Free Republic

In separate rulings, one in California and the other in Minnesota, judges ordered those states’ governors to restore spending that they had reduced because of soaring deficits. In Minnesota, District Judge Kathleen Gearin directed state Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) to reinstate cuts he had made to a food distribution program, calling the Governor’s actions “callous and immoral.” “At a time of high unemployment it is exceedingly cruel for a state official to be denying people access to the food they need to live,” Gearin said. “This is especially the case when it is obvious that the government has not maximized...

"I think I'm moving to Montana soon, gonna raise me up a batch of dental floss." -Frank Zappa Part of the solution to the quixotic health care bill being proposed by the enlightened public servants in Washington can be found in a reflective consideration of dental floss. One of my friends, who actually did move to Montana, became a dentist back in the late '70s. Montana Bob told me, "Bloom, the best thing you can do to prevent dental disease is to regularly floss your teeth." His next statement: "But I know you won't. Nobody does. You'll eventually come to...

A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis", says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times. Wolf, who has honorary doctorates from three universities, bases his argument in part on the Triffin dilemma, an economic paradox named after economist Robert Triffin. The paradox shows that the US dollar's role as a global reserve currency leads to a conflict between US national monetary policy and global monetary policy. It also points to fundamental imbalances in...

WASHINGTON -- * The Senate voted yesterday to raise the ceiling on the government debt to $12.4 trillion, a massive increase over the current limit and a political problem that President Obama has promised to address next year. The Senate's rare Christmas Eve vote, 60-39, follows House passage last week and raises the debt ceiling by $290 billion. The vote split completely along party lines, with Democrats voting to raise the limit and Republicans voting against doing so. There was one defection on each side, by senators up for re-election next year: GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio and Democratic...

Blogger Doug Ross got to the news of the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Report (PDF) over the weekend, quite accurately observing that the establishment news coverage of its content barely existed. The results of searches at the Associated Press's raw feed page on "Congressional Budget Office" (not in quotes) and "CBO" confirm Doug's observation, as no result returned relates to the CBO's report. The virtual non-coverage of the report may be due to the dire, dour news contained therein, as noted by Reuters, which at least had a story: U.S. already $292 bln in the red this year -...

How many more times will Dems repeat this junk that the HCR bills are deficit Neutral??? My head EXPLODES every time I hear/read it, because the fact is Health Care will – starting in ‘14 – cost the government a fresh $145 billion EVERY YEAR, if the “reforms” take place. Here are the (approximate) raw numbers: In the first 10 years from when President Obama will (hopefully not) sign the HCR bill, Medicare will be cut by $500 billion, and taxes will be increased by a half trillion dollars. This should reduce the deficit by $1 trillion in the first...

... The [financial] crisis was caused in part by excessive debt: mortgages that could not be repaid; credit card balances that consumers could not cover; property loans based on inflated values. And the solution being proposed is more debt: massive government borrowing. The economy is floating on a sea of credit, with government deficits topping $1 trillion, over 80% of the mortgage market supported by the government, and the Federal Reserve Board printing so many dollars that fears of deflation have been replaced with a gnawing worry that it is inflation that will prove the enemy -- although not a...

IT'S TIME to stop worrying about the deficit -- and start panicking about the debt. To put it another way, short-term deficits aren't the real problem. The punishing hangover of borrowed money is. The ballooning national debt once looked like a long-term problem. Now, the long-term has become the middle-term, fast-forwarded by the cratering economy and the unavoidable and immense spending in the service of saving it. Consider: In the space of a single fiscal year, 2009, the debt soared from 41 percent of the gross domestic product to 53 percent. By way of comparison, the average for the past...

The Wall Street Journal reported today about the Democrat's political abuse of TARP, which was created to "save the financial system" in a time of "crisis". (I don't buy into that, but I digress.). The original description of the program, according to Federal Reserve's own website was...

