our neighbor’s eye sooner than the beam in our own, to use the biblical metaphor. This same tendency exists at the national level. Such blindness can be fatal, as Ralph Waldo Emerson warned when he wrote, “A nation never falls but by suicide.” In America today, we readily perceive the dangers posed by international terrorism, hostile foreign regimes, uncontrolled immigration, the global narco-gangsters, etc. It is the threat within that seems to be off the radar screen. The fall of Rome and...

CHESTERFIELD, Mo. -- A St. Louis-based homebuilder is donating a new house to Shawn Hornbeck and his family. McBride and Son Homes said the ranch-style home will be built on the property where Shawn and his parents now live in Richwoods.

A boon in tax receipts has allowed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to lavish money on schools without raising taxes, undermining challenger Phil Angelides' central campaign premise that the state needs more revenue to fund education. The $131.4 billion budget Schwarzenegger signed Friday gives an extra $5.1 billion to education next year, which may be enough to bring California close to the national average for education spending, according to an early estimate by the Legislative Analyst's office. Although it is likely to be temporary, the $7.5 billion tax windfall that enabled the governor's largesse has come just in time for the November...

The condom controversy . . . November 28, 2004 BY MICHAEL SNEED SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Dateline -- Scoopsville . . . Sneed hears Gov. Blagojevich just licked a ticklish situation. *Translation: The gov, who is the doting father of two girls, quietly but decisively rescinded a Department of Health program where colored and flavored condoms were being distributed free of charge to the public. *Quoth a top source: "It was a matter of moral values to him." *To wit: "The governor first read about the program in the Sun-Times and was aghast and so upset that he immediately called for a...

<p>Democrats and a few Republicans yesterday blocked the Senate from approving the $820 billion spending bill left over from last year, saying the overtime-pay and media-ownership provisions attached to the bill would have detrimental effects on millions of Americans.</p> <p>"We should take the time to fix the bill's problems because they affect millions of American families," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat who led the effort to block the bill. "We ask just a few days to improve this bill."</p>