Free Republic

McManus is a mechanical engineer and his wife Mairee is a surgical physician's assistant, as well as the primary earner. He breaks out his budget by week. In 2014, they brought home an average after-tax household income of $14,735 a month. In the chart below, check out their average monthly spending for 2013, 2014, and predicted for 2015. Note that these are averages, so a single month isn't depicted.

The Milwaukee Business Journal is reporting that Gov. Scott Walker will include a jock tax in the next budget to help fund a new Milwaukee arena project for the Milwaukee Bucks. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is preparing to propose diverting revenue from taxes on NBA players for public funding of a new arena in downtown Milwaukee, sources close to the situation told the Milwaukee Business Journal. In June 2014 Walker said in an interview with the Milwaukee Business Journal that he was studying the possibility of tapping NBA players' income tax for arena construction funding, a so-called "jock tax." Since...

Madison — Setting up a likely legal fight in the federal courts, Gov. Scott Walker is proceeding with his plan to ensure that drug users aren't getting food stamp or jobless benefits. Fulfilling a campaign promise, the Republican governor committed Thursday to putting the proposal in his next budget but provided few new details on how he would pursue a plan that could run afoul of federal rules in programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance. For the first time, he did commit to offering free treatment and job training for those testing positive for drugs, but he offered...

President Obama wants to toss the sequestration agreement he made with Republcians in 2011 and is proposing an increase of at least $68 billion in the FY 2016 budget. As imperfect as it is, sequestration has been partly successful in reigning in government spending. It could have worked better if Congress wasn't always carving out exemptions. But there's no doubt that there are tens of billions of dollars that would have been spent without it. With tax receipts at an all time high, rather than applying that money to reducing the deficit, the president - as every Democratic president...

Some conservatives are disappointed by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s apparent reluctance to push for right-to-work legislation in his new term. Today the Wall Street Journal joins the chorus, calling it “unfortunate that he’s ducking a chance to make Wisconsin the country’s 25th right-to-work state.” But Walker has made it clear that such legislation is not a priority and that he wants to focus instead on education reform and on cutting Wisconsin’s woefully bloated budget. Walker is right, and it demonstrates yet again that he’s got the right formula for conservative reforms. As Walker explained to me last May, Wisconsin is...

Over the last 15 years, California racked up three small surpluses, two break-evens and 10 huge deficits. “There’s not a lot of money left in the budget,” said Gov. Jerry Brown regarding the $164.7 billion budget unveiled Friday. “It’s very tight.” The real reason money is tight is Brown and the Democratic legislature increased spending by five percent in a period when inflation is averaging 1.3 percent. California’s proposed spending will jump $5.8 billion more than inflation.

A U.S.-funded power plant and fueling station at an Afghan military complex in Kabul were barely functioning nearly two years after contractors finished building them, a watchdog report said. Another U.S.-backed project, a dining hall for soldiers at the Afghan National Army’s Camp Commando, was serving more than five times the number of people it was built to handle. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction encountered difficulty in inspecting the three facilities due to lost records that would have shown when they were tested and commissioned in its report on the camp. Together, the power plant, fueling station and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to incorporate macroeconomic projections into cost estimates for major legislation, a move that critics say could hide the true budgetary effects of tax cuts. The move toward "dynamic scoring" is part of a package of new rules that passed on a 234-172 party-line vote as the new Republican-controlled Congress started its work.

When Republicans swept control of the Michigan House, Senate and Governor's office in a November 2010 electoral "trifecta," the national media took notice. In early 2011, the New York Times wrote a story titled: “Michigan Governor Proposes Budget Cuts and Lower Taxes.” However, in four years of Republican governance under Gov. Rick Snyder with GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, state spending from state taxes and fees has increased by $2.7 billion. The overall budget (including federal dollars) has spiked by $4.7 billion. In the first budget enacted under GOP control in 2011-12, state spending from state sources...

If you thought the lame-duck Congress that met in December -- in which House Speaker John Boehner cut a deal with President Barack Obama to fund almost all of Obama's programs through the rest of the current fiscal year -- was a bad deal for America, wait until the next lame-duck Congress convenes after the 2016 election. That could be the "bipartisan" moment for a bailout of the federal disability program -- and perhaps Social Security with it. The very dry, very long Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of Social Security, released in July, included two crucial predictions....

Another day and another complaint by the IRS that they won’t have enough money to administer the tax code properly. Boohoo. Maybe they should have thought about that before Lois Lerner came before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and decided to invoke her right not to incriminate herself. Repeatedly. Its one thing when a Mafia don does that. But come on: The IRS? Or perhaps they should have thought of it before they lost the emails that they said died because of a hard drive failure. This time the crier for the IRS is CNNMoney, which complains that...