By the end of the year, the federal government may have totally restructured the American healthcare system. This health-insurance industry takeover may lead to widespread taxpayer subsidies for elective abortion. A new national energy tax may be imposed to reduce carbon emissions. The secret ballot for union organization may be effectively eliminated, swelling Big Labor’s ranks and coffers. Or maybe none of these things will have happened. Hard as it may be to believe, that last prospect looks most likely. It is a real possibility that none of these major legislative items—all considered inevitable after the Democratic victories of 2006...

In 1991, James Payne wrote a book entitled The Culture of Spending. In the front jacket of the book he inscribed for me a quote from the French author and psychologist, Gustave Le Bon: "In politics, the name of things are more important than what they are." I found the quote as I flipped through the book searching for a particular passage I remembered from my original reading of the book. The original passage commented on the oft repeated view of those on the left that a dollar spent by the government is as good as a dollar spent by...

In an interview for Nation magazine, former President Jimmy Carter says that current President Barack Obama is “the best in my lifetime, maybe the best this country has ever had.” Key to the high praise was Carter’s assessment that “President Obama is the most brilliant man to ever have held the office. He is wise beyond the boundaries we normally observe for human beings. That is probably why his Administration is our nation’s most unprecedented in history.” “Of course, being the first black man to be elected president has to rank as the most unprecedented accomplishment ever achieved by anyone...

The Federal Government admits to over $12 Trillion dollars in debt. In reality, its obligations are multiples of that number. The unfunded promises from Social Security and Medicare total around $100 trillion. To properly fund the forecasted future deficits in Social Security and Medicare, $100 trillion would have to be put in the fund today. Without this infusion, this liability grows exponentially. Next year, for example, it will be $4 - 5 trillion higher! The Government has promised benefits that they cannot possibly honor. The total net worth of the entire country (the country's total assets less liabilities) is slightly...

Well, here is how to cover the war: The Democrats claim that health care reform pays for itself by more people having insurance, thus more have access to preventative medicine. In turn, billions of would-be health expenses that the nation has now due to an uninsured population, would vanish in coming years. Using this thinking, Afghanistan pays for itself. How? By crushing the Taliban and the terrorists, the United States will prevent a lot of instability in the region and terror attacks worldwide, thus sparing the Treasury billions in future war costs, in addition to the fact the in times...

Reform: Only a Bernie Madoff could believe the Senate's health care bill will extend coverage to 31 million Americans while cutting deficits by $127 billion over 10 years. It would be the first profitable entitlement. But that's what Majority Leader Harry Reid, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates, tells us the 2,074-page bill — said to cost only $849 billion over a decade — would do. Like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he seems to be following Vice President Joe Biden's admonition at an AARP town hall meeting that "we've got to spend money to keep from going bankrupt." We suspect Reid's...

BEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

According to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement, the US economy continues melting away as receipts are nowhere near to funding outlays, meaning more and more debt has to be used (and more and more interest expense has to be paid as a result). The deficit last month of $176 billion was $20 billion worse than a year ago, and is the single worst October reading in US history. The number was a function of $312 billion in outlays and just $135 billion in receipts, an 18% decline YoY, and also the weakest reading for the month of October since 2002....

The surrealities of a "healthy" economy never end. The latest indication of the new banrkupt normal is New York State itself. A new report by NY state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli entitled "Highway Robbery: State's ailing road and bridges robbed; State siphoned money to pay for operations and debt service" tells you all you need to know about just how prosperous the ailing economy really is. According to DiNapoli, "only one-third of the money in the Highway and Bridge Trust Fund has actually been used to pay for highways and bridges. The rest has been siphoned off to pay for debt...

The video title identifies this as a speech at the '64 Republican convention. That is incorrect. RR made the speech in LA on October 27, 1964 for the Goldwater campaign. Everyone who watched the telecast knew he could go places in politics if he wanted to. It was definitely a boost to us Goldwater kids after hearing "you are going to lose" for months. WATCH IT AND REMEMBER WHAT IS LIKE TO HAVE A REAL LEADER!

