Free Republic

Americans’ unpaid medical bills will remain on their credit reports after a federal judge last week vacated a Biden-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that would have removed such debt. Judge Sean Jordan of the US District Court of Texas’ Eastern District found that the rule exceeded the bureau’s authority under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, agreeing with the arguments of two industry associations, which had filed a lawsuit against the rule that was later joined by the Trump administration. The court found that “every major substantive provision of the Medical Debt Rule” exceeded the CFPB’s authority, Jordan, a...

President Donald Trump’s offer to most federal employees to resign now and be paid through September stunned the workers who received it – angering some, confusing many and raising questions about whether the offer is even legal. When a US Department of Agriculture staffer based in Mississippi received the deferred resignation offer on Tuesday, they read through it, laughing because it was just “nonsensical,” and then deleted it. “I’ve got my whole entire life invested in the federal government,” said the staffer, who also spent time in the military. “I’m not going to throw everything away.” Across the United States,...

Much of the federal workforce is on edge and bracing itself for the likelihood its ranks will be purged when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump, who has derided civil servants as agents of the “deep state,” promised on the campaign trail to reinstate a 2020 executive order known as Schedule F, giving him the power to commence mass firings of nonpartisan federal employees who might spoil Trump’s partisan plans. “The objective is to create space to put loyalists in what were, what are still, career civil service positions,” former Trump appointee Ronald Sanders – who resigned over Trump’s politicization...

A sweeping $1.9 trillion spending plan, known as the Build Back Better bill, is making its way through Congress and could make a key part of President Joe Biden's economic agenda a reality. A majority of the funding is focused on transforming the nation's social safety net by reducing the cost of child and health care, as well as combating climate change. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation would increase the deficit by $367 billion over the next 10 years. But the White House has worked to make the case that the bill will be fully paid for...