Free Republic

Sen. Marco Rubio missed Friday's Senate vote approving a massive $1.8 trillion end-of-the-year spending bill and tax package - a day after he suggested that he could try to slow the legislation down. The Florida Republican, who is running for president, was the only 2016 contender to miss the vote, which is the Senate's final vote of the year. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), three other presidential candidates, all voted against the the legislation.

(CNSNews.com) - The White House objects to a few Republican provisions in the omnibus $1.1-trillion spending bill, but overall, "We succeeded," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Wednesday. "So we walked into these negotiations focused on making sure that Republicans would not succeed in advancing their ideological agenda through the budgetary process, and I think, based on all of the solid reporting work that you have done over the last several weeks, there were a variety of attempts that Republicans undertook to try to do exactly that, and we did succeed in fighting off those efforts. What is...

Paul Anthony Gosar is an American Republican politician and member of the United States House of Representatives from Arizona since 2011, representing Arizona's 4th congressional district. Yesterday, Gosar took to his Facebook page to expose the reality of the massive Omnibus Spending Bill... and who is to blame... Why I Am Voting NO on the Massive Omnibus Spending Bill: Once again I find myself shaking my head at the wasteful spending in DC and a flawed process that drops thousands of pages of text on us with 48 hours to "read" and understand. I wish I could put all the...

There are certainly some good things in the Omnibus Spending/Tax Extenders bills that dropped early this morning (though I thought this Congress was elected to stop this kind of legislation-by-crisis). Unfortunately, what's not in the bill suggests Congress missed several opportunities to rein in the Obama administration's regulatory overreach. My tax policy colleagues think the good outweighs the bad. The provision preventing taxation of Internet commerce is good. The oil export language is good. There are some very good things reinforcing First Amendment rights (which shouldn't need reinforcing in the first place). Yuval Levin has written about the complexities of...

Republican and Democratic negotiators in the House clinched a deal late Tuesday on a $1.1 trillion spending bill and a huge package of tax breaks. Legislative drafters, racing a midnight deadline, met the time limit for issuing the tax package but apparently missed it for the spending bill. That could push back a vote on the House floor by one day, until Friday. The late-hour tension emphasized the deep disagreements over an array of policy provisions that have left weeks of negotiations tinged with acrimony. Since the Republicans took back control of the House in 2011, a majority in the...

Government spending on the elderly continues to climb. Fueled by rapid growth in the number of Americans over age 65 and increased spending on benefits per person, public expenditures devoted to the elderly continue to edge up. A crucial question for future policymaking is whether rising outlays on programs for the aged will squeeze out spending on programs for children, especially investments in their schooling. Many pessimists think this outcome is inevitable, and they urge us to reduce government commitments to the elderly to make room for spending on the young. Federal spending is especially concentrated on the elderly. The...

A measure introduced in the Michigan House earlier this year could start the process of making an exception to the state constitution’s ban on taxpayer support for nonpublic schools. Specifically, the end result would be allowing parents to send their children with special needs to private or religious schools using tax dollars. The state would cover the cost for each child, up to the amount it would have paid for educating that at a public school. Such a change would require the approval of voters in a statewide election, and if the Legislature approves HJR B, voters would face that...

Consumers confidence fell in November to the lowest level in more than a year, a survey shows. The consumer confidence index dropped to 90.4 from a revised 99.1 in October, the Conference Board said Tuesday. That's the lowest level since September 2014. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected the index to rise to 100. The present situation index, a measure of current conditions, dropped to 108.1 from 114.6. .... "The decline was mainly due to a less favorable view of the job market," said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at board. The number of people who said jobs were...

When Congress left town for the August recess, it did so without coming to an agreement on a long-term transportation bill. Instead, the president signed a three-month extension that set the stage for another showdown this fall. More than 30 such temporary extensions have passed since the last multi-year transportation bill expired in 2011. The inability of Congress to come together to pass a transportation package has frustrated the myriad special interests whose lobbyists want assurances that the dollars will keep flowing for years, and not just months, to come. And the media, which seldom miss an opportunity to push...

olorado Springs police officers will not be required to take a physical fitness test this year, and those who failed it last year will no longer face penalties, pending the outcome of a discrimination lawsuit 12 female officers have filed. The city of Colorado Springs and its police department agreed on Friday to all conditions the plaintiffs sought in a preliminary injunction, and on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch ordered the demands be met.

As he made clear, he's not going to 'pay' for more big government business as usual. At the CNBC debate on October 28, Ted Cruz 97%released his tax reform proposal, which I believe is the best of all the presidential candidates' plans. At Tuesday night's debate, Cruz released a spending reduction plan showing how he will pay for the tax cut involved in the tax reform plan. For the individual income tax under his tax reform, Cruz's plan provides for one flat rate of 10% on everything – wages, capital gains, dividends, personal business income, rent, interest, and all other...