Paying for the president's government health care takeover with gargantuan cuts in Medicare isn't so popular with doctors. A third of them already refuse to take new Medicare patients because the program pays less than their costs. Other doctors participate only because they can make up Medicare losses by boosting prices for privately insured patients. The Democrats' health care takeover plan, which covers more people with Medicare by lower reimbursements further, would only make problems worse. To placate the medical establishment's opposition to spending cuts in the health care takeover bill, the Democratic leadership in the Senate put up another...

America's economy faces a miserable future, according to an important government report. The media collectively have yawned, and official Washington has barely blinked. The Government Accountability Office recently issued its report to the Congress on the long-term fiscal outlook for the United States. It is a bleak picture. The report opens: "Weakness in the economy and financial markets -- and the government's response to them -- have contributed to near-term increases in federal deficits, which reached record level in fiscal year 2009. While a lot of attention has been given to the recent fiscal deterioration, the federal government faces even...

hopefully this HTML works. . . this cartoon is hilarious!

Obama's Stash--Part Three or How Many Zeros in a Trillion? http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com/ When Gray Davis was still governor of California--before the recall effort and the election of the Governator--he gave an interview to the media to explain why the state was in deficit. At the time, I had taken over the management of a company struggling with profitability. Reporting to my board was a chore. And then I heard the melodious voice of Gray Davis explaining away the state's problems. It's not that we spent too much money, it's that we didn't have enough revenue. Would my board fall for that?...

Obama's Stash--Part Three or How Many Zeros in a Trillion? http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com/ When Gray Davis was still governor of California--before the recall effort and the election of the Governator--he gave an interview to the media to explain why the state was in deficit. At the time, I had taken over the management of a company struggling with profitability. Reporting to my board was a chore. And then I heard the melodious voice of Gray Davis explaining away the state's problems. It's not that we spent too much money, it's that we didn't have enough revenue. Would my board fall for that?...

a way to scare the nation and the Congress to control spending, deficit critics warn about the debt that will “be left for our grandchildren.” The problem is that such a warning permits people to say: “our economy is in trouble now, so let’s spend our way out of it, we will worry about the deficit another time.” This of course is nonsense because the debt of now creates messes now (let alone for the future too).

There's more fiscal insanity being proposed by the print, borrow and spend crowd. I call these people graduates of the Joe Biden School of Economics. You know who I'm talking about. Those elitist "intellectuals" (my dad used to refer to these types as "educated idiots") who believe you can borrow your way out of debt or spend your way to prosperity. Those so devoid of common sense and reasoning, actually believing that money grows on trees.

WASHINGTON -- Senate leaders on Thursday announced a climactic Finance Committee vote next week on health care legislation, even as Democrats and Republicans kept feuding over its cost and breadth of coverage. Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on a 10-year, $829-billion proposal that would expand coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans-while reducing the federal deficit. A positive cost report on the legislation Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office marked a turning point for its main author, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Before "fixing" health care, maybe Washington should focus on educa tion. Because it looks like no one in Congress ever learned basic math. How else to explain the Democrats' boast that ObamaCare will save taxpayers money? They're reacting, of course, to the Congressional Budget Office's declaration that Sen. Max Baucus' "compromise" health-care bill -- which comes in at the bargain-basement price of $829 billion -- might reduce the federal deficit. Too bad the numbers come from books so well-cooked they'd make Julia Child blush. Under Baucus' scheme, money from tax hikes starts coming in three years beforecash for benefits starts...

The Cato Institute today announced the launch of "Downsizing the Federal Government," a new website aimed at providing policymakers, media and the public with comprehensive data on federal spending. The federal government is running massive all-time record budget deficits, spending too much, and heading toward a financial crisis. Without a change of direction in Washington, average working families will be faced with huge tax increases and a lower standard of living. This makes the launching of this website especially timely and applicable.

VIDEO: Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration and current economic advisor to President Obama, made such a preposterous statement on CNBC Friday that the other guests could hardly keep from busting out laughing.

In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned about possible future inflation and higher taxes as consequences for the unprecedented deficit spending taking place in the United States.

