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The Congressional Budget Office on Friday released its analysis of President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal and found it does less to rein in deficits and the debt than the administration had estimated. CBO estimates Obama's plan would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion. By 2021, it would increase the debt held by the public to 87 percent of gross domestic product. The administration, using different methods, estimated budget deficits would total $7.2 trillion over the next 10 years under the 2012 budget. It forecast that total debt in 2021 would be 77 percent of GDP.  The White House...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I've seen this quote before. I ran across it again last night. You might have heard me mention this. You might have heard this quote yourself. "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." You know who said it? Eleanor Roosevelt, before she knew that Hillary Clinton was trying to channel her in seances. "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." And it reminded me what we were talking about yesterday about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, the Drive-By Media in general. The leftist punditry talks incessantly...

This may sound like a liberal parody of conservative economic thinking, but let me put it out there: America’s problem is that the rich don’t have enough money. There, I said it. Let’s rumble. When it comes to the Scrooge McDuck set, the problem isn’t that they’re not rich enough, it’s that there aren’t enough rich — not enough to do what liberals want to do, anyway, which is to balance the budget by increasing taxes on them. Let’s deploy some always-suspect English-major math: There are lots of liberal definitions of “rich.” When Pres. Barack Obama talks about the rich,...

President Barack Obama sharply criticized the Wisconsin Legislature for passing a bill that limits public employee unions’ collective bargaining to wages only. “This legislation goes against my policy,” the President declared. “It is an insult to the efforts I am making toward the social transformation I am seeking for this country. It must be rescinded.” Press Secretary Jay Carney embellished upon the President’s position contending that “the main purpose of the legislation seems to be the vilification of public employees. The implication that excessive pay or benefits for government employees may play a significant role in a state’s fiscal difficulties...

The Wisconsin Legislature has abolished nearly all collective bargaining rights for public employees and required them to pay a portion of their retirement benefits. We hope this starts a badly needed nationwide trend. . .

Budget Cuts: You know we're in trouble when the Senate majority leader says dealing with a $14 trillion debt might mean the end of cowboy poetry readings in northern Nevada. When Harry Reid proposed that Nevada make prostitution illegal everywhere in his state, little did we know his backup plan for stimulating the Nevada economy was continued federal funding of cowboy poetry readings in northern Nevada. Exhibiting the kind of leadership that's quickly becoming a national embarrassment, and that begs for a Republican takeover of the Senate in 2012, Reid took to the floor to lament that Republicans, through a...

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With major budget votes set for Tuesday, Senate Democrats spent the weekend dismissing House Republicans' plans to cut the budget as “ideological, extremist, reckless." President Obama advocated “a government that lives within its means,” but he also charged “there’s nothing responsible about the Republican budget cuts. Following the same script, news headlines described the House Republicans cuts as "dramatic" and "outrageous." The magnitude of this year’s deficit might be hard for many to appreciate. But the monthly budget deficit for February of $223 billion is larger than the $160.7 billion deficit for all of 2007, the last time we had...

The effort of State Senator Thad Altman (R) and Arthenia Joyner (D) to have the court compel Governor Rick Scott (R) to accept $2.4 billion in federal money for the construction of high-speed rail in the state was unanimously rejected when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that “by both federal and state law, the Governor is authorized to make this decision.” Senator Altman called the decision “devastating for the State of Florida. Perhaps the Governor is within his legal rights to reject this money, but the consequences will be felt by every person in the state. Even if the Governor...

Jimmy John Liautaud, founder of the Jimmy John's sub chain, just applied to move his residence from Illinois to Florida — and his company's headquarters could soon follow. "All they do is stick it to us," he says of the state legislature's move to jack up the personal income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent — and the corporate income tax from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent. "I could absorb this and adapt," Liautaud tells his hometown paper, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, "but it doesn't feel good in my soul to make it happen," he says. Where the sub business...

