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In a breathtaking example of hypocrisy, Jim Cooper testified today - presumably with a straight face - that deficit spending of the sort that has lead to $55 trillion dollars in unfunded mandates threatening to cripple the US Economy is a "fiscal cancer." While he does say that the Health Care bill passed in the House on Saturday won't help address the problem, he neglects to mention he voted for it. Instead he recommends another Congressional panel to make recommendations.

OOPs, it looks as if the NY Times is going to get the "Fox News" treatment. Yes THAT NY Times "the bible of liberalism." Yesterday the "Old Grey Lady" ran a story about how some democrats are concerned that Obamacare will not bring down the costs of healthcare and may bankrupt the economy: WASHINGTON — As health care legislation moves toward a crucial airing in the Senate, the White House is facing a growing revolt from some Democrats and analysts who say the bills Congress is considering do not fulfill President Obama’s promise to slow the runaway rise in health...

Another member of the far left, "Obama approved" media member has jumped off the Obamacare Titanic. John Cassidy, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is a fervent supporter of socialized health care, and whose essay on Karl Marx was nominated for a National Magazine Award, gives a blunt, logical, and revealing breakdown of H.R. 3962.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, blasted the Obama administration and Congressman Barney Frank this morning telling a banking audience that the Democrats’ actions to restructure the entire economy are “insane.” “I hope that the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s race will put some realism into this administration,” Welch told an enthusiastic crowd at the Bank Administration Institute convention at Boston’s Convention and Exhibition Center. “I hope it will cause them to pause and not just jump into anything they encounter.” Welch was referring to the races on Tuesday where Republicans bested Democrats, a sign some say that...

Federal Spending: Tipping Point Allie Winegar Duzett, November 9, 2009 “We need to get a grip on our budget,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) argued at this week’s Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing. The spending is “out of control,” Rep. Ryan declared, adding that “there is either A) no desire to get it under control, or B) no capacity to get it under control, or a combination of the two.” Rep. Ryan has recently sponsored a bill that would address this problem. “Our bill … creates a legally binding budget, [and] gives the budget the force of law,” he stated. “The problem...

China hopes that the United States will keep its deficit to an appropriate size to ensure basic stability in the U.S. dollar exchange rate, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Sunday. "We have seen some signs of recovery in the U.S. economy ... I hope that as the largest economy in the world and an issuing country of a major reserve currency, the United States will effectively discharge its responsibilities," Wen told a news conference in Egypt. "Most importantly, we hope the United States will keep an appropriate size to its deficit so that there will be basic stability in...

Are the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and other first-world nations in danger of defaulting on their debt? In my latest NEWSWEEK column, I suggested that the unthinkable had become thinkable: some advanced society—say, the United States, Spain, Italy, Japan, or Great Britain—might someday default on its government debt. It wouldn't pay its creditors all they were owed or wouldn't pay them on time. Just a few days later, and completely coincidentally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a report that, without saying so, added credence to this unsettling hypothesis. The report, done by IMF staff economists, comes with the...

The Treasury recently reported that the federal government recorded a total budget deficit of $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2009, about $960 billion more than the deficit incurred in 2008. CBO notes, in its latest Monthly Budget Review, that the federal deficit rose as a share of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009—the highest deficit as a share of GDP since 1945.As shown in the figure below, federal spending and receipts diverged dramatically in 2009, reflecting the weakening economy and the federal response. The increase in the deficit of...

Not all Dem governors for health reformThursday, November 5, 2009 By Donald Lambro When the nation's 28 Democratic governors were asked to send a letter to congressional leaders last month expressing their support for health care reform, seven refused to sign the letter and even some who did complained that the pending reform plans could hit them with budget-busting expenses. The big concern among the holdouts is that the health care overhaul will leave them on the hook to pay for expansions in Medicaid programs for the poor while Washington reaps the political credit. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, one of...

The White House is beginning to send strong signals that it recognizes the $1.4 trillion budget deficit is a looming political problem that needs to be addressed, even as President Obama reminds Americans that the country's fiscal crisis originated with the Bush administration and will not be resolved overnight. The president's budget director, Peter R. Orszag, on Tuesday will deliver the second major speech on the deficit in a week by a top White House official. Mr. Orszag's speech on "reining in the deficit" will be the first time that a top White House economist will look forward at the...

