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11:02:22, FBI Employee: “All the people who were initially voting for her would not, and were not, swayed by any decision the FBI put out. Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing. They probably didn’t watch the debates, aren’t fully educated on his policies, and are stupidly wrapped up in his unmerited enthusiasm.”

It takes a lot of courage for a president to target almost a quarter of the federal budget for reform in an election year. But this is exactly what President Trump is doing with his executive order, "Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility." We're now spending more than $700 billion per year on low-income assistance, which is more than we are spending on our national defense. And there are plenty of reasons to believe this spending is inefficient, wasteful and counterproductive. Over the last half-century, some $22 trillion has been spent on anti-poverty programs and yet...

“MASON CITY: To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.” — Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men” (1946) WASHINGTON — Appropriately, Warren began the best book about American populism, his novel based on Huey Long’s Louisiana career, with a rolling sentence about a road. Time was, infrastructure — roads, especially — was a preoccupation of populists, who were mostly rural and needed roads to get products to market, and for travel to neighbors and towns, which assuaged loneliness. Today, there is no comparably sympathetic constituency clamoring...

Budget: President Trump's budget plan doesn't come close to balancing the books, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But it does cut the deficit in half, even while reducing taxes. The CBO's analysis of Trump's budget says that it would, if enacted, produce a deficit of $720 billion in 2027, not the small surplus Trump claimed. That's what made the headlines. But as if often the case, it's what didn't make the headlines — or get pundit tongues wagging — that matters. In this case, it's the fact that almost the entire difference between the CBO's and Trump's view is...

France is set to miss its 2017 deficit target by a wide margin, the country’s public accounts watchdog said on Thursday, predicting the gap between spending and revenue would exceed a eurozone limit of 3 percent of GDP. In the absence of “strong adjustment measures”, the deficit will reach 3.2 percent of GDP, the Court of Auditors said, in a warning to new President Emmanuel Macron, who will produce his first budget in the autumn. The previous Socialist government said it expected the deficit to fall from 3.4 percent last year to 2.8 percent this year, which would have brought...

Larry Hauth has a farm in Coffey County and a daughter in Wichita. Good roads are kind of important to him. So he’s disturbed by the ongoing and accelerating trend of the state taking money out of the highway fund to balance the rest of its budget. “One of the things Kansas has going for it, compared to our surrounding states, is our road system,” Hauth said. “When they built them in years past, they were thinking ahead. I don’t think we’re thinking ahead right now. We’re trying to tread water, at best.” Gov. Sam Brownback wants to take nearly...

The nation's long-term fiscal picture has grown considerably more dire over the past year, according to the latest forecast from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, driven mainly by out-of-control spending. The CBO now expects federal debt held by the public to reach 141% of the nation's GDP by 2046, assuming that current policies remain in place. That's up sharply from last year's forecast of 111%, and would be the highest level of debt in the nation's history.

Fiscal Policy: House Republicans have a budget plan that would balance the budget in 10 years entirely through spending cuts. But it’s not likely to go anywhere because of the $30 billion in extra spending this year.

Well then, you must like losing your job to someone in Mexico who will make $3/hour. Union leaders at an air conditioner factory in Indianapolis threatened with losing 1,400 jobs to Mexico said on Tuesday the plants owner expects to pay Mexican workers $3 an hour compared to an average of more than $20 an hour for the U.S. workers. "We have not given up the fight yet," said Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers union local that represents workers at the Carrier Corp plant. "But Carrier has pretty well indicated that the wage differential is too great and...

Today, America's national debt hit the staggering total combined amount of $19 trillion. It has been a little over fourteen months since it hit $18 trillion. Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office a little more than seven years ago, he, the democrats, and a few spineless republican "leaders" in congress have increased the total combined national debt by nearly $8.4 trillion: Date                 Debt Held by the Public       Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding 1/20/2009       6,307,310,739,681.66           4,319,566,309,231.42              10,626,877,048,913.08...

Fiscal Policy: When the president released his budget in February, he said it was full of new ideas for the 21st century. But now we know it's just good old tax-and-spend liberalism.