State tax revenues in the second quarter plunged 17% from a year earlier as rising unemployment and reduced spending hurt sales- and income-tax collections, according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday. The decline was the sharpest since at least the 1960s. The biggest drop among major revenue sources was in state income taxes, which were down 28% from a year ago. Sales-tax revenues fell 9%. About two-thirds of state revenues are derived from sales and income taxes. The numbers aren't adjusted for inflation or changes in tax rates.

Inflation was limited under Bush to the destructive price increases of oil and gasoline, which were created (deliberately) by Pelosi's energy policies to destroy the US economy in 2007 through summer 2008. By destroying the US transportation sectors by limiting oil exploration and oil markets - which threatened everything that moves, feeds, ships, or eats anything else - she created the housing and bank failures that we saw in late summer 2008. And those market crashes created the economic environment that allowed the democrat news media to give Obama the win. (Coupled, of course, with McCain's stpuid campaign and Bush's...

California has chosen to indulge its poor with what President Obama might call the "Cadillac version" of Medicaid, with all the optional equipment, and no pesky documentation requirements. As a result, financial chaos looms. Medicaid covers nearly 60 million individuals. In 2007, states and the federal government spent $319 billion on the program. California's elected decision makers have expanded both program eligibility and benefits without demanding accountability, efficiency, quality or access to care.

In spite of unexpected public opposition, President Barack Obama continues to unflinchingly "guarantee" that he will "reform" healthcare this year. Recently, he said the Democrats will get it "done one way or another," hinting of the nuclear option. By invoking arcane rules in the Senate, the President could force through a bill with only 51 votes, instead of the required 60. Such a partisan, bully-move would eliminate the need for dissenting Democrats -- not Republicans, as the administration frames it and the media dutifully reports. Although Obama has ample Democrat majorities, he can't even secure the necessary Democrat votes --...

OK, President Obama has had his say on health care. Now let's look at some inconvenient truths. Obama insisted Wednesday that his public-option plan would save tax dollars, while not adding "one dime" to the deficit. Moreover, he said, "nothing in our plan requires you to change what [health insurance] you have." The first claim is demonstrably false; the second, profoundly misleading. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has reported that the House Democratic bills would add $220 billion to the deficit over the next decade -- and even more after that.

While the deficits caused by the fiscal stimulus package will end in 2011 and will help to sustain a fragile recovery in 2010, the deficits projected for the longer term are a threat to our economic future. The starting point for controlling those future deficits is for Congress to abandon the administration's health-care plan—a plan that will cost more than $1 trillion. The deficits projected for the next decade and beyond are unprecedented. According to an assessment released in March by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the president's budget implies that deficits will average 5.2% of GDP over the next...

David Walker sounds like a modern-day Paul Revere as he warns about the country's perilous future. "We suffer from a fiscal cancer," he tells a meeting of the National Taxpayers Union, the nation's oldest anti-tax lobby. "Our off balance sheet obligations associated with Social Security and Medicare put us in a $56 trillion financial hole—and that's before the recession was officially declared last year. America now owes more than Americans are worth—and the gap is growing!" His audience sits in rapt attention. A few years ago these antitax activists would have been polite but a tad restless listening to the...

Recession-fueled federal spending and deficit growth caught the public unaware, but awareness is growing, welling up like a primal scream. Inarticulate now, the public is searching for its voice.Fiscal conservatives must be that voice, but this opportunity has taken them by surprise too. It's an opportunity for leadership, not partisanship, and it's not simply enough to oppose. At some point, public demand switches from style to substance, and a solution must be offered. Fortunately, an answer can be found in a few basic steps — for those knowing where to look. It's easy to see how America has been fiscally...

An overwhelming majority, if not every single American cannot begin to comprehend the astronomical deficits and debt projections flowing from Washington these days. The Obama Administration and congressional Democrats have done an outstanding job of breaking down uninsured statistics into smaller more understandable numbers such as their 14,000 newly uninsured claim. Yet, when it comes to deficits and the national debt, no one in Washington seems to want the public to understand just how much money they are spending. Politicians talk in dollar amounts that no American, even the richest among us, will ever truly comprehend. As a result, in...

