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The Obama administration confirmed on Friday that a six-year run of declining annual budget deficits had halted: The shortfall for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was $587 billion, an increase over last year in dollars and as a percentage of the economy. The uptick, which had been projected last winter by government analysts, largely reflected the revenue loss from expiring tax breaks for businesses and individuals that Congress extended in December. President Obama had proposed to pair the tax cuts with some tax increases on wealthy Americans, to avoid adding to the deficit, but Congress refused. The $587...

<p>The American people will have to absorb higher deficits, greater debt, less economic liberty and more corporate welfare. Congress cannot seem to help itself in bending to every whim of special interests. How can they face their constituents when they continue to burden our children and grandchildren with debts they will never be able to repay? Our government is failing us, so we must do something about it. Who knows how bad things will be when the next administration comes in and has to pick up the pieces?</p>

WASHINGTON—The U.S. budget deficit narrowed further in May as revenue continued to rise faster than expenses have in the past year, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. The budget picture has improved this year amid higher tax revenue and stronger economic growth, even though government spending has also increased. Revenue for the fiscal year, which began in October, is running 9% ahead of the year-earlier levels, while government spending is up 6%. In the past 12 months, the budget deficit has fallen to $412 billion, down from $460 billion in April and $491 billion a year earlier. That marks the lowest...

A nonpartisan government study says repealing President Barack Obama’s signature health care law would modestly increase the budget deficit and the number of uninsured Americans would rise by more than 20 million. The report from the Congressional Budget Office comes ahead of a highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling that could have a major impact on the Affordable Care Act, nullifying health insurance subsidies for some 6 million people in more than 30 states. The budget analysts said that would add a host of new uncertainties to their estimates. Republicans now in control of both chambers of Congress say they are...

The Congressional Budget Office says legislation the House will pass this week to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy would lead to an increase in the budget deficit of at least $235 million over the next decade, and perhaps as much as half a billion dollars. The CBO released a report Tuesday for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, H.R. 36, which the House will consider on Thursday. That bill aims to ban abortions after 20 weeks, and is based on evidence that a fetus can feel pain once it reaches that age. CBO’s report assumes that if the...

WASHINGTON - Republicans have a wealth of political issues that will dominate the 2014 midterm election races and determine their outcome. The national news media has done its best to try to bury these issues, play them down or sugar coat them, but the American people know better. They have persistently put these issues at or near the top of every voter poll in the last six years of Barack Obama's scandal-ridden, trouble-plagued administration. It's hard to break through and overcome the power of the Washington news media that has worked hard to cover up the Obama White House's blunders....

The Congressional Budget Office reported this week that the budget deficit is falling rapidly from its trillion-dollar-plus Rocky Mountain highs during Barack Obama’s first term. I estimate that the deficit will likely be $400 billion or lower this fiscal year, and that is a near $1 trillion improvement over four years. As a share of GDP, federal deficits have tumbled from nearly 10 percent to just under 3 percent. The question is, Why the progress? The main factor has been falling government spending, which is a positive force for the economy. And the reason government spending is falling is that...

<p>WASHINGTON—The U.S. government is posting the strongest revenue since before the recession, buoyed by higher tax rates and a slowly improving economy, leaving the federal budget on track for its narrowest deficit in five years.</p> <p>Revenue from October to July, the first 10 months of the government's fiscal year, totaled $2.287 trillion, the Treasury Department said Monday. That is up about 14% from a year earlier and about 8.1% from the first 10 months of 2007, the next highest year for revenue. Meanwhile, government spending is down slightly, largely due to across-the-board cuts called the sequester that went into effect March 1.</p>

After years of trillion-dollar annual deficits, federal red ink is lessening – and pace of the decline now looks much quicker than forecasters thought it would be. That’s good news for American taxpayers worried about a pileup of debt – and the risk that would pose for their pocketbooks in the future. The debt problem isn’t solved, but this is progress. Here are the new numbers: The federal budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates. Just three months ago, the CBO was forecasting a deficit of $845 billion for the 2013...