I nearly fell out of my chair as I read this New York Times headline: "Democrats Push for Plan to Cut Deficit." From the headline alone, I couldn't tell whether this was before, during or after they supported President Barack Obama's intentional, exponential escalation of the deficit to $1.4 trillion. That's simply immeasurable chutzpah. But just in case you're ready to be taken in yet again by these fair-weather deficit watchdogs, the first sentence of the Times article reveals their true -- and true to form -- motive. "Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and...

Geithner: The Deficit Is Gigantic, But We'll Deal With It Another Time Joe WeisenthalNov. 1, 2009, 2:35 PM On Meet The Press, Tim Geithner acknowledged the monster deficit, and said it had to be dealth with... but that was really a problem to be solved at some point down the road. ---- AP: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledges the federal budget deficit is too high, but that the priorities now are economic growth and job creation. Asked repeatedly on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether this means taxes will rise, Geithner avoided giving specifics. He did say President Barack Obama is...

It Is Japan We Should Be Worrying About, Not AmericaJapan is drifting helplessly towards a dramatic fiscal crisis. For 20 years the world's second-largest economy has been able to borrow cheaply from a captive bond market, feeding its addiction to Keynesian deficit spending – and allowing it to push public debt beyond the point of no return. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Published: 5:33PM GMT 01 Nov 2009 The rocketing cost of insuring against the bankruptcy of the Japanese state is telling us that the model has smashed into the buffers. Credit default swaps (CDS) on five-year Japanese debt have risen from...

Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts. But even the idea of a panel to bridge the partisan divide has run into partisan objections. Many Democrats, including in the White House, are loath to cede such far-reaching decisions to a commission and doubt Republicans’ willingness to compromise. And most Republicans remain adamantly opposed to tax increases, leaving the prospects...

Today is Halloween, but Gov. Bill Richardson has been running around as Dr. Doom all week. Richardson is upset the Legislature approved a 7.6 percent cut in funding for most of his agencies as a means to help address a $650 million budget deficit. Day after day this week, in a well-orchestrated public-relations campaign, Richardson and other administration officials warned of dire consequences ... Senior citizens will go hungry, poor children will go without medical care, state parks will be shut, two prisons will be closed and hundreds of criminals will be set loose to prey on you, the administration...

Federal income tax rates would have to be nearly tripled across the income spectrum if Congress were to close the deficit in fiscal year 2010, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Instead of taxing joint filers with rates ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent, tax rates would have to start at 27.2 percent and reach up to 95.2 percent.

FRANKFURT (Dow Jones)-Greek and Portuguese government bonds came under pressure Thursday after rating agency Moody's Investors Service issued fresh warnings on the countries' sovereign credit ratings. Moody's placed Greece's A1 currency ratings on review for possible downgrade, and it also changed the outlook on Portugal's Aa2 rating to negative, citing serious fiscal deterioration in Greece and structural economic challenges and a lack of will to challenge them in Portugal.

The Associated Press noted last week that the federal deficit reached a record $1.42 trillion for the fiscal year that ended September 30. Up until now, most of the mainstream media have either ignored the exploding deficits or declared them a good thing, since they were supposed to lift us out of the recession. But now that the full figures have come in even some Obama-friendly media stalwarts are struck by their enormity. Read the Full Article.

The unprecedented, improbable and indeed almost unimaginable global financial crisis has virtually put an end to the comfortable notion that American and Western capitalism would dominate the world economy. In turn, the financial meltdown threatening another Great Depression has been the rationale for a phenomenal expansion of government spending to prop up demand and fend off economic disaster. As a result, the deficit quadrupled from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.85 trillion this year. It has gone from 3.2% of gross domestic product to 13.1%, twice the post-World War II record of 6% in 1983 under President Reagan. What's more,...

