Free Republic

After Joe Biden’s first year in office, NOT ONE participant in Face the Nation’s focus group believes America is in a better place. CBS host Margaret Brennan was stunned when the entire panel of six participants, including Biden voters, said America is on the wrong path. “During the course of the pandemic, “Face the Nation” has been listening to Americans, through Zoom, to get their thoughts on COVID, the economy and how the government is handling it all. On Friday, we checked back in with six of them,” host Margaret Brennan said. “Who feels like we are in a better...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is having trouble with the curve (yield curve, that is). It keeps inching up, meaning that Treasury’s cost of debt financing is inching up too. As Treasury yields keep rising, so does the problem of financing the massive Federal debt load. Here is a chart showing the interest outlays in the Federal budget against the cost of Federal funding at the 10-year and 2-year tenors. Now, The Fed is predicted to raise their target rate 4 times in 2022 (according to Fed Funds Futures data) and it looks like a whopping 100 basis points (or 1%)....

resident Biden on Friday sought to highlight the progress implementing the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law he signed 60 days ago, even as other elements of his legislative agenda have stalled recently. In remarks from the White House, Biden described a government-wide effort over the past two months to get funds flowing to help repair bridges and highways as well as expand access to broadband. “There’s a lot of talk about disappointments and things we haven’t gotten done - we're going to get a lot of them done, I might add - but this is something we did get done and...

We have repeatedly pointed out that the United States remains the only nation on the planet willing to damage its economy in the name of “climate change.”‘Greenwash’: The US Is the Only Country Actually Engaged in Economic SuicideThe Latest Round of Global Climate Lie ‘Pledges’ from International PollutersDemocrats’ Climate Change Predictions May Not Materialize – But Their Taxes Undoubtedly WillSometimes the international hypocrisy is so glaring it’s hysterical (in both senses of the word).China’s Slave Labor, Coal-Fired, Mass-Subsidized Solar Panels Dominate the PlanetDomestic “climate change” alarmists remain steadfastly oblivious to all of the hollow international bloviating and sanctimony. And continue...

Sen. Joe Manchin has yanked his proposal for a $1.8 trillion compromise on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan off the table, according to reports — potentially the final nail in the coffin of the Democratic Party’s signature social-spending agenda. The West Virginia Democrat’s about-face was reported Saturday by the Washington Post, citing three unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter.

The Hill has a misleading piece entitled “Biden is delivering the fastest economic recovery in history. Why hasn’t anyone noticed?” Even crooner Barbra Streisand agrees. A good quote from The Hill story: “Under Biden, the American economy has recovered from its Trump-era lows with remarkable speed.” As Leslie Knope said “That seems like an unfair phrasing.” Hmm. Well, here is a chart that best explains the “Biden Miracle.” It shows the growth in Federal expenditures from the previous year during the banking crisis and then the COVID crisis. During the banking crisis, the increase in Federal expenditures (red) was normal....

Well, at least construction materials are growing more slowly than energy prices! The Producer Price Index for Construction Materials rose at a 34.7% YoY pace in November. So it is no surprise that the median sales price for new homes rose 18.8% YoY in November.

Build Back Better May Not Be Dead Just Yet On Sunday, December 19, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin dropped a bomb on the Biden administration when he said he would not support the $1.9 trillion Build Back Better legislation. With a 50-50 split in the Senate, a no vote from a Democrat was a death knell for the pending program. The senator cited rising inflation as a reason why the US cannot afford to spend another almost $2 trillion after the cost of the legislation would not be covered by tax hikes. While Republicans cheered, the move angered many...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said that the Build Back Better reconciliation bill was “Bernie Sanders’ bill” and that there was only one Democrat who was willing to oppose spending trillions of dollars with high inflation. Toomey stated, “I mean, I give Joe a lot of credit, the amount of abuse and flack he has taken from some of his colleagues, from the left wing all over America. It’s really pretty shocking when you think about it, here’s one Democrat in the United States Senate, one Democrat, who thinks maybe...

The good news is that US Real GDP grew at 2.3% QoQ in Q3 thanks to massive Federal government and Federal Reserve stiimulus. The bad news? Prices are growing at rate of 6% QoQ, three times higher than the growth of real personal consumption. Runaway inflation, cooling personal consumption. This is the definition of “stimulyltpo”: the excessive spending by Washington DC in conjunction with excessive monetary stimulus from The Federal Reserve. Let’s see if Christmas season is jolly with Sewage Joe trying to scare everyone about Omicron.

