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The Wife's fingers fly clickity-clack over the calculator keypad as she works on our taxes. When she gets on a roll she makes that thing sound like Fred Astaire with an Uzi. I hear the occasional muttered expletive or plaintive sigh and that's when I want to give her a hug, but I dare not. The Wife is not to be messed with at tax time. This ritual is played out in millions of American homes - death and taxes, right? But in our home the burden falls fully on The Wife because I'm incapable of performing this basic function...

MADISON — What’s in a “surplus” or a “balanced budget”? The better question might be: What’s not? As the economy improves and tax revenue rebounds, politicians nationwide are touting balanced budgets — even surpluses — as proof their states are on a positive fiscal track. The problem, fiscal analysts say, is that for virtually any state, those reports are little more than a thin veil, masking deep-rooted financial problems. Seeking balance  For years, states have relied on accounting gimmicks, pension-plan deferments and help from the federal government to keep budgets balanced, Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at George Mason...

One month ago Ohio voted with its heart against reforms portrayed as an attack on public workers. Ohio, DC, and New York union bosses spent more than $30 million drenching the airwaves in images of sad firefighters, sad police officers, and evil Republicans, convincing voters to overlook a broken status quo.A month later, how are local governments celebrating the union victory on Issue 2?Middletown is laying off 9 firefighters, despite the city’s police and fire budgets both increasing by nearly 1/3 in the past decade. In Hamilton, a $5.9 million death tax haul will delay the inevitable: Inflation coupled with...

WATCH: Heartbreaking Video Of Italian Minister Bursting Into Tears While Announcing Pension Reforms Joe Weisenthal Dec. 4, 2011, 5:05 PM We're not sure exactly what Welfare Minister Elsa Fornero saying, but obviously announcing reforms to pension systems is an emotional subject, as it means more pain for seniors on fixed incomes. (via Hugo Dixon). A commenter translates part of her statement: "I'm sorry. The people who work have no more money to give you. As a result, the pension age will go to 62 years old for woman, and 65 years old for man. No longer can we afford to...

The Gloria Steinem generation convinced women that they were not doing jobs. Women were told they were being slaves to their families, and not getting paid for it. In lousy economic times, these newly learned old skills give women a bigger choice of where to spend money. They can cut corners by mending, canning, and growing a garden. They have the power and flexibility to fill their pantries and not depend on the government or stores in difficult times.

President Obama wants to spend $3.7 trillion next year and $5.7 trillion in 2021. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to spend $3.6 trillion next year and $4.7 trillion in 2021. The Republican Study Committee (RSC) wants to spend $3.6 trillion next year and $4.2 trillion in 2021. Rand Paul wants to spend $3.7 trillion next year and $3.4 trillion in 2016. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has a "People's Budget" outline that, in keeping with representing a math-averse nation, doesn't include anything as straightforward as a series of annual-outlay numbers, though it does promise that outlays and revenues in 2021...

Gov. Kasich explains how Ohio turned its greatest fiscal shortfall into a structurally balanced budget, all while cutting taxes for every Ohioan.

The California Assembly says the public has no right to see lawmakers' current office budgets and spending projections, documents that could show whether punishment is doled out for key votes.

The Florida Highway Patrol has been patrolling Florida roadways since 1939. It was created to provide uniform traffic enforcement and investigation across the state, but as Mike Vasilinda tells us, there was a serious attempt this past legislative session to give the FHP’s duties top local sheriffs. Florida Highway Patrol troopers came close to wearing the green uniforms of Sheriff’s deputies this past legislative session. The jobs of more than 1500 troopers were almost given to local sheriffs. It would have been the biggest outsourcing in recent history and it was backed by Governor Rick Scott. It was the Sheriffs,...

By 45%-42%, voters back Republican efforts to balance state budgets by limiting collective bargaining rights for government unions, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. That stance is backed by Republicans, 80%-8%, and by independents, 46%-36%. Even 14% of Democrats say limit collective bargaining. That’s a switch from last month when an IBD/TIPP poll asked whether voters favored Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or the state public employee unions in that state’s showdown over bargaining rights. That poll found the public supported the unions, 49%-43%. Democrats backed the unions, 83%-11%, while independents backed them, 47%-42%. Republicans backed Walker, 82%-11%.