Federal income tax rates would have to be nearly tripled across the income spectrum if Congress were to close the deficit in fiscal year 2010, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Instead of taxing joint filers with rates ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent, tax rates would have to start at 27.2 percent and reach up to 95.2 percent. "Federal government spending levels are so high that even if policymakers were willing to stop debt-financing government services, the federal tax system in its current form wouldn't be able to raise that much," said Tax Foundation...

By ALLAN H. MELTZER The United States is headed toward a new financial crisis. History gives many examples of countries with high actual and expected money growth, unsustainable budget deficits, and a currency expected to depreciate. Unless these countries made massive policy changes, they ended in crisis. We will escape only if we act forcefully and soon. As long ago as the 1960s, then French President Charles de Gaulle complained that the U.S. had the "exorbitant privilege" of financing its budget deficit by issuing more dollars. Massive purchases of dollar debt by foreigners can of course delay the crisis, but...

Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) lead analyst covering US debt said that the Amercan goverment could lose its “AAA” rating if it cannot cut the deficit and budget gaps in the next three to four years. Steven Hess told Reuters: “The Aaa rating of the U.S. is not guaranteed.” The current rating should be stable for at least 18 months.It was only earlier this year that the UK government got a similar warning from credit agencies.China expressed concern to Secretary Geithner that it does not have an unending appetite for US Treasury paper. At some point the People’s Republic will not be willing to...

Should the American people turn the Czars concept against our rulers? How about a Congress Czar, whose job it would be to ensure that Congress balances the budget (spends no more than it takes in) or else Congress forfeits 90% of its pay and benefits. The only thing the Congress czar could not directly control is the influence peddling that Congress uses after they are out of office to enrich themselves. Media scrutiny would identify cases of Congress selling out the American people for personal gain, and the new Congress czar would have the power to fine the Congressperson, or...

President Obama has assured his bobble heads that health care reform won't add anything to the deficit. It's difficult to figure out how a bill that costs somewhere just south of a trillion dollars is going to be deficit neutral. But bureaucrats have a mathematical principle available to them that we regular folk aren't allowed to use. It's called calling it something else. President Obama has made serial promises that he will not sign a health-care bill that "adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future, period." This was never plausible, but now we can begin...

Eye-Opening.

Just days after the federal government reported a budget deficit more than triple that of any previous fiscal year, Democrats in Washington prepared to double down on their disastrous economic record with “more stimulus” – read: more spending and borrowing. The price tag for this “stealth stimulus:” $100 billion & counting. While Democrats “have scheduled a meeting” for this week to talk about all this new spending, House Republicans have proposed a “bipartisan jobs plan” to help small businesses, assembled a “kitchen cabinet” of economic experts, and convened a working group of lawmakers to review additional job creation proposals. Out-of-work...

Republicans needn't trouble themselves to nominate a presidential candidate in 2012. No matter what, President Obama will be running against George W. Bush. Bush will be Obama's eternal foil. At this rate, when Obama writes his post-presidential memoir, it will be titled "An Audacious Presidency, or How I Saved America From That Bastard Bush." His presidential library will have a fright-house wing devoted to Bush's misrule. Obama clearly wants Bush to be the Hoover to his FDR. Since Bush left office with a 34 percent job approval, Obama understandably feels moved to scorn him. But Obama's perpetual campaign against Bush...

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released updated information on the nation’s fiscal outlook, based on the projections from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). On October 7, CBO announced that the nation's budget deficit for 2009 was $1.4 trillion, triple 2008's, which was the worst in history at the time.

Senate Finance Committee members have been notified that the committee's health reform bill was filed today. S. 1796 weighs in at 1,502 pages, according to a Senate Republican leadership source. It's still not up yet on the Finance Committee website or Thomas.gov. We'll post a link as soon as we get one.

As he became California's state Senate leader last December, Darrell Steinberg gave a speech urging his colleagues to pass a bill – within 120 days – extending health insurance to every child in the state. Ten months later, after a season of budget slashing, Steinberg instead scrambled for votes and money to rescue the existing kids insurance program from collapse. "When I gave that speech, I don't think anybody realized the complete magnitude of what we were about to face," the Sacramento Democrat said in an interview, looking back on his opening year as president pro tem of the California...

