Free Republic

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says that trillion-dollar deficits could not have been avoided by the GOP-controlled Congress, responding to critics within his party who say that leaders have behaved irresponsibly. “That was going to happen. The baby boomers retiring was going to do that,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” of projections that the country will start running trillion-dollar deficits as soon as 2020. Etc...

America’s massive trade deficit with China is estimated to have resulted in about two million job losses in the US, the White House has said, defending President Donald Trump’s decision to initiate strong actions against China’s “unfair” trade practices. (please see link, for full article)

And let's begin by discussing how to maintain economic growth by controlling and eventually eliminating the problem of Federal deficits. We have had a balanced budget only eight times in the last 57 years. For the first time in 14 years, the Federal Government spent less in real terms last year than the year before. We took $73 billion off last year's deficit compared to the year before. The deficit itself has moved from 6.3 percent of the gross national product to only 3.4 percent. And perhaps the most important sign of progress has been the change in our view...

RUSH: Here’s Chuck You Schumer. This is in Washington today on the Senate floor. Audio sound bite No. 24. SCHUMER: Overall, we Democrats are very happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish on a number of very important priorities to the middle class in America: infrastructure, education, opioid treatment, mental health, child care. This spending agreement brings that era of austerity to an unceremonious end and represents one of the most significant investments in the middle class in decades. RUSH: I don’t know, folks. I just want to puke when I hear this stuff. I just want to vomit....

The largest financial institution in the world – the U.S. government – issued its financial statement just a few days ago, and nobody in Washington seems to care that the deficit is almost twice as large as they once thought. snip In substance-free Washington, the release of the annual financial statements of the U.S. government isn’t a big deal, but it should be. The statements demonstrate that we have gone backward, not forward, with Republicans in charge of all branches of government. According to the annual financial report of the U.S. government published by the Treasury Department, the real deficit...

Congressional Republicans have been raked over the coals in the last two weeks for slamming through budget caps and inflating government spending and debt by another $300 billion. The criticisms are well-deserved. It's a historical truism that Republicans are much more fiscally conscientious when they are in the minority than when they run Congress. And Republicans tend to be much bigger fiscal hawks when there is a Democratic president than a Republican president -- as we are now witnessing. The only time in half a century that the budget has been balanced was in the late 1990s, when Bill Clinton...

Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you’re crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn’t yours and you owe it back. Now imagine that this happens every minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three years, you owe back...

In "Hamlet," Shakespeare pens one of the most familiar lines -- and best advice -- ever written. Before Laertes leaves for Paris, his father, Polonius, tells him: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be..." We have ignored that advice for far too long, which is why the U.S. national debt is $20 trillion with more to come, thanks to the Republican Congress, which has passed a two-year spending bill that calls for $300 billion in new spending and removes caps applied by the Budget Control Act of 2011. It's being sold to the public with the highest and purist motives....

<p>Trump tweeted, “Just signed Bill. Our Military will now be stronger than ever before. We love and need our Military and gave them everything — and more. First time this has happened in a long time. Also means JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!”</p>

WASHINGTON — Just add cash. That was the ingredient Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill needed to strike and pass a long-term budget deal after months of bitter fighting across and within party lines about how to spend funds that had been limited by budget caps. An $89 billion injection "changes a lot of votes," explained North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of Republicans' arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and an opponent of the bill, hours before it passed. And that figure, an important factor in securing the support of lawmakers from the Republican-heavy states of Texas and Florida, only...

Thousands of federal workers faced uncertainty about the status of their jobs and paychecks after U.S. Senate leaders failed to reach an agreement to end a government shutdown before the work week begins on Monday. “This is incredibly stressful,” said Jessica Klement, vice president at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, which represents more than 20,000 workers. “Essential employees must report to work without knowing when they’ll be paid next,” she said. “Non-essential employees will be forced to stay home without pay, not knowing if back pay will be provided.” Some employees may not have received notice of...