Government overspending, gleefully celebrated by record tax collections of your hard earned dollars. The rapacious government needs to be fed. This Washington Times piece did an nice overview of FY2014: The Treasury Department unveiled its Fiscal Year 2014 numbers, which showed that the government’s revenue, for the first time ever, hit the $3 trillion mark. However, the government still overspent its revenues, leaving a $483 billion deficit. Supporters of President Obama are touting the “success” of a $483 billion deficit by pointing out its the lowest deficit since 2008. A “mere” $483 billion deficit is not something to be celebrated....

World economic leaders are being urged to rally around a plan to let government do what it does best - spend money - in an effort to buoy a global economy that remains slack and slowing. The effort comes as six years of crisis fighting have lapsed with little guarantee the world economy is on a stable footing. Germany is in danger of slipping into recession, China has slowed, and U.S. policymakers are concerned a fresh bout of global weakness will stymie the U.S. recovery as well. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde issued a blunt call on Thursday...

Fox News may be demolishing its more liberal cable news rivals in the ratings but to Democrats it’s still the bogeyman. That’s why President Obama took the opportunity to criticize the network during a speech defending his economic record at Northwestern University today. But in doing so, the president not only demonstrated the weakness of his position but also why he doesn’t understand Fox’s appeal. During his speech, the president said this about Fox and its audience: A true opposition party should have the courage to lay out their agenda. Hopefully also grounded in facts. There’s a reason fewer Republicans...

It has been clear for at least a year that the focus of the nation on reducing the federal debt has vanished. The speeches of policymakers, the House and Senate legislative agendas, the content of the nation's debate forums, and the rhetoric of President Obama are all virtually silent on the nation's debt. You would think that the debt problem had been solved. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the intense, three-year focus on the debt that featured bitter inter-party battles and closing of the federal government while producing several laws that reduced the nation's debt in the short-term,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says President Barack Obama's budget request would mean significantly larger budget deficits than the White House claims. CBO says the budget plan proposed last month by Obama would produce deficits of $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years — $1.6 trillion more than the White House estimates. The main reason is that the White House has a rosier estimate of the economy's performance over the decade than CBO. That means the administration predicts higher tax revenues. The president's budget is just a proposal; it has gained little...

With pensions for retired municipal employees exceeding City resources by an estimated $7,000 per household, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has warned residents that he may have to double their property taxes to cover these costs. The mayor admitted that “doubling the property tax would hit a lot of people hard, but the alternative of cutting back on the benefits we pay to our retirees is unthinkable. Remember, these are people who have dedicated their careers to serving the citizens of this city.” Emanuel argued that “extracting another few thousand dollars from each home owner seems the more tolerable option. I mean,...

In the fourteen fiscal years that preceded President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the tax receipts coming into the federal government’s Disability Insurance Trust Fund exceeded the benefits paid out, and the trust fund ran a surplus. In each of the five fiscal years Obama has served as president, the trust fund has run a deficit as the number of people receiving disability benefits has surged. The Disability Insurance Trust Fund has never before run five straight years of deficits. In fiscal 2013, which ended on Sept. 30, the Disability Insurance Trust Fund ran a record deficit of $31.494 billion,...

Somebody should tell President Obama to forget the folksy metaphors. The prez sounds phony mouthing them, and since they are unfamiliar to him, he's apt to get them wrong. As was the case at today's townhall at Binghamton University, when Obama claimed that reducing spending on government programs would be "like eating your corn seed." You might have thought the man from Illinois would have known that the phrase is "eating your seed corn." Then again, they don't raise much maize in Hyde Park. For good measure, Obama assured the audience that "we don't have an urgent deficit crisis." Let...

Cost-Shifting: Looks like Detroit might get a federal bailout after all, by offloading its retiree health costs onto federal taxpayers via ObamaCare. It's a window into why Obama-Care costs will quickly spiral out of control. On Sunday, the New York Times noted that Detroit hopes to push its younger retirees who aren't yet eligible for Medicare into the ObamaCare exchanges, where many will be eligible for subsidized insurance. Federal tax payers will pick up the tab, rather than those in Detroit.