In a shocking admission for most of mainstream America, the former U.S. comptroller general says the real U.S. debt is closer to about $65 trillion than the oft-cited figure of $18 trillion, thanks to unfunded liabilities which simply cannot be ignored. As The Hill reports, unless economic growth accelerates, he warns, "you’re not going to be able to provide the kind of social safety net that we need in this country," adding unequivocially that Americans have "lost touch with reality" when it comes to spending.As The Hill reports, Dave Walker, who headed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under Presidents...

The Senate approved the horrible budget deal last night while most of us were asleep at 3am: Ted Cruz last night called this budget deal a corrupt betrayal of the people as he spoke over an hour and a half. The vote was mostly Democrats voting to pass it but a fair number of Republicans voted for it as well. Here's how they voted: YEAs: 64 Alexander (R-TN) Ayotte (R-NH) Baldwin (D-WI) Barrasso (R-WY) Bennet (D-CO) Blumenthal (D-CT) Booker (D-NJ) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Cantwell (D-WA) Capito (R-WV) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Cochran (R-MS) Collins (R-ME) Coons (D-DE)...

The leader of a key Michigan House budget committee said it’s time to take a look at how public schools are funded in Michigan. In a story posted on the MLive news site, Rep. Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville, was apparently pointing to Benton Harbor Area Schools as evidence of shortcomings in the Proposal A school funding system that was approved by Michigan voters in 1994. “Take a look at Proposal A? I think that's a great question, and I think that's something we ought to look at,” said Pscholka, who is chair of the House Appropriations Committee. “ ... I've got...

Congress may be (but it isn’t known when) preparing to override President Barack Obama’s decision to veto a $612B defense bill. Obama’s reasoning for vetoing the bill: it doesn’t have enough money. Number one, it keeps in place the sequester that is inadequate for us to properly fund our military in a stable, sustained way and allows all of our armed forces to plan properly. I have repeatedly called on Congress to eliminate the sequester and make sure that we’re providing certainty to our military so they can do out-year planning, ensure military readiness, ensure our troops are getting...

It hasn’t gotten much attention, but two big budget showdowns are looming in Washington in the weeks ahead. The first is what to do about raising the $18 trillion debt ceiling. And the second is whether to retain the spending caps/sequester cuts in the 2016 budget.[snip]President Obama has made his demands clear. He wants to bust the spending caps this year and he wants a debt ceiling extension from Congress with no strings attached.[snip]Some on the left argue that we should not even have a federal debt ceiling — that the government should have a rubber stamp to borrow at...

Per student spending by public schools in the District of Columbia outstrips that of all 50 states. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, as of 2012, D.C. was annually spending a total of $25,038 per pupil. Nevertheless, in 2013 Colorado-based Augenblick, Palaich and Associates – the firm recently chosen to produce an upcoming education funding “adequacy” study for the State of Michigan – released a report claiming that D.C. wasn’t spending enough. APA’s Washington funding study concluded that to adequately educate students D.C. needs to increase the amount of funding it provides by 22.1 percent. The study concluded:...

Clintondale Community Schools has been in continuous deficit-spending mode dating back to 2005-06. The Macomb County district was not contrite in explaining nine consecutive years of being unable to balance its budget. On a form required by Michigan Department of Education, the school district’s administration defiantly gives this reason for its failure: “Inadequate funding and declining enrollment.” And in a recent Detroit News story, Ken Austin, the president of the district’s teachers union local said, “We would likely not be in the current position if it were not for the many huge cuts to school funding that districts have been...

The Snyder administration's preliminary pick for a contractor to do a study on whether Michigan spends an “adequate” amount on public schools has a long history of coming to the same conclusion on similar questions: “Not adequate." The company’s 12 most recent state studies have all concluded that spending on public schools should be increased. The record includes a 2013 report which found "inadequate" school spending by the District of Columbia, which year after year spends more per student than all (or nearly all) the 50 states. Gov. Rick Snyder and legislative Republicans committed to buying what is known in...

President Ronald Reagan is invoked incessantly by conservative commentators and politicians, but never more so than when the subject is taxes. And so it was when Donald Trump released his plan for tax reform. Several conservative commentators have done Trump a favor (and the public a disservice) by vouching for the legitimacy of the plan and saying it is very much in the Reagan tradition. That gives Trump far too much credit. His tax plan bears a superficial resemblance to Reagan’s agenda, but Reagan would never have proposed something so transparently infeasible. Reagan is invoked too casually on taxes both...