Tuesday on FNC’s “Fox News Primetime,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he was not surprised his colleague Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) came out to oppose the so-called Build Back Better agenda promoted by President Joe Biden. According to Graham, one of the takeaways was Manchin was “telling the world” reconciliation to pass spending bills was dead.

"This is the end. My only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end." – The Doors It's not like the Biden Presidency was breaking any records or anything (other than the daily "oldest president in history" record he sets merely by waking up). But this weekend's "It's a 'no' from me, dawg" pronouncement from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) could very well be the beginning of a very long and pitiful coda to this accident of American politics. And while the media and erstwhile wannabe socialists across the political, academic, and entertainment spectrum insist on demonizing the West Virginia...

Right before Thanksgiving Day, House Democrats passed Build Back Better, one of the most misguided and ill-timed bills in the history of congressional legislation. At a time when an average of 1,300 Americans a day are dying from Covid-19 and tens of millions are battling chronic diseases from cancer to diabetes, the bill would discourage the development of lifesaving drugs. America's seniors will suffer the most as medicine cabinets soon turn distressingly bare. Build Back Better would set drug reimbursements far below the market-based prices that Medicare, the nation's largest insurance program, currently pays. Cheaper drugs sound great, in theory....

Due to party infighting, Democrats are now looking to push a vote on Joe Biden’s big-government socialism juggernaut, the Build Back Better Act, into next year. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had hoped to pass the bill before Christmas, but key holdouts like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) made it impossible to pass the bill through the evenly split Senate due to his concerns about the hefty price tag. Democrats now expect a vote won’t happen until January at the earliest. But that’s wishful thinking, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who says Biden’s $3 trillion plan is “dead forever.”...

With the price of gas hitting $7 a gallon and a package of Oscar Meyer bacon hitting $9.59 out in California, you can bet inflation is on consumers' minds, and 80% of them know who did it.Big government spending, the kind that requires the Fed to print more money than the economy can handle, is behind it. The U.S. has passed a helluva lot of gargantuan trillion-plus-dollar spending bills for things such as COVID relief, "infrastructure," bailouts of favored industries, stimulus payouts, and more in the last few years and the economy is still struggling to digest it.Inflation, according to...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly planning to put President Joe Biden's multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better spending spree on the back burner, dashing White House hopes the monster legislation would pass before Christmas. Despite Biden's best efforts, he hasn't convinced West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to vote for the package. Schumer is still holding out hope for action on voting rights this year, multiple sources tell us. They are hoping for agreement on a rules change between four moderates who have been meeting - Tester, Kaine, King and Manchin 2/— Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC) December 15, 2021Sen....

Millions of Americans have weathered the COVID-19 pandemic with the help of direct cash payments from the U.S. government, via stimulus checks, extra unemployment benefits and the expanded Child Tax Credit. But that last financial buffer may come to an end on December 15 when the IRS sends out the sixth — and potentially last — check to parents. That would close the door on the nation's biggest federal cash-assistance programs, which began in 2020. Experts credit those six months of direct payments with helping millions of low- and middle-income families afford basics like food, rent and car repairs, as...

There was an interesting op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The Fed Is the Main Inflation Culprit”. I agree with the op-ed, but as Paul Harvey liked to say, “And now for the rest of the story.” The Federal Reserve is only half of The Federal government “Stimulypto.” Starting in late 2008, The Fed crashed their target rate to 25 basis points and began their quantitative easing (QE) program where The Fed purchased Treasuries and Agency Mortgage-backed Securities (MBS) amongst other assets. Notice in the chart below that QE was adjusted, but never went away and The Fed’s target...

U.S. senators need to forgo the posh Capitol dining rooms and go food shopping in the shoes of ordinary Americans. Shoppers are panicking at the meat counter, where beef prices are up more than 20%. Nearly everything in the basket costs more. Most pols are clueless about the pain inflation is causing. Retirees are the biggest victims. Inflation is decimating them. With interest rates near zero, retirees are watching the purchasing power of the money they have in the bank literally shrink. They're getting punished for their years of thrift, prudence and self-reliance. For the 65-and-up crowd, it's a double...

As Congress worked in recent days to increase the legal limit on the federal debt, the Treasury kept that debt artificially frozen at approximately $28.9 trillion, where it stood at the beginning of this week. With that limit lifted, the federal debt will take a jump upward, then keep steadily climbing, constantly increasing the burden on future taxpayers. In 2018, according to the last complete annual report on individual income tax returns published by the Internal Revenue Service, there were 100,424,240 households in the United States that filed what the IRS calls a "taxable return." "The taxable and nontaxable classification...