After decades of increasing tobacco taxes at the federal, state, and local levels, some states are beginning to buck this fiscally burdensome and irresponsible trend. On March 17, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill that would cut the state’s cigarette tax by a dime, to $1.68 per pack. Two other states with high tobacco taxes—New Jersey and Rhode Island—are also considering proposals to reduce taxes on tobacco products to make their state’s tax rates more competitive. This reversal in policy would be fiscally responsible and especially beneficial to low-income people. Many economists have noted that many states’...

At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago. That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference. Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3...

The Communist Party USA is promoting widespread protests across the United States in support of leftist and labor protesters in Wisconsin. Reports Ohio Communist Party leader Rick Nagin reported from Columbus; Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, the state AFL-CIO and its affiliates have called for a massive turnout for a rally Tuesday at the Statehouse in Columbus to protest a Republican bill to repeal collective bargaining for public employees. In robocalls and emails sent throughout the state, Strickland said "the fate of Ohio's middle class is on the line" and urged people "to join with the thousands who will gather...

Kentucky Senate Votes To End Guaranteed Pensions John Ellis Feb. 14, 2011, 11:45 AM The Kentucky state Senate passed a bill Friday that would end guaranteed pensions for new state and local government employees. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the bill was designed to address the public pension funds' growing liability. The paper reports: Kentucky needs to stay ahead of the multibillion-dollar pension liability problem that is forcing tax hikes and painful spending reductions in other states, said Republican senators backing the bill. "It is just not affordable to go forward with our current plan, for state government or for...

Another year of sluggish growth. And another one after that. And so on. Full recovery? Wait until 2016. The economic forecast released Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown is as grim as the budget blueprint he delivered at the same time. It says a troubled housing market will continue to hold back consumer spending in California for the foreseeable future. "A sharp rebound does not appear likely," says the official forecast from the state Department of Finance. Perhaps the most striking prediction: California's job market won't recapture all its lost jobs until the third quarter of 2016, or a whopping 87...

A Northeastern governor is considering education spending cuts and this time it is not New Jersey’s Chris Christie. “Gov. Martin O’Malley is considering a 5 percent across-the-board cut to Maryland’s K-12 public education system, unwelcome news to school districts already scrounging for money,” Lisa Gartner reported in The Washington Examiner. “T. Eloise Foster, secretary of the State Department of Budget and Management, said in a letter to Prince George’s County Superintendent William Hite that his request for an additional $139 million in state aid ‘suggests that you believe that the governor’s winning re-election is the equivalent to winning the lottery.’”...

Do insolvent states actually believe other states should bail them out? In June 2009, I was invited to introduce Michael Reagan at an event in Anchorage. In my remarks as Governor of Alaska, I warned against President Obama’s debt-ridden stimulus bill and its effect on all our state budgets. I believed that the bill’s benefits would be limited because government would grow exponentially, and I warned that the package was equivalent to a federal bribe with fat strings attached that created new unfunded mandates for state governments. At the time, most state legislatures, including Alaska’s, chose to ignore that warning....

SAN DIEGO – Incoming Republican governors from Pennsylvania to New Mexico are vowing to keep campaign promises to slice already cut-to-the-bone budgets and balance them without raising taxes. In doing so, GOP leaders intent on conservative governance signaled a desire to try to fundamentally change state government, shrinking it significantly. And they acknowledged that could mean more job losses and service cuts to already recession-hammered states anticipating more budget trouble ahead. "While we're all facing these challenges, there are incredible opportunities for us to go look at what the core missions of government were, and redefine the role," said South...

The good news is that Berkeley produces a skewed world view. The bad news is that it provides an all too accurate microcosm of academia. “Campus radicalism is back, big time,” Michael Cohen writes in the latest issue of Radical Teacher. “For the first time in a generation, massive rallies, marches, blogs, and, increasingly, student strikes, building occupations and confrontations with the police are drawing the public’s attention to the crisis in public higher education.” “On March 4 of this year, rallies in 28 states and 11 different countries testified to a growing movement to reverse the now thirty-year neoliberal...

