Free Republic

Gov. Jerry Brown says there are $8 billion worth of cuts coming to state programs this summer, and that's not even enough to fill the $16 billion sinkhole California faces July 1. One enterprising legislator has a wild idea, though: Tax strip club patrons $10 each time they enter an exotic dancing establishment. Damn. Talk about your cover charge. Assemblyman Das Williams of Oxnard plans to tax you like a gangster taxes drug dealers: AB 2441, which is moving through the state Assembly as we speak, would levy a $10 fee on each and everyone of you good gentlemen (and...

President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it. Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year. Republicans forced the vote by offering the president's plan on the Senate floor. Democrats disputed that it was actually the president's plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn't actually match Mr. Obama's budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president's numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan. Sen. Jeff...

President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it. Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year. Republicans forced the vote by offering the president's plan on the Senate floor. Democrats disputed that it was actually the president's plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn't actually match Mr. Obama's budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president's numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan. Sen. Jeff...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. government in April posted its first monthly budget surplus since September 2008, the Treasury Department said Thursday, as tax receipts climbed and spending on education, Medicare and certain defense programs fell. The surplus of $59 billion is the first of Barack Obama’s presidency, and lands at the outset of a presidential-election campaign expected to be fought largely over the issues of government spending, taxes and jobs. The surplus in September 2008 — the month Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy — was $46 billion. The government spent $260 billion in April, $70 billion less than in...

Poker players often use the phrase "betting on the come" to describe a willingness, if instincts and odds indicate, to wager big on the hope that they will draw winning cards. That's a perfectly valid tactic when one is playing with one's own money and therefore bearing the risk. But is it appropriate for California politicians to bet on the come by approving many billions of dollars in spending on very shaky assumptions that the money will be there when it's needed to pay the bills? Risk was the underlying theme of two hearings in the Capitol on Tuesday. One...

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday that the state budget deficit had grown by a remarkable 70 percent since January, but fiscal experts said the economy had little to do with it. They instead blamed a bad marriage of volatile capital gains and political intransigence that led state leaders last year to count on a huge upswing in revenues that never materialized. At the same time, corporate tax changes from 2009 appear to have cost California more than state officials ever realized. The Democratic governor says the general fund deficit has mushroomed from $9.2 billion to $15.7 billion. Most of the...

Over the weekend, we received an email complaining about something we must have written about Gov. Jerry Brown and his budgeting schenanigans. It came from someone who apparently has an iPhone and identifies himself as ”Jerry Brown.” Who knows? Any way, the writer’s complaint with this writer was thus: “Check out the massive budget reductions, government realignment, reorganization and solid pension reform. And don’t forget that the most affluent have taken 80% of the growth in income in recent years. And how about JP Morgan blowing $2 billion after lobbying against regs that would have protected its shareholders. Balance and...

After discussing and debating the state’s finances behind closed doors for the past month, the Maryland General Assembly will convene Monday to start debating a revenue package during a special session. Lawmakers will hold public hearings and consider amendments on a pair of bills meant to supplement the state’s budget largely by raising income taxes. But the details of the bills appear all but set in stone, having been finalized in recent weeks during closed-door negotiations among Democratic leaders who say the bills will likely pass with few or no changes. House and Senate leaders say they did most of...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion — much larger than had been predicted just months ago — and will force severe cuts to schools and public safety if voters fail to approve tax increases in November, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday. The Democratic governor said the shortfall grew from $9.2 billion in January in part because tax collections have not come in as high as expected and the economy isn’t growing as fast as hoped for. The deficit has also risen because lawsuits and federal requirements have blocked billions of dollars in state...

France's Hollande: Sarkozy underplayed budget woesAssociated Press – 8 hrs ago PARIS (AP) — French President-elect Francois Hollande suggested Friday that the government of outgoing leader Nicolas Sarkozy underestimated the country's budget problems and wants a new audit of France's books. But Hollande, a Socialist elected Sunday to lead the world's fifth-biggest economy, said that wouldn't hurt his ability to fulfill campaign pledges. Those include higher taxes on the rich, thousands of new teaching jobs and freezes on some government spending. And Hollande stuck to his own deficit reduction goals despite new European Union figures released Friday that paint a...

We will know more about this when Gov. Jerry Brown releases his May revision of the coming year’s budget, scheduled for Monday. But the Sacramento Bee says “Officials representing Gov. Jerry Brown met with state employee union leaders last week and delivered the news: A budget revision he’ll release Monday includes a new proposal to cut payroll costs in the upcoming fiscal year.” Aren't you glad you elected him? Now, knowing his track record, we should take this with a grain of salt. Remember how he promised not to be controlled by the public employee unions when he campaigned for...

Can the Senate leadership be impeached for failure to execute their duties? Harry Reid, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad haven't passed a budget in over 1,000 days. Can the House impeach them?

Paul Ryan had better check in with his parish priest for some penance assignments. No less an expert in the exercise of Catholicism in public policy than Joe Biden has pronounced the House Budget Committee chair a heretic, or something. Speaking today at a rabbinical assembly in Atlanta, Biden scolded Ryan for his budget, which Biden pronounced “contrary to the social doctrine you teach and the social doctrine my church teaches”: Few parts of Catholic doctrine are as misunderstood as the Catholic teachings on social justice, which is Biden’s reference here. Tina Korbe wrote about this very topic in connection...

Lesson # 1: * U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 * Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 * New debt: $1,650,000,000,000 * National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 * Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000 Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget: * Annual family income: $21,700 * Money the family spent: $38,200 * New debt on the credit card: $16,500 * Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 * Total budget cuts: $385 Got It ?? OK. Now, Lesson # 2: Another way to look at the Debt Ceiling: Let's say you come home from work and find there’s been a sewer backup in your...

The New Hampshire House of Representatives recently passed a resolution (HCR 40) that, if approved in the Senate, would make New Hampshire the 18th of 38 states needed to draft and ratify a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Representative Ulery (District 27), the House Sponsor, stated, “a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) will force Congress to do what they seem incapable of doing, that is reduce spending and tell the American people the truth about the cost of our nation’s unfunded entitlement promises.” Co-founder of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force and Economics Professor (Ret.), Dr. Barry Poulson noted,...

Or: 'It's over, idiots' The folks who are getting the free stuff do not like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff... So the folks who are paying for the free stuff want  the much-swollen flow of free stuff to stop. But amazingly, the folks who are getting all this free stuff want even more free stuff on-top of the (undeserved) free stuff they are already getting! Now, the people who are forcing people...

Remember the Greek-style protests in Madison, the union sit-ins, the lawmakers who fled to Illinois to avoid voting on Scott Walker's collective-bargaining law last year? Now that the recall election of Mr. Walker is in full swing, Big Labor must be wondering where the outrage went.

Bill Clinton feels Gov. Jerry Brown's pain. "I know what he's going through out here," said the former president after hearing Brown's litany of budget woes delivered at a conference of Bay Area business executives and public officials last week. "I said, 'How you doing, Jerry?' He said, 'This is tough.' I said, 'Yes, but I think you're doing the right thing. You have to live by the laws of economics and the money you've got.' " If it's any consolation, Clinton added, "the dilemmas that the governor and the Legislature, and the people who will soon vote on the...

Be you Democrat, Republican or Independent, if care about the survival of our Republic, this video is worth 5 minutes of you time.

Join us from 12-1 ET for a live online chat about the Federal Budget. Heritage's Alison Fraser will be taking your questions about the federal budget, the debt, and how we can get back on course.