We are used to hearing about fraud and government programs that fail to accomplish their goals. It now appears that yet another category might be important: duplication. Hundreds of major government programs have been discovered to duplicate what other government programs are doing. If we are to believe a new Government Accountability Office report, consolidation of programs could easily save up to $200 billion over the next decade. Call it "press release government." For politicians, the best way to be seen as being actively involved and to viewed as caring about a problem is to set up a new government...

President Obama lashed out at Republicans Monday for having "denigrated or vilified" public union employees. Without collective bargaining and the ability to go on strike, he said we wouldn't be able to attract "the best and the brightest to public service." Are public employees simply the best and the brightest? Or are we simply lavishing them with much better employment deals than their private counterparts? To measure how attractive a job is, economists study how employees vote with their feet -- that is, comparing the rate at which different categories of employees voluntarily quit their jobs. Over the last six...

A flurry of social investment news is coming from across the pond with a $1bn impact investment fund for deprived areas and the possibility of a US variation on the Social Impact Bond. The $1bn Impact Investment Fund, announced as part of a drive by the Obama administration to promote entrepreneurship, will see government backed bonds used to provide match finance on a 2:1 basis to organisations that fund companies in economically distressed areas and emerging sectors such as clean energy. The details of how the fund will work are not expected for another couple of months but the fund...

<p>As members of Congress fight over what to cut in the current federal budget to avert a government shutdown, lawmakers are about to receive a blockbuster report that could provide a roadmap to potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in waste. The nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO) is poised to release a report Tuesday that one senator said "will make us all look like jackasses."</p>

In recent days and weeks, the House of Representatives approved four major pieces of legislation that, if they become law, could stagger the big government mindset responsible for massive deficits and draconian regulations. On three separate bills, the House overwhelmingly voted to prevent federal agencies from spending money to implement Obamacare, and to cut $61 billion from the federal budget and this week to cut off funding to the U.N.'s questionable global warming panel because it "whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomenon which is statistically questionable at best," as Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., put it. Controlled by Republicans...

Fascinating how we rarely hear the word "messiah" used anymore, isn't it? Has the seemingly Biblical turmoil in the mideast, along with all of the dark portents swirling all around us, much like an ill wind of doom, insulated our collective political vitriole, or is it, perhaps, something else? A recent story at ABC News spoke to this fairly new phenomenon. The story essentially admonished the President for using his own brand of "self-specialized" media while locking out the traditional news outlets. In fact, the reporter went on to state that "the President has narrowed access by the mainstream media...

Democrats and Unions Badger GOP in Wisconsin “I've said all along the thousands of people who are storming the capitol have every right to be heard, but I'm not going to let them overshadow the voices of the millions of taxpayers in the state of Wisconsin who deserve to be heard, as well.” -- Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisc., “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” Union protesters and Democrat lawmakers will attempt to prevent for a second day a vote in the Wisconsin Senate that would increase public employees’ contributions to retirement and health benefits and strip unions of the...

It's always amusing when Democrats call for "bipartisanship", because it means that their ideas are really bad, and they want to include Republicans, so they can throw Republicans under the bus when the legislation is really horrendous and the American People hate it. Witness the budget President Obama conceded on Tuesday that his new budget does not do enough to resolve the nation’s long-term fiscal problems, but he counseled patience, suggesting that he would eventually come together with Republicans on a broad deal. But, Mr. Obama said at a news conference, any such compromise to address Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security...

This was supposed to be the moment we were all waiting for. After three years of historic deficits that have added almost $4.5 trillion to the national debt, President Obama was finally going to get serious about fiscal discipline. Instead, what landed on Congress's doorstep on Monday was a White House budget that increases deficits above the spending baseline for the next two years. Hosni Mubarak was more in touch with reality last Thursday night. The White House actually touts as tight-fisted a budget proposing a record $1.645 trillion deficit for fiscal 2011, due largely to a new surge in...

Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest industrial powerhouse that the world has ever seen. Our immense economic machinery was the envy of the rest of the globe and it provided the foundation for the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. But now the once great U.S. economic machine is being dismantled piece by piece. The U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized and very few of our leaders even seem to care. It was the United States that once showed the rest of the world how to...