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Congress is getting set to OK another trillion or three in spending sort of related to the pandemic, with not a lot more rhyme or reason than in prior rounds. These are routinely called “stimulus” bills, even though much of the spending is more like “life support” for an economy dramatically slowed by lockdowns and deep uncertainty about even the near future. That includes cash for Americans thrown out of work — which is relief money. The Paycheck Protection Program, meanwhile, bribes businesses to keep on employees they’d otherwise lay off — in hopes those companies and workers will be...

Federal agencies, led by Labor and Health and Human Services, are cutting Obama-era regulations and saving money faster than demanded by President Trump, according to a new report. And as a result, the administration is expected to easily meet the president’s order to cut at least two old regulations for every new one issued and cut the costs of regulations. “With less than two months remaining in FY 2018, the Trump administration is well on its way to surpassing its regulatory budget goals,” said the new report from American Action Forum, which charts federal regulations. “Collectively, executive agencies subject to...

Trump is draining the swamp —Rebuilding government may be impossible In the 2013 novel “A Delicate Truth,” John le Carré presents the “deep state” as a moneyed, cultured élite — the “non-governmental insiders from banking, industry, and commerce” whose access to information allows them to rule in secret. Trump’s conception is quite different. A real-estate baron, Trump is at war with the clerks — the apparatchiks who, he claims, are seeking to nullify the election by denying the prerogatives of his Administration. This attack on “bureaucracy” is really an attack on the State Department, the intelligence community and ordinary bureaucrats...

The company plans to call back about 500 employees United States Steel Corp. X +4.25% said it would restart a blast furnace in Illinois to handle the higher demand it expects from President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign steel. The steelmaker said it also plans to call 500 employees back to work at the Granite City mill. U.S. Steel idled its blast furnaces there two years ago as a flood of cheap imports pushed down domestic steel prices. Steel producers have been hurt in recent years by increasing competition from foreign competitors, particularly China, that have ramped up production...

Expect a stampede of companies handing out bonuses, raising pay, spending on capital projects and giving to charities, with the windfall from the massive corporate tax cuts passed Wednesday. In the hours after Congress the GOP tax cut plan, a handful of companies jumped to announce plans to share some of the proceeds on their employees and spend on infrastructure. AT&T was first out of the gate, saying it would give more than 200,000 unionized employees a special bonus of $1,000 once the tax bill is signed. The company also said it would increase its capital expenditures by $1 billion....

Florida Senator Marco Rubio admits that the Republican tax cut plan to aid corporations and the wealthy will require cuts to Social Security and Medicare to pay for it. Rubio told reporters this week that in order to address the federal deficit, which will grow by at least $1 trillion if the tax plan passes, Congress will need to cut entitlement programs such as Social Security. Advocates for the elderly and the poor have warned that entitlement programs would be on the chopping block, but this is the first time a prominent Republican has backed their claims. “We have to...

Cut taxes. Reduce the tax burdens of the American people. Shelve hair-brained schemes like accrual accounting and FACTA whose sole purpose is to please the accountants at the CBO. Follow the Reagan model. It has a proven record of success Obamacare repeal was supposed to be an easy lift. For seven years, every Republican in Washington pledged to repeal and replace the law that has greatly damaged our health care system. Yet when it was time for a vote, political and legislative realities hit them in the face. Enacting legislation, even when in the majority, is never easy. While the...

“I think as an industry, we’re excited about working together with the president and his administration on tax policies, on regulation, and on trade to really create a renaissance in American manufacturing,” Fields told reporters after the meeting, according to the Detroit News. Fields also praised Trump’s decision to kill former President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, pointing out that it failed to address currency manipulation.

Donald Trump is ready to take an ax to government spending. Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned. The changes they propose are dramatic. The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the...

U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi admitted that manufacturing challenges exist exclusively in the United States thanks to oppressive regulation set forth by President Obama. Longhi is willing to bring as many as 10,000 jobs back to the United States because of the prosperity predicted with the advent of the incoming Trump administration. Jobs were lost to lay offs and downsizing during the Obama administration, and many employees found work overseas.

Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, sending the Republican businessman to the White House as the first president-elect with no prior experience in government or the military. Trump’s unexpected victory sent shockwaves throughout the country and the world, and will likely do the same for federal agencies. Trump has promised to institute a government wide hiring freeze on his first day in office and to change civil service laws to ease the firing of disloyal workers. Last month, just 65 percent of federal employees said they were committed to staying in their jobs if Trump were elected.

Donald Trump's transition team is preparing for the billionaire businessman to take over as commander in chief, they're ruffling a few feathers along the way. Scientific American reports Trump has selected climate change critic, Myron Ebell, to lead his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team. Ebell, who's the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, has been described by Newsweek as a fierce opponent of climate change, which the publisher calls “entirely at odds with scientific consensus.” David Goldston, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, explained that...

1. Reduce Bureaucratic Red Tape Republican leaders made it easier to do business in Indiana. They reduced bureaucratic red tape and eliminated many unnecessary regulations. Rather than burdening employers and trying to micromanage how businesses operate, Republicans put in place policies that have allowed our state to grow. 2. Balance the Budget The state put its fiscal house in order. Statehouse leaders cut government spending, balanced the budget, created a surplus, and built a near record reserve fund. Indiana earned a triple-A credit rating in 2010 and has maintained it ever since. These strategies help put the state in a...

Candidate Ted Cruz and candidate John Kasich have officially “suspended” their campaign efforts to win the republican nomination. However, the campaign effort to deliver a resounding win for Donald Trump continues.Yes, a major hurdle has been crossed – Donald Trump is now the last remaining candidate running for the nomination; but that doesn’t mean the push through the last remaining states should be any less important. Every vote counts. Every delegate matters.Anyone who is inclined toward complacency needs only to look at the reaction yesterday by House Speaker Paul ‘Omnibus‘ Ryan and note why it is vital for the...

Over the past 28 years there has been a sea change in the media. Not only has the monopoly of the so-called mainstream media been shattered but the phenomenal rise of conservative media has been truly stunning. It began in 1988 with the national syndication of Rush Limbaugh and his distinctive brand of conservative political commentary espoused in an entertaining and captivating way, which opened the flood gates for other conservatives, together with Rush, to dominate the talk radio airwaves. In the 1990’s the internet, through hundreds of websites, gave voice to journalists to report stories either ignored or downplayed...

Since Obuma was elected to POTUS, I have been coming to Free Republic to get news, opinions and a few laughs. Most of the serious posts were bemoaning the out of control government and what could be done about it. "Oh Whoa is Me!". Then along comes a constitutional conservative. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, we have a constitutional candidate running for the GOP nomination. This man was elected by conservatives to go to Washington and stand up to the elites that no longer listen to the American people. He didn't go to Washington and "fall in" with...

and "Rent boy Marco Rubio."

This market is looking like a disaster and the rates are a reflection of that," warns one of the world's largest shipbrokers, but while The Baltic Dry Freight Index gets all the headlines - having collapsed to all-time record lows this week - it is the spefics below that headline that are truly terrifying. At a time of typical seasonal strength for freight and thus global trade around the world, Reuters reports that spot rates for transporting containers from Asia to Northern Europe have crashed a stunning 70% in the last 3 weeks alone.

The self-proclaimed “Robin Hood of Rock” is beginning to sound a little more like Grover Norquist than a traditional pop-culture leftist. The U2 frontman, Bono, recently praised Ireland’s extraordinarily low tax rate, while claiming that the move has brought unparalleled prosperity to the Emerald Isle. According to the UK Independent, Bono boasted about the tax-policy’s ability to bring wealth to Ireland for the first time in centuries:“We are a tiny little country, we don’t have scale, and our version of scale is to be innovative and to be clever, and tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known.”He even...

China has unveiled a series of moves aimed at boosting growth, indicating that policymakers are concerned about the slowdown in its economy. The steps include tax breaks for small businesses, reduced fees for exporters and opening up of railway construction. Beijing said it would suspend value-added tax (VAT) and turnover tax for small businesses with monthly sales of less than 20,000 yuan ($3,257; £2,125), starting from 1 August. Policymakers said they would also implement measures to simplify customs clearance procedures, cut operational fees and facilitate the exports of small and medium-sized private enterprises. It said it would set up a...