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, may be up for a promotion, assuming polls are correct. So what would Speaker Boehner do? He gave a few clues during a speech Thursday at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

This week, President Obama called for the hiring of 10,000 new teachers to beef up math and science achievement. Meanwhile,...public school employment has grown 10 times faster than enrollment for 40 years (see chart), while achievement at the end of high school has stagnated in math and declined in science (see other chart).

NEW YORK – For cash-strapped states counting on federal stimulus money, the news was a stunning blow: A deficit-weary Congress had rejected billions in additional aid, forcing lawmakers into a mad scramble to balance their budgets. .. many governors are proposing to make up for the shortfall with tax increases, cuts in essential services .. layoffs of thousands of public employees. ... California faces a whopping $19 billion deficit — more than 20 percent of the state's total budget — despite deep cuts .. The federal stimulus program enacted last year is set to expire in December. Much of the...

ALBANY—David Paterson, the current governor of New York, has a message for his successor: You're doomed to fail. In a 70-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal, the governor cast himself as a scapegoat for the state's problems, blamed an "organized smear campaign" for ruining his political career and pinned his inability to repair New York's ailing finances on a dysfunctional budget process. "Whether the governor is David Paterson or Rick Lazio or Andrew Cuomo or Superman, we don't have a structure that empowers a single leader to get his or her state out of a major conflict," said Mr....

Dear Meghan Fox, I’m asking for all of America, please just go away. There are plenty of other attractive talentless women who won’t make us listen to this crap you spew. Even I know you’re a bad actress, you’re extremely ungrateful, and you uttered one of the most idiotic statements I’ve ever heard any say: The “Transformers” bombshell-cum-uninhibited philosophizer also contemplates — reluctantly — what she would say to Megatron to keep him from destroying the world. “I’d barter with him,” she muses to the July issue Total Film UK, “and say instead of the entire planet, can you just...

English universities' teaching budgets were slashed today for the first time in a decade as part of savage government cuts to higher education. The cuts come amid unprecedented demand for places, with an expected seven applications for every place at a top university. Some £215m will be shaved off universities' teaching budgets in the academic year 2010-11, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), which funds universities on behalf of the government, said in a letter to vice-chancellors. The £4.7bn that institutions will receive for teaching is 1.6% less in real terms than the amount they received the year...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a bow to political winds that demand the streets be cleared of snow, plows were out on Wednesday across the U.S. midsection despite the strain on tight state and local government budgets. A winter storm was forecast to dump as much as a foot (0.3 meter) of snow across the Great Plains and Midwest by the weekend. The storm was expected to bring enough snow to Des Moines, Iowa, to match the city's normal snowfall total for an entire winter season. The Iowa capital expects to chew through its $3 million annual snow removal budget soon...

ATLANTA – If you thought state budgets were in bad shape last year, just wait: 2010 promises to be brutal for lawmakers — many facing re-election — as they scramble to find enough money to keep their states running without raising taxes. Tax collections continue to sputter. Federal stimulus dollars are about to dry up. Rainy day funds have been tapped. And demand for services — like Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits — is soaring. As lawmakers head back to state capitols this month, budget woes range "from bad to ridiculously bad," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard...

Report: 10 States Face Looming Budget Disasters By JUDY LIN, Associated Press Wednesday, November 11, 2009SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In Arizona, the budget has grown so gloomy that lawmakers are considering mortgaging Capitol buildings. In Michigan, state officials dealing with the nation's highest unemployment rate are slashing spending on schools and health care. Drastic financial remedies are no longer limited to California, where a historic budget crisis earlier this year grew so bad that state agencies issued IOUs to pay bills. A study released Wednesday warned that at least nine other big states are also barreling toward economic disaster, raising the...

We’re just loving the service Glenn Beck is providing to America on his Fox News television program, using his crack team of investigators to uncover intriguing and potentially explosive information about key players in our federal government, particularly in the executive branch, whose presence may threaten American sovereignty and security. This past week, Mr. Beck focused on Mr. Obama’s unelected, unvetted, unaccountable czars who have been given the use of gargantuan budgets funded by the use of our personal, hard-earned money (without our permission, of course). Since some of the czars have served prison terms or are self-proclaimed Communists (and...

