Free Republic

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres wants to “turn the world around” but is lacking in one thing: other people’s money. On Monday the veteran Portuguese socialist acknowledged the financial shortfall and demanded the world step up and give to the globalist organization to fill the gap in aid donations. Guterres made his call at a meeting in Valencia, Spain, citing a “$4 trillion financing gap” as cause for immediate action. He noted “massive headwinds” exist since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew USAID contributions to U.N. projects soon after he returned to the White House via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that recent U.S. tariff increases will reduce federal deficits by $2.8 trillion over the next decade, primarily through increased customs revenue and lower interest payments on federal debt—more than enough to offset the projected cost of President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cut bill. In a separate analysis, the CBO recently estimated that extending the 2017 tax cuts, as proposed in the administration’s new tax and spending bill, would increase the deficit by roughly $2.4 trillion over the same period. That legislation would reduce federal revenues by $3.67 trillion while cutting spending by $1.25 trillion,...

Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to President Trump, said the president’s tariff plan will raise more than $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade. Navarro joined “Fox News Sunday,” where host Shannon Bream noted that Americans are concerned that Trump’s tariffs are going to raise the price of everyday goods. “First of all, we’re going to raise about $100 billion with the auto tariffs alone. What we’re going to do is, in the new tax bill that has to pass, it absolutely has to pass, we’re going to provide tax benefits, tax credits, to the people who...

The Senate rejected an amendment proposed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that would have cut spending by $1.5 trillion as the chamber considered legislation to secure the border and fulfill other parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda. The Senate on Friday morning advanced its reconciliation bill which aims to advance Trump’s priorities to secure the southern border, unleash domestic energy production, among other priorities, while leaving Trump’s proposed tax plan for the next bill. The 47th president had endorsed passing one “big beautiful” bill to pass his legislative agenda. Republicans plan to use budgetary reconciliation, an arcane legislative procedure, to...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected Friday that the federal budget deficit would hit $1.9 trillion in fiscal 2025. The nonpartisan budget scorekeeper estimated that federal spending would total $7 trillion during the fiscal year, amounting to 23.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). That figure is estimated to reach 24.4 percent in 2035, as spending in areas like Social Security, Medicare and net interest costs is expected to grow. At the same time, revenues are projected to hit $5.2 trillion this year, reaching 17.1 percent of the nation’s GDP. The figure is estimated to rise 1.1 percent...

Critics call gambling “the devil’s playground.” Losses to online gambling in the U.S. now look set to live down to that estimation by surpassing the $1 trillion mark in coming years at the expense of American bettors. U.S. lawmakers and government regulators “cannot continue to rely on the theory of responsible gambling, which shifts the burden of harm prevention onto individuals,” Derek Webb, founder and chief funder of the California-based Campaign for Fairer Gambling, said Wednesday in a release forecasting the impending losses.

The interest burden of the public debt of the U.S. government has topped $1 trillion already this year, the first time interest costs have crossed the trillion dollar threshold. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, interest payments totaled $1.05 trillion, up 30 percent from a year ago, the Treasury Department said Thursday. This is the first time interest payments have ever climbed about $1 trillion. Despite claims by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to have addressed the U.S. budget deficit, the deficit is up 24 percent in the first 11 months of this fiscal...

Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic plan would increase taxes by $5 trillion over ten years, according to Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). Harris’s campaign announced an enormous economic package on Monday that would undo former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, claiming it would be part of “a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.” Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, lowered income tax rates, and doubled the standard deduction. Harris’s economic...

Donald Trump has claimed he will stop taxing the Social Security benefits of seniors if he wins a second term in the White House. The cut is the latest in a series of tax relief policies which Democrats claim with endanger federal benefits and see the U.S' debt balloon. Others say Congress would be unlikely to pass the plans. But this latest proposal made on Fox and Friends is the most significant and expensive yet, costing the government $1.8 trillion over the next decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They claim the cuts would see Federal...

The US national debt – the total amount of Treasury securities – rose to $35.00 trillion, according to the Treasury Department on Friday (rounded to the nearest billion: $34.998 trillion). Since the beginning of the year, in less than seven months, the debt has jumped by $1.0 trillion. In the three-and-a-half years since January 2020, the debt has ballooned by 50%. The economy has been growing rapidly since the trough in 2020. Yet trillions in new debt were whizzing by so fast they were hard to see, like, “Oh wow, there went another one I think.” We don’t even want...