Most American’s were ready for Obama to go before his term started. Now after nine month’s in office, the first affirmative action POTUS declares that he is ‘ready to go’. I don’t know where he’s planning to go, but I suspect that it’s not anywhere that the rest of America would care to venture. Let’s review Obama’s performance as CEO of the United States.According to the Associated Press, the Federal Budget deficit has surged to an all-time high of $1.42 trillion as tax revenues plunged while the Obama Administration was spending massive amounts on the way to its undeclared destination....

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A leading fiscal mind on Capitol Hill and a one-time Obama Cabinet pick sounded the alarm Sunday over the projected long-term financial challenges the country faces. “This deficit is driven by us,” New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg candidly said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union when asked about the federal government’s projected $1.42 trillion operating deficit for the 2009 fiscal year. “You talk about systemic risk. The systemic risk today is the Congress of the United States,“ the Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “that we’re creating...

Back on October 7, when the Congressional Budget Office reported that the federal deficit had ballooned to a massive $1.4 trillion during President Obama’s first year on the job, Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News did not tell viewers. But Couric finally caught up to the bad news after the Obama White House put out its final numbers on Friday afternoon. Couric disclosed the news in a brief item on the October 16 Evening News that never mentioned Obama by name: “It’s the biggest IOU Uncle Sam has ever written. Government figures out today show for the last fiscal year, which...

$1.4 Trillion Deficit Complicates Stimulus PlansBy JACKIE CALMES Published: October 16, 2009 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945. The number, while lower than forecast a few months ago, underscored the challenges ahead in shrinking the deficit even as the White House and Congress are considering more steps to stimulate an economy that is making a slow recovery. The political hurdles to finding...

Remember this little nugget from January of 2007 from one Nancy Pelosi? After years of historic deficits, this new Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: pay as you go, no new deficit spending. Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt. And as the Democrats railed against Bush and his deficit they don't utter a peep about this: WASHINGTON – What is $1.42 trillion? It's more than the total national debt for the first 200 years of the Republic, more than the entire economy of India, almost as much...

As expected, the deficit for 2009 hit a record $1.4 trillion in 2009, according to the White House's official fiscal figures. The deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was officially $1.417 trillion, more than triple the 2008 deficit of $455 billion. The red ink flowed largely because of the recession's impact on tax receipts and on government attempts to salvage the economy. Money generated from taxes fell from $2.5 trillion in 2008 to $2.1 trillion in 2009. Outlays increased from nearly $3 trillion to $3.5 trillion. Obama administration officials acknowledged that the 2009 deficit and expected deficits...

The Obama administration on Friday said the government ran a $1.42 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2009. That made it the worst year on record since World War II, according to data from the Treasury and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Tax receipts for the year fell 16.6% overall, while spending soared 18.2% compared to fiscal year 2008. The causes: rising unemployment, the economic slowdown and the extraordinary measures taken by lawmakers to stem the economic meltdown that hit in fall 2008. Consequently, the annual deficit rose 212% to the record dollar amount of $1.42 trillion, from...

Remember this? [VIDEO OF OBAMA'S TRANSPARENCY AT SITE] Yeeeeeah: Maneuvering to boost prospects for sweeping health care legislation, Senate Democrats hope first to win quick approval for a bill that grants doctors a $247 billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade but raises federal deficits in the process, officials said Wednesday. By creating a two-bill approach, Democrats intend to claim the more comprehensive health care measure meets President Barack Obama’s conditions — that it will neither add to deficits nor exceed $900 billion in costs over 10 years. If approved and signed into law, the legislation would avert a...

China's trade surplus shrinks to $12.9 billion in September Falling surpluses point to end of China's role as `dollar recycler,' analyst says By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- China's trade surplus contracted in September at a faster-than-expected pace, as the gap between what the nation sells to and buys from the world continued to shrink. Analysts said the report adds to evidence that the country will swing to a trade deficit early next year. China's trade surplus in September totaled $12.9 billion, down about 56% from a year earlier. Median market expectations were for a surplus of $15.8...