State budget impasses in Conn. and Pa. could replay in other states with slow tax dollar flow . While most states have already passed their budgets, Connecticut and Pennsylvania remain the only two in the nation still at odds over how to balance the books this fiscal year amid plummeting state revenues. Connecticut's revenue flow has dropped by $2 billion from last year while Pennsylvania's came in $3.3 billion less than expected. "It's a symptom of a very severe recession that's caused some really difficult political choices to be made," Meanwhile, in Michigan, where the fiscal year begins Oct. 1,...

Revenue shortfalls lead to new budget gaps only three weeks into the new fiscal year. States are forced to make more painful budget cuts.NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The bad news about state budgets just keeps getting worse. Only three weeks into the new fiscal year, gaps are already opening up. And the shortfalls are only expected to grow. "If you think legislators are breathing a sigh of relief because their budgets are passed, think again," said William Pound, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. State legislators and governors had to contend with deficits totaling $142.6 billion as...

Steven MalangaThe City’s Finances: Budget-Cutting Made Simple Balancing the books doesn’t take genius, just political courage. 6 July 2009 Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that balancing New York City’s budget in tough times requires “shared sacrifice,” by which he means combined tax increases and spending cuts. Yet as is often the case in New York, the biggest sacrifice is expected of taxpayers—this time, nearly $1 billion in tax hikes on top of what is already the heaviest tax burden among major cities in the nation (see “Life in Taxopolis,” coming soon). The city’s budget-cutting, by contrast, is exceedingly modest. In...

Commuters in our Nations Capital who cannot find time to make it to the gym for their workouts are now able to burn off those extra calorie lunch’s compliments of the DC Metro Union worker’s Obama Method, spend big- cut little, “Let’s Get Fit “ Program.

While chatting with fellow freepers, I realized I have some expertise (I'm no expert) in the ways of making a household more economical. I preserve foods by canning and freezing, I hunt, plant a garden, dry clothes outside, and so on. I do not pretend to be an expert in any of these endeavors, but I do my best. I have been told in the past that I mustn't be so thrifty, because it is that unwillingness to spend that hurts our economy. Got it. However, I live this way because I am building and planning for a grand future....

No modern American president would repeat the fiscal mistake of 1932, in which the federal government tried to balance its budget in the face of a severe recession. The Obama administration will put deficit concerns on hold while it fights the economic crisis. But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers — state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.

When things get tough, what kind of budget decisions do governors make? That depends on the governor, his or her governing philosophy and what those philosophies have done for their respective states. In New York state, Gov. David Patterson wants the taxpayers to do the heavy lifting. His proposed $121 Billion budget for the coming year would increase state spending by 1.1 percent ($1.3 Billion) and impose 88 new taxes and fees. That’s a tax increase for every key on a piano. Patterson wants to raise $4 billion in revenues with the plethora of new taxes and fees. He intends...

More States are becoming Transparent and as Texas is finding the usefulness is not only for the taxpayer but also for the state agencies. Internally, because the information was easily available they were able to identify $8.7 million dollars of savings. Sometimes it was for something as simple as buying toner cartridges, which net a $73,000 savings.

But if history is a guide, governors and legislators across the country will seek to avoid the difficult choices that are required. Instead, they will likely pass the costs of the services that we enjoy today on to our children and grandchildren, through creatively deceptive budgeting. This is a time-honored practice. In 1991, the State of New York sold Attica prison to none other than itself. The buyer was a state agency that financed the $200 million purchase price by issuing bonds. The agency then leased the prison back to the state, with the lease payments being equal to the...

He says he is — seriously devoted to building and maintaining highways. But he is just as devoted to fencing state government into fiscal straits that make these goals impossible without privatizing highways through tolls. Perry last week said that going full-bore with toll roads is the only way for Texas to build new highways. That’s not so. The history of Texas tells us it’s not. Toll roads have their function without question. But so do bonds. So does a gasoline tax that has not kept pace with inflation. So does a reexamination of how Texas funds highways in general...