For the first time since 2007 – before the recession – the US Treasury is planning to make a down payment on the federal debt. The budget deficit has been shrinking more than expected. Thanks to government spending cuts, and higher tax receipts The Treasury says it expects to pay off $35 billion of debt in the second quarter. That compares to an earlier forecast that it would have to borrow $103 billion. Usually this time of year is the best for government cash flow because annual tax returns flood into the Treasury in April. But the return to at...

The annual deficit has fallen 32% over the first seven months of this fiscal year compared with same period last year, according to Congressional Budget Office figures released Tuesday. A major reason: A big jump in tax revenue. Tax collections rose by $220 billion -- or 16% -- between the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 through April 30. Individual and payroll taxes accounted for $184 billion of that increase. The tax haul rose sharply primarily because wages and salaries were higher, the payroll tax cut of the past two years expired on Jan. 1 and the fiscal...

“We need a balanced approach.” How many times have you heard that poll-tested line from Obama? Unfortunately, the President’s rhetoric doesn’t match his actions. Only four weeks after raising taxes on the majority of Americans, the President wants to raise taxes again. Predictably, his definition of balance means more taxes right now in exchange for soaring rhetoric about cutting spending that is backed only by accounting gimmicks and broken promises. No issue is a greater threat to our economic prosperity than government overspending – a lopsided imbalance that has led to over $146,000 in debt per American taxpayer. In the...

WASHINGTON - House Republican leaders seized the high ground this week in the furious battle to curb federal spending, forcing Senate Democrats to produce their first budget in nearly four years. It was a political high wire act, but House Speaker John Boehner pulled it off without a hitch. In one master stroke, he reunited most of his rebellious Republicans behind his budget strategy, and divided the Democrats. When the smoke cleared in the latest budgetary skirmish Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has dictatorially ignored previous House budgets, agreed to accept the GOP's limited debt ceiling suspension as...

The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Summary of Operations for fiscal year 2012, released last week, shows an agency that is significantly over-funded. In 2010, the Obama Administration increased the agency’s budget even though it previously operated with a fiscal year-end surplus. Now, the operating report reveals that the agency’s business continues to erode with the decline of unionization in the private sector making its increased appropriation even more unnecessary than it was in 2010. According to the report, issued by Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, total case intake decreased by three percent; unfair labor practice case intake decreased by...

"You don't have to be a deficit hawk to be disturbed by the growing gap between revenues and expenses," said Sen. Barack Obama during a Nov. 3, 2005, debate on the Senate floor. At the time, Obama had been a senator for less than a year and the federal budget deficit was in fact shrinking, from $248 billion in fiscal 2006 to $160 billion in fiscal 2007. Still, Obama seemed deeply concerned about the deficit, and he appeared to believe it when he said the only way to close the shortfalls was to force Congress to pay for what it...

A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reminds Americans that, contrary to the narrative that huge deficits and debt are merely a recent product of the Great Recession, the problem began over forty years ago. Daniel Thornton, the St. Louis Fed's Vice President and economic adviser, finds what conservatives have been saying all along is true: it's steadily increasing government spending, not a lack of tax revenues, that's causing all of this. [A]fter 1970, both revenues and expenditures increased on average relative to the previous two decades; however, revenue increased marginally while expenditures increased significantly... on...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama thinks the debate over raising the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling isn't the place or the time to be discussing runaway spending. Essentially, that was his message Monday in a full-court press assault on Republicans in Congress for having the temerity to suggest that before we raise the debt ceiling by another $2 trillion, maybe we should begin discussing how to reduce spending, how to shrink our monstrous national debt and how the government must begin living within its means. But with the government debt soaring toward nearly $19 trillion -- and likely to skyrocket to $25...

Republicans, and many Democrats, are upset by the prospect of so-called sequestration cuts to the nation's defense budget. Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is so alarmed that the day before the Senate took up what became the "fiscal cliff" agreement, he called a key Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to express deep concern that the cuts might go into effect. As it turned out, Congress put them off for two months. Sequestration would force the government to reduce discretionary spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Roughly half of that, or $600 billion, would come from defense --...

Thomas Jefferson warned us, "I, however, place economy among the first and most important Republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt... I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple." Nothing we face compares to the challenge our founding fathers faced in winning independence and forming a more perfect union, but reclaiming a "frugal and simple" government will take far more than replaying another version of Washington's "fiscal cliff" charade. Congress first put a limit on federal debt during...