The federal government ran another big deficit in June, as the national debt inches closer to $35 trillion.$35 trillion USD.Trillion with a 'T.' That's an unfathomable number. It's meaningless to most people. We simply can't comprehend a number that big.Let's try to put the $34.9 trillion national debt into perspective.According to the National Debt Clock, every American citizen would have to write a check for $103,565 to pay off the national debt. Of course, a lot of people don't pay taxes. That means the taxpayer burden is much higher. Every U.S. taxpayer would have to write a check for $266,953...

The wealthiest one percent in President Joe Biden’s America set a record with a net worth of $44 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter, U.S. Federal Reserve data revealed. Biden casts his administration as opposed to the widening wealth gap, even though a majority of Americans still live paycheck to paycheck, a recent LendingClub study found, raising concerns that so-called “Bidenomics” failed to help average Americans. A majority of voters are “worse off financially” under Biden, up 25 points since he assumed office in 2021, a Fox News poll found Wednesday.

Congress will vote Friday on a $1.2 trillion, 1,000-plus page spending bill revealed Thursday just before 3:00 a.m. The bill will start in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will move the bill under “suspension of the rules.” Johnson repeatedly has used suspension of the rules — which requires two-thirds support but bypasses procedural opposition from conservatives — to advance legislation lacking broad Republican support. Suspension of the rules also enables Johnson to bypass a requirement that Congress receive at least 72 hours to review legislation before voting on it.

A billboard in New York City’s Times Square warns of the “ticking time bomb” that is the $34 trillion national debt. Released by the nonprofit Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP) group, the ad campaign includes a 50-f00t-high billboard that will run for three months in Times Square. The digital billboard features a video of people running away in fear of a giant countdown of the national debt until it finally explodes in oblivion. Take a look: Scared of the national debt? You should be. @Comm4Prosperity's NEW Time Square billboard warns of the threat posed by the "ticking time bomb" of...

Medicare and Social Security are in crisis and face significant challenges according a report from the U.S. Treasury Department which indicates the programs are both underfunded to the tune of a $175 trillion. The report suggests that if the current trends continue the programs may not be around when the current generation of American children reach retirement age unless substantial changes are implemented. Projections suggest that Medicare and Social Security may struggle to meet full benefit obligations within the next decade, with factors like inflation and economic output adding strain due to insufficient funds coming in to support these programs....

Tax cuts and pandemic relief measures enacted during the Trump administration added $8.4 trillion to the national debt over the 10-year budget window, according to a study released Wednesday by a top budget watchdog group. Discretionary spending increases from 2018 and 2019 added $2.1 trillion, Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added $1.9 trillion and the 2020 bipartisan CARES Act for pandemic relief added another $1.9 trillion, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank, found in a study released earlier this month. “Of the $8.4 trillion President Trump added to the debt, $3.6 trillion...

Nearly a third of all outstanding US government debt is set to mature in the next 12 months, according to an analysis from asset management firm Apollo. A chart shared by Chief Economist Torsten Sløk in September showed that the share of US public debt set to mature in a year or less has steadily risen toward pandemic-era levels and is now at 31%. In terms of dollar amount, that's $7.6 trillion, a high not seen since early 2021, and is a source of upward pressure on US rates, he added. In addition, public debt maturing in the near term...

The IRS is cracking down on domestic tax evasion by going after wealthy individuals and complex private partnerships, but some of the biggest tax evaders — U.S. multinational corporations — are still exploiting legal gray areas to stash money overseas and keep it out of the government’s reach. Fed up with a stalled international effort at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to rein in the use of tax havens and put a global corporate minimum tax into force, African countries at the United Nations are now leading a charge for greater transparency and fairness in international tax.

CNN — The federal budget deficit is expected to balloon to about $2 trillion for fiscal year 2023, roughly double what it was in the previous fiscal year, according to a government watchdog group. The surge stems largely from a sharp decline in tax revenues, coupled with an increase in mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and interest payments, as well as in other areas. It follows a sharp drop in the budget shortfall in fiscal year 2022 after two years of giant deficits swollen by record government spending on Covid-19 pandemic relief measures.

During this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) decried the immorality of congressional spending levels for 2023. In 2019, Congress spent $4.4 trillion, Johnson said. In 2023, the federal government is expected to spend $6.3 trillion. “When I hear bipartisanship — and I asked Nancy, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, about this earlier — that Senate appropriators, and I’m talking about Democrats and Republicans, have gone — they’re working on — to boost spending above the Fiscal Responsibility Act levels by classifying $14 billion of ordinary appropriations as emergency spending,” fill-in host Dagan McDowell said. “What the...