"Wisconsin governors have long been allowed to sign off on budget bills but do some tricky erasing first. They could delete words, numbers, sentences, paragraphs or some combination of all of those, to create entirely new meanings never intended by the original authors — a legislative twist on the game of Mad Libs. Like when Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat, scratched out some 700 words from a section of the 2005 budget bill, leaving behind just 20 words that, when stitched back together, moved $427 million from the transportation fund to education."

Gasoline prices, which for months lagged behind the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising quickly, with some experts saying they could approach $4 a gallon by spring. Diesel is hitting new records daily, and oil settled at a record high of $100.88 a barrel on Tuesday. The increases could not come at a worse time for the economy. With growth slowing, energy increases that were once easily absorbed by consumers are now more likely to act as a drag on household budgets, leaving people with less money to spend elsewhere. These costs could worsen the nation’s...

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It's starting to seem like a tradition in the Golden State: pay raises for the highest-paid elected officials in the country while their budgets go bare. This week, Sacramento's legislators got a boost to their paychecks. They were already the best-paid legislators in the country, but still they got a $3,111 a year raise, to $116,208 with only a few declining the increase. That's on top of their generous per diems, state cars, and large office staffs. And what have these pols done to earn this boost? Let's see: redistricting legislation? Nope. Health care reform? Nope. Solved the budget problems?...

AUSTIN — A political activist dedicated to independent candidates and third-party tickets has launched a new Internet site dedicated to impeaching Gov. Rick Perry. Linda Curtis, founder of Independent Texans, launched the site to call on the Legislature to draft articles of impeachment against Perry in 2009. Curtis noted that Texas does not have the right of recall, so petitioning the Legislature to impeach the governor is the only answer when citizens are unhappy. When asked about the new Impeach Perry Web site, Perry spokesman Robert Black responded by saying: "Free speech is a wonderful thing." Curtis said the two...

WASHINGTON, March 30 — The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has estimated that the Army has enough budget flexibility to pay for its military operations through July in the event that a standoff between the White House and Congress over Iraq holds up the money the administration says it needs for the war effort. The service’s report, made public Friday by Senate Democrats, said the Pentagon may have to shift money between accounts and curtail some nonessential activities, but said Congress has provided the military with new ability to do so, lessening the potential for disruptions until additional money is approved....

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s budget director mounted a blistering attack on Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposed state budget yesterday, asserting that it would create an $862 million shortfall in the New York City budget for the fiscal year that starts on July 1. The city’s budget director, Mark Page, warned that such a shortfall, if other revenues were not found, could result in an 8 percent across-the-board cut in agency spending or imperil the mayor’s $1 billion plan to cut taxes. Mr. Bloomberg’s plan calls for reducing property taxes by about 5 percent for one year, eliminating the city sales tax...

Dems to Wipe Out Pet Projects in Bills Dec 11 8:08 PM US/Eastern By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON Democrats tidying up a cluster of unfinished spending bills dumped on them by departing Republican leaders in Congress will start by removing billions of dollars in lawmakers' pet projects next month. The move, orchestrated by the incoming chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, could prove politically savvy even as it proves unpopular with other members of Congress, who as a group will lose thousands of so-called earmarks. "There will be no congressional earmarks," Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., and...

Man, and you guys thought I was optimistic earlier. Check this out: [Lawrence Kudlow says] Look at blue dog conservative Dem victories, and look at Northeast liberal GOP defeats. The changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one. Blue dogs are rabid budget balancers. At tomorrow's news conference, President Bush should reach out to them, and to Republican base, with a spending limitation pay-as-you go proposal that gets to a balanced budget in a couple of years. Any spending increases (defense) must be offset with spending cuts (domestic pork). A spending limit paygo was...

Air Force Association August 2006, Vol. 89, No. 8 By Robert S. Dudney, Editor in ChiefBack to Demolition Derby? The Air Force should prepare itself for budget combat. Critics frequently dispute USAF’s claim that it needs to modernize its aircraft fleets. For anyone who may have harbored an honest doubt, though, the question was answered by a June exercise in Alaska. Twelve super-sophisticated F-22s, in simulated combat, posted a startling 108-to-zero record against current-generation “enemy� fighters, reported Gen. John D.W. Corley, USAF’s vice chief of staff. Against the same foes, older F-15s and F/A-18s did one-tenth as well as the...