WASHINGTON–The United States mistakenly supported China’s membership of the World Trade Organization in 2001 during Bill Clinton’s presidency on terms that have failed to force Beijing to open its economy, the Trump administration said on Friday as it prepares to clamp down on Chinese trade. “It seems clear that the United States erred in supporting China’s entry into the WTO on terms that have proven to be ineffective in securing China’s embrace of an open, market-orientated trade regime,” the administration said in an annual report to Congress on China’s compliance with WTO commitments. (Please link to follow article for additional...

Why do we constantly talk about race and immigration? Race and immigration? It never ends. That's all we talk about. We have allowed the Democrats, liberals, cultural marxists and their Republican suck-ups to set the terms of this national debate. Why do we never talk about balancing the budget or eliminating our $100 trillion federal debt? To me, this is far more important. Why don't we put off the race and immigration debate until we balance the budget? How can we even consider giving illegal immigrants government money when the government is completely broke? Repeat after me---OUR GOVERNMENT IS COMPLETELY...

The trade deficit in the US widened to USD 50.5 billion in November of 2017 from an upwardly revised USD 48.9 billion in October. It is the biggest trade gap since January of 2012 as imports reached a record high on rising demand for consumer goods, cell phones, crude oil and semiconductors. Exports recovered form October's fall and touched a record value on higher sales of capital goods, aircraft and cars. Balance of Trade in the United States averaged -14032.83 USD Million from 1950 until 2017, reaching an all time high of 1946 USD Million in June of 1975 and...

The federal government collected record individual-income-tax revenues through the first quarter of fiscal 2018 (October through December), according to the new Monthly Treasury Statement. This was the last quarter before the new tax-cut law signed by President Donald Trump on Dec. 22 took effect. Despite taking in record individual-income-tax revenues, the federal government ran a deficit of approximately $225 billion during the quarter. The Treasury collected a record $390,847,000,000 in individual income taxes in October through December, according to the Treasury statement. That was $30,568,380,000 more than the $360,278,620,000 that the Treasury collected (in constant December 2017 dollars) in individual...

he House passed a short-term spending measure Thursday to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday, and quickly voted on a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill to aid victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The Senate is expected to vote Thursday evening on the stopgap, which passed the House 231-188 and will push back delicate decisions on spending, immigration, health care and national security until Jan. 17.

If you're a normal person who pays attention to politics, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Washington can't decide whether deficits are bad or not. Well, I have one easy trick that will help you make sense of it all. In Washington, when you hear people complain that this or that piece of legislation will "explode" the deficit, what they are really telling you is that they don't like the legislation. It's really that simple. Good legislation, like good food, movies, novels and pretty much everything else except for dogs (they're all good), is in the eye of the beholder....

This week, Republicans in the Senate finally passed their long-awaited tax reform plan. It lowers individual income tax rates across the board, although it does claw back some government revenue in the form of elimination of state and local tax deductions. It drops corporate tax rates as well. It is, in other words, a significant but not atypical Republican tax cut designed to boost economic growth by allowing Americans to keep more of their own money. The tax cut will almost certainly increase the deficit, however. Even with dynamic scoring -- the assumption that the economy will grow at...

NEW YORK - The Federal Reserve bought $3.447 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities in the week from Nov. 23 to Nov. 29, compared with $5.516 billion purchased the previous week, the New York Federal Reserve Bank said on Thursday. In a move to help the housing market begun in October 2011, the U.S. central bank has been using funds from principal payments on the agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, it holds to reinvest in agency MBS.

WASHINGTON - The federal government began its new budget year with an October deficit of $63.2 billion, up sharply from a year ago. The Treasury Department reported Monday that the October deficit was 37.9 percent higher than the $45.8 billion deficit recorded in October 2016. Both government receipts and spending were up for the month, with receipts climbing 14.3 percent to $235.3 billion, a record for the month of October. The larger spending figure was up a sizable 11.6 percent to $298.6 billion. The deficit for the 2017 budget year, which ended on Sept. 30, totaled $666 billion, up 13.7...