Free Republic

Roman poet Virgil penned these words in his epic, The Aeneid, roughly a generation before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. They can be loosely translated to, “the descent to hell is easy.” Those who’ve traversed this passage can attest to the veracity of this axiom. Though not apparent in the milieu of Virgil’s poem, for our purposes today, we’ll extend its application to the insidious progression of currency debasement. What short utterance more aptly characterizes the steady degradation, as currently practiced by today’s church of state? Yesterday [Thursday], for example, the House acted with untroubled ease to further America’s...

The U.S. government will pay American farmers hurt by the trade war with China between $15 and $150 per acre in an aid package totaling $16 billion, officials said on Thursday, with farmers in the South poised to see higher rates than in the Midwest.

The budget ‘deal’ being touted by President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will do nothing to solve the federal government’s fiscal issues. It’s more likely this ‘compromise’ is going to make problems even worse, especially once the debt markers are called in – whenever that happens.One of the (if not the) biggest problems in the ‘agreement’ is the fact spending can go up without any worry about hitting some sort of artificial barrier. 2. The Agreement modifies the discretionary spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act (“BCA”) for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 pursuant to the...

When President Donald Trump begrudgingly signed a budget deal he called “ridiculous” in order to get increases for the military budget, he asserted: “I’m not going to do it again.” That was 16 months ago. Now, the Trump administration and House Democrats reportedly have reached a deal to suspend the debt limit temporarily and increase spending by more than $300 billion with only limited cuts. Around 5:45 p.m. in Washington, the president tweeted: "I am pleased to announce that a deal has been struck with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy...

The White House projects that the federal deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year, the only time in the nation's history the deficit has exceeded that level, excluding the four-year period following the Great Recession. "The 2019 deficit has been revised to a projected $1.0 trillion," the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote in its midyear review. As a candidate, President Trump promised to wipe out not only the deficit but the entire federal debt, which has surpassed $22 trillion. Republicans cast aside projections that their 2017 tax reform law would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit...

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its mid-year update on the federal fiscal situation, and it portends a debt avalanche. But don't bother to tell Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that. They're busy advocating tens of trillions of dollars in new federal spending. The new report shows that budget deficits are expected to remain in the $1 trillion territory for years to come. It appears that 13-digit deficits are the new normal in Washington, as spending inexorably keeps rising by hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This spend-and-borrow forecast ranges from troublesome to panic-room sheer terror —...

Debt was a much bigger topic of conversation during the Obama administration. Republicans mostly arguing it was reaching a critical level and progressives mostly suggested we shouldn’t worry too much about it (We can always mint that $1 trillion coin). Today the CBO released new long-term projections of federal debt which suggest it will nearly double as a percentage of GDP by 2049: In our extended baseline projections, budget deficits drive federal debt held by the public to unprecedented levels. Debt rises from 78 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, which is already high by historical standards,...

The Treasury Department reported a $208 billion deficit for the month of May — which is $61 billion higher than May 2018. To put that in perspective, the deficit for the entire year of 2007 was $161 billion. In the first eight months of the current fiscal year, red ink has already reached $738 billion. Even adjusting for inflation, the total annual federal deficit has exceeded that only six times in the nation’s history (five of them under President Obama). Not surprisingly, the Republican tax cuts are taking the blame for this year’s extraordinary deficits. But wait a minute. Overall...

This year, Sen. Rand Paul's (R–Ky.) effort to balance the federal budget didn't even get a floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. Paul's so-called "Pennies Plan" failed a procedural vote on Monday evening when only 22 senators voted in favor of a cloture motion that would have brought the bill to a final vote. A majority of Republicans and all Democrats voted against proceeding to a floor vote on the bill. It's another sign that fiscal responsibility is all but dead in Congress, even as the national debt heads toward record highs and the budget deficit approaches $1 trillion this...

If Congress doesn’t act, Americans’ taxes will automatically increase in the coming years. The 2017 tax cuts are temporary, and some of those taxes are scheduled to start increasing in three years’ time. Last year, American families of four saw their taxes cut by an average of $3,000. The typical taxpayers benefited from getting to keep about $1,400 more of their hard-earned money. One of the most important parts of the tax cuts, which support new business investments for workers and jobs, begins to expire after 2022. Three years after that, taxes increase on personal income. As deficits increase to...

