Free Republic

This is a video clip. From CNBC. With yet more whining from China, about our great president. :D Donald is turning into a great, great, president. Best ever.

The United States trade deficit dropped in May to the lowest level in 19 months as exports rose to a record level. The Department of Commerce announced the May trade deficit — the difference between what America sells and what it buys in foreign markets — decreased 6.6 percent to $43.1 billion — the smallest imbalance since October 2016. Exports climbed 1.9 percent to a record $215.3 billion. Imports were up a smaller 0.4 percent to $258.4 billion. The Trump administration followed through with imposing tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese products on Friday. China retaliated in kind, starting what...

On Fox Business Channel Friday morning director of the United States National Economic Council Larry Kudlow claimed that the deficit “is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly.” He said: "As the economy gears up, more people working, better jobs and careers, those revenues come rolling in. And the deficit—which is one of the other criticisms—is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly. Growth solves a lot of problems. You’ve heard me say this for a very long time." While job growth continues to show strong numbers and revenues have increased from last year, is it inaccurate to suggest that...

Republicans have had a rough week, mostly of their own making, and on Wednesday they added to their self-punishment with a spending fiasco in the Senate. Two GOP Senators blocked the Trump Administration’s rescissions package that would claw back $15 billion, much of which wasn’t even likely to be spent under current policy. A Senate procedural vote to move the rescissions package failed 48-50 after defections from Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Burr of North Carolina. From what we’ve heard Ms. Collins wanted to keep the money on ice so if it isn’t spent as part of its current...

China offered to purchase nearly $70 billion of U.S. farm, manufacturing and energy products if the Trump administration abandons threatened tariffs, according to people briefed on the latest negotiations with American trade officials. In weekend talks in Beijing, Chinese negotiators led by Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s economic envoy, presented a U.S. team headed by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross a package that includes Chinese companies buying more U.S. soybeans, corn, natural gas, crude oil, coal and manufactured goods. Chinese and U.S. officials estimated the value of the package at nearly $70 billion in the first year. President Donald Trump has...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said during a “town hall meeting” on CNN on Wednesday night that when there is a Democratic president the federal deficit goes down. “It’s counterintuitive in people’s minds that the Democrats are the deficit reduction folks,” said Pelosi. “But the fact is, you look, when there’s a Democratic president, that the deficit goes down, when the Republicans are in power, they give tax cuts at the high end, all kinds of other things, and the deficit, the debt, the national debt goes up.” The historical data published by the White House Office of Management and...

There is an old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and we've learned that again with the Congressional Budget Office and its latest highly misleading fiscal forecast. For years, we've been trying to get the CBO to use real-world scoring that reflects how businesses, workers and financial markets react to changes in tax rates. But no go. This is why the left is having a field day with the CBO's forecast that deficits under President Trump will average a trillion dollars a year for the next decade. This is supposed to be a result of Trump's...

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...