A year ago, the Obama campaign was reeling from a series of attack ads that suggested that the former community organizer saw himself as a messianic figure and juxtaposed Obama’s environmentalist promise to heal the oceans with a film clip of Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea from the Cecil B. DeMille Biblical epic “The Ten Commandments.” In retrospect, it seems as if Obama would have been better depicted as being overwhelmed in his attempts to halt the rising tide of red ink that has been the hallmark of his administration. Red ink may threaten to drown generations...

The Congressional Budget Office came out with an update to its predictions of the federal budget this week. For some reason, the CBO did not title its report "Hell In A Hand Basket." It is difficult to put all these predictions into easily understandable apples-to-apples comparisons. But I will try. One thing that messes up the understanding is that the White House or Treasury comes out with predictions as well the CBO, and usually at about the same time, so that there are always multiple estimates of about the same things. Here is my tip for getting a grip on...

In an article for the Examiner on Saturday, I alluded to the fact that the White House withheld the economic data until after the final new cycle of the work week just prior to the President's vacation in an effort to limit media access to the President and subsequent questioning over the White House deficit projections that were 28% more than their estimates released this spring. However, throughout the course of the week it now appears that there is much more to the original story. In previous years, under both the Bush and Clinton administrations, updated deficit projections were always...

SEN. Joseph Lieberman's criticism of the Obama health-care initiative may prove to be a pivotal turning point. Others have focused exclusively on the Obama plan's impact on health care. The elderly worry about bearing the brunt of the inevitable rationing; others look with alarm at the de facto socialization of one-sixth of our economy. But Lieberman's critique doesn't center on the program's health-care aspects or even on its ultimate desirability. Rather, he questions the wisdom of attempting so radical a transformation and so extensive -- and expensive -- an extention of government's role in our economy during a major recession...

Last year, President Obama campaigned against budget deficits. Yet, now we have the newly announced figures from the Obama administration stating that the deficits numbers over the next decade will add up to over $9 trillion-- $2 trillion more than had been forecast as recently as March. Even this likely underestimates the deficit by at least another $1 trillion. Looking back, it is hard to believe that the deficits during the Bush administration totaled only about $3 trillion over eight years. Candidate Obama promised to rein in the budget deficit. When CBS's Bob Schieffer asked Obama, during the third presidential...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House and congressional budget officials projected Tuesday in competing but similar economic forecasts. Both the White House Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the budget deficit this year would swell to nearly $1.6 trillion, a record, and far above the then-record 2008 budget deficit of $455 billion.

The New York Post features our own John Hinderaker's column "Bam's $2 trillion Friday surprise." John's column takes off from the Obama administration's leaked announcement last Friday that it will revise its projection of the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years from $7 trillion to $9 trillion: "That $2 trillion upward revision will put the White House's numbers in line with the $9.1 trillion deficit that the Congressional Budget Office projected in June. Back then, the administration criticized CBO's analysis; now it's admitting that CBO was right after all." John adds:

Unfortunately, it seems that the reports of a cure for Bush Derangement Syndrome have been premature. Either that, or Paul Begala hasn’t gotten his shots yet. On last night’s episode of Anderson Cooper 360, during a news story on the government's new estimates adding another $2 trillion to the national deficit, Begala agreed that Obama is up a creek with no paddle in regards to the deficit. However, he claimed that the President “inherited” that creek from The One the Left Loves to Hate, George W. Bush. “…I think the president will be able to make the case that he...

VIDEO HERE.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Caught with near-chronic budget shortfalls, U.S. states are scrambling to change their tax codes and bring in more revenues, the Tax Foundation said on Wednesday. The foundation has compiled an annual index on 37 categories of states' taxing and spending since 1937. This is the first time that it has had to update the report in the middle of the year. "Many states have started the new fiscal year with tax codes that are vastly different compared to just a few months ago," Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge said in a statement. Hawaii, for example, has recently...