I keep reading where the Chinese are flaying us in trade. Balance of trade deficits keep going up, and the Chicken Littles scream that the sky is falling. Seems to me balance-of-trade worries are misplaced. Supposedly, we got equal value for what we spent; it's just easier to quantify the dollars we put up than the goods they put up. Example: Who got more out of the deal when you bought your car? All you got was a car, but the dealer got, say, $40K. Is your balance of trade with the dealer out of whack? Not at all. He...

Each year, millions of Americans pay their taxes. We suffer through the nightmare of unfathomable IRS forms, spend tens of billions of dollars on tax experts so the IRS won’t audit us … and yet watch as other people slip through the cracks.Those cracks are pretty large. The IRS has concluded that approximately 16.3 percent of taxes simply don’t get paid. This was the case in 2001, 2006, and 2008-2010.In 2018, this meant that almost $643 billion in federal taxes simply went unpaid, based upon the $3.3 trillion pulled into federal coffers– what the IRS and Government Accountability Office...

President Trump and Democratic leaders have discovered the one policy that unites Washington: spending money we don’t have. Yet their bipartisan pledge to spend an added $2 trillion on infrastructure over the next decade faces serious obstacles if these leaders are to responsibly improve our infrastructure. First, Washington should spend only as much as it is willing to offset with other savings. Putting $2 trillion on the national credit card would boost deficits that are already on course to surpass $2 trillion a year within a decade, due mostly to entitlements. These deficits are projected to push ­annual interest costs...

The biggest damage from a renewed trade war with the United States will be China’s swing from 25 years as a net domestic saver to a global net borrower. More than $1 trillion in stock value was wiped out on Monday due to the collapse of the expected U.S./China Trade Deal. The American government mostly ignored the 600 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and soybean futures hitting an 11-year low; but China’s central bank was forced to inject $3.5 billion into the financial system after foreign investors dumped a record $1.6 billion worth of mainland shares...

I think the time is coming for an idea that is so old that it is new again: cutting the Federal government in half. The idea is: cancel all Federal welfare-type programs, including all means-tested welfare programs (apparently there are over 150 of them), all healthcare-related programs including Medicare and Medicaid, all education-related, arts-related and housing-related programs, and anything else of this sort -- in short, most everything except for the military, national parks, and maybe some public works. Social Security could eventually be reformed to a system of private retirement accounts, known as a "provident fund" system and in...

U.S. debt has climbed to an alarming level, according to DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach. “People are starting to realize that the deficit and debt are totally out of control,” Gundlach said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” Tuesday. Guldach said the “main reason” the yield curve between 3-year Treasury bonds and 5-year bonds is steepening is a ballooning deficit. Gundlach — sometimes known as the “bond king” — runs the $50 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund. Its five-year performance is one of the best in its category, but lagged most of its peers in 2019 with a gain of just...

As news circulated Tuesday that President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are eyeing a $2 trillion infrastructure spending package, the House Republican Study Committee introduced a budget proposal that recognizes that America’s $22 trillion—and rapidly growing—national debt is unsustainable, and that Congress must change course. “Preserving American Freedom,” the Republican Study Committee’s comprehensive fiscal 2020 budget proposal, would rein in Washington’s spending addiction by prioritizing core constitutional functions. By reducing inappropriate and wasteful spending and right-sizing the federal government, the committee’s proposal would balance the budget in six years and start...

The numbers: The federal government ran a budget deficit of $234 billion in February, the Treasury Department reported on Friday, the biggest monthly shortfall on record. It was wider than the $215 billion recorded in February 2018, as spending rose 8% while receipts climbed 7%. Previously, the largest monthly deficit was $231.7 billion in February 2012.

Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy. Can we conservatives agree — at least among ourselves — on that much? Maybe not. Confession: I am not much of an ideologue. And I don’t think “Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy!” is an ideological position, exactly. And there’s no need to be fanatical about it: Running a deficit during a serious economic downturn, a war, or a national emergency? I’m flexible. You show me Hitler invading Poland and my response is not going to be: Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy. Whip those Nazis. And, then: Stop spending money...

Washington, D.C. is the nation’s capital — and its suburbs could be moving towards becoming the nation’s capital of privately owned express toll lanes. The Virginia side of the Potomac has placed a big bet on such roadways, with 14 miles of pay lanes in the middle of the region’s famous Beltway, reversible toll lanes along 29 miles of I-95, and construction under way on three more highway segments. Last September, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced an even more ambitious plan for his side of the river, covering 77 miles of the Beltway and I-270. If these plans go forward,...