Obama plans to talk manufacturing in Detroit ahead of auto show By Khalil AlHajal | kalhajal@mlive.com January 05, 2015 at 1:48 PM DETROIT, MI -- President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak in Michigan on Wednesday and is expected talk about manufacturing jobs, according to the Associated Press. The visit will come days ahead of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which begins with press previews Jan. 12. The president is expected to highlight manufacturing jobs and his decision to bail out the auto industry in a Detroit-area visit before heading to Phoenix the next day to focus...

The federal budget is almost certain to be the central battleground between President Obama and the new Republican Congress in 2015. The GOP has vowed to use control of the House and Senate to slash the size of government, with entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security a potential target for cuts. But Obama has made clear he will use his veto pen against the GOP, forcing Republicans to tread carefully as they seek to avoid government shutdowns and recapture the White House in 2016. Here are the dates to watch as the conflict unfolds...

Chicago Obama library bids in trouble; foundation has 'major concerns' with U. of C. proposal Posted: 12/30/2014, 12:45pm | Lynn Sweet WASHINGTON — The Barack Obama Foundation has major problems with the University of Chicago bid for the Obama presidential library and museum and is uneasy about the bid from the University of Illinois at Chicago, leaving Columbia University in New York the front-runner for the project. A source close to the foundation told me that the University of Chicago bid is in jeopardy because it does not own — and has no definite path to acquiring at present —...

The favorite government agency of statists, liberals, and progressives is worried that it might not have enough funding to adequately separate Americans from their hard earned money. The IRS commissioner John Koskinen complained to congress that the agency may not have budgeted enough next year to effectively carry out its duties. According to the AP:Budget cuts at the IRS could delay tax refunds, reduce taxpayer services and hurt enforcement efforts, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Thursday.Apparently 11 billion dollars just won’t cut it for the Federal Revenuers. In addition to needing billions of dollars to pay pensions, target conservative non-profits, and...

“It’s ending purposeless, perpetual, global warfare, stupid.” Republican presidential contenders for 2016 should embrace that campaign theme to demolish the ultra-hawkish Hillary Clinton and her Napoleonic complex. Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign theme, “It’s the economy, stupid,” is obsolete. Presidential strategists sermonize that voters are instinctively concerned more about jobs, mortgages, and health care than about national security policy. True enough. But that is because presidential aspirants have failed to discern and to explain the direct connection between, on the one hand, purposeless, perpetual, global warfare and the projection of military force everywhere that has created an exorbitant, inefficient, and corrupt...

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol The Ghost of Legislative Sessions Past: Wisconsin was in bad shape in 2009. With rising unemployment and a staggering decline in state revenues, experts advised us to brace for the worst. Wisconsin lost nearly 120,000 jobs that year and the state unemployment rate hit a 27-year high of 9.4%. Business morale was down and families were feeling the pinch. Democratic out of control spending by the Democrats and dubious budget accounting practices by the...

Republicans on and off Capitol Hill are rallying behind using a rarely-deployed budget tool next year to dismantle ObamaCare. But the issue of how to use “budget reconciliation” has divided Republicans, with some calling for it to be implemented to overhaul the tax code or to push through major energy reforms. The tool is useful because it could allow newly-empowered Senate Republicans to pass legislation with a 51-vote simple majority rather than the usual 60, greatly increasing the chances of moving legislation to President Obama’s desk. And while Obama is certain to veto anything that tries to roll back his...

On Republicans working with Obama to pass a $1.1 trillion Omnibus spending bill written by and for the Chamber of Amnesty… I don’t know how you go into 2016…and you say: ‘Okay, I want you to support the GOP because…we didn’t stop immigration-amnesty, we’re gonna bring in a lot more guest workers, and we think it’s good to do these big omnibus bills…oh, and by the way, we’re probably gonna fight a couple more wars. Vote for us.’ … What position would you rather be in? Warren’s position or, like, Paul Ryan– Mister Budget Hawk? Oh boy, that Paul Ryan...

Sen. Ted Cruz, the firebrand conservative freshman from Texas, has blown up the Senate leadership’s plans to have a peaceful weekend by forcing round-the-clock votes on President Obama’s nominees and the $1.1 trillion omnibus.Cruz took to the floor late Friday to castigate congressional leaders for trying to pass the 1,600-page spending bill after only a few hours of debate and questioned the resolve of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to fight Obama’s executive order protecting five million illegal immigrants from deportation.“Even though millions of voters rose up just one month ago to protest how...