[snip]In case anybody checked, the dollar's path has been steadily downward since the early years of the administration of George W. Bush. And, notwithstanding the bleating you hear about the battered buck, that's just fine with Wall Street. According to Barclays Capital, "since 2003, dollar weakness has gone hand-in-hand with equity rallies." The bank's economists estimate currency depreciation helped to reduce the trade deficit, which added 1.1 percentage points to gross domestic product growth in the first half of 2009 from a year earlier. From the stock market's perspective, Barclays Capital notes in its U.S. Portfolio Strategy weekly letter that...

Debt can become a real liability for a superpower. Recall what happened to postwar Britain. The dollar's sharp drop over the past few weeks has led to considerable anxiety about the status of the United States as the dominant force in the global economy. Closely related to this fear is constant worry about the rise of China and the evermore complicated relationship between Beijing and Washington. Most people are now aware that China is the largest creditor to a heavily indebted U.S. government. It holds close to a trillion dollars of U.S. Treasurys and has invested hundreds of billions more...

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- California's state controller is warning that disappointing tax receipts will push the state into a bigger budget deficit than expected. A report released Friday by Controller John Chiang says state revenue is about $1 billion short of what lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger expected when they reached a budget deal during the summer. The report says the biggest dip is in income tax, with receipts down about 11 percent.

Barack Obama owes Max Baucus one giant kiss, or maybe some bridges to nowhere in Montana. Everything changed on October 7, 2009. We now have a health reform plan that the Congressional Budget Office says would reduce the deficit and significantly reduce the rolls of the uninsured. This will pass. In fact, expect it to pass at about the same time the recession is said to have ended. By November, Obama's approval ratings will be back in the 60s. And Saturday Night Live will get back to making fun of Republicans exclusively, without the burden of being fact checked.

US Deficit 'Hits Record $1.4Tn' The US budget deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion (£877bn) in the year to 30 September, US Congress estimates say. Analysts had predicted a $1.6tn deficit but revised the estimate, which comes after the end of the US financial year. The deficit was equal to 9.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) - more than treble the 2008 level and the highest since the end of World War II. The surging deficit was put down to increased government spending and a big drop in tax revenues. The Treasury Department will report the actual deficit later this...

Only in the halls of Washington, D.C. and the Obama administration, does the current fiscal policy of unprecedented borrowing and printing of money make sense. To most Americans, it's a difficult to wrap your brain around trillion dollar deficits, but they understand that spending money you don't have will eventually come back to bite you.

Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief after a positive cost report on health care overhaul gave them a chance to rally around a Senate plan that significantly expands coverage while trimming the federal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that the latest version of the Senate Finance Committee proposal would expand coverage to 94 percent of all eligible Americans at a 10-year cost of $829 billion. The budget umpires added that the legislation would reduce federal deficits by $81 billion over a decade and could lead to continued reductions in federal red ink in the years beyond. But...

Hurry While Supplies Last!!!

Gov. David A. Paterson took a step on Tuesday toward plugging an expected $3 billion budget deficit and ordered state agencies to cut $500 million from their expenses. The move will represent a decrease of approximately 11 percent in the agencies’ nonlabor costs like travel, vehicles, equipment and postage, the governor’s office said. The new cuts come on top of $1 billion in spending reductions the governor ordered for the last budget cycle. Taken together, the two rounds of cuts will result in combined, recurring savings of $1.5 billion, the governor’s office said. The action by the governor’s office probably...

If you watch C-Span for a while, you’re sure to hear a politician or pundit criticizing some idea by comparing it to “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” It’s a vivid illustration of the short-sightedness and futility of so much of what Washington does superficially to improve failed programs. In Washington today, however, we are witnessing an unprecedented extension of the Titanic analogy: Both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are focused on rearranging our deck chairs while there is still time to steer around the iceberg, if only someone would grab the wheel...

RICHMOND — In a scathing letter to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said no state has been slower than Virginia in putting federal highway stimulus cash to use. As of Aug. 31, construction had begun on only 16.5 percent of the $695 million Virginia received for statewide and local highway and bridge projects under President Barack Obama’s stimulus initiative, said the letter from U.S. Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn. Nationally, nearly 43 percent of the billions of dollars a Democratic Congress approved for highway revitalization is already under construction, according to...