Free Republic

The Senate adjourned Friday without approving extensions of cash and health insurance benefits for the unemployed after a lone senator blocked swift passage due to his insistence that Congress first pay for the $10 billion package. Retiring Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, led a spirited Senate debate with Democrats over the issue -- at one time cursing at another senator on the floor. Bunning said he doesn't oppose extending the programs -- he just doesn't want to add to the deficit. According to two Democratic aides on the Senate floor Thursday night, Bunning muttered "tough s---" as Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon,...

Senate Democrats spent Thursday night hammering away at Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) for single-handedly holding up action in the upper chamber – but he blurted out a message to one of them on the Senate floor: “Tough s—t.” In an unusual display in the normally sleepy chamber, Bunning – without the support of GOP leadership – has blocked efforts to quickly approve a series of extensions to measures that would otherwise expire Sunday, including unemployment insurance and the Cobra program that allows people who lose their health benefits to continue getting coverage. And that has led to a furious exchange...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) says funding for the health care bill is a "Ponzi scheme" that would make "Bernie Madoff proud."

A lot has happened during the year since President Barack Obama signed the so-called "economic stimulus" into law as as a measure that would give the economy a "shot in the arm." Unfortunately for the president, little of what has happened can be described as good.

Behind closed doors and with no cameras present, President Obama signed into law Friday afternoon the bill raising the public debt limit from $12.394 trillion to $14.294 trillion. The current national debt is $12.3 trillion. Check out the National Debt Clock, which tells you your share of that -- roughly $40,000 per citizen, $113,000 per taxpayer.

President Obama has spent billions on so-called green job programs as part of the economic recovery and plans to spend billions more. He has repeatedly argued this will create good-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced. But, according to the green groups themselves, these jobs can be highly expensive, often costing well more than $100,000 per job in subsidies and/or tax credits. Just last month, the White House said it was spending $135,294 per job to create 17,000 green jobs. And research commissioned in part by the Sierra Club found that the jobs often pay less than the industry average and,...

If the tea party movement is the soul of small government and personal responsibility, the Republican Party is the institutional body conservatives need to regain control over government run amok. You can't have one without the other, says Bill Whittle. The transcript of this video essay is below. IMHO: video is better - Bill Whittle's presentation is characteristically passionate; and his passion is contagious. Well, the Tea party movement is not even a year old, and already it is holding its first national convention. I was honored to be asked to speak at the West Los Angeles event on September...

A year after it was passed, it has become painfully obvious to anyone with open eyes that the massive federal “stimulus” – along with several other trillion-dollar government interventions in the free market – has utterly failed to turn around America’s economy. In fact, all this massive infusion of taxpayer cash has done is deprive our consumer-driven private sector of much-needed oxygen, while sending our annual deficits and national debt soaring to previously unthinkable heights. It’s the classic Washington approach to the economy. When times are good, politicians in both parties spend excessively. When times are bad? They spend uncontrollably....

Let’s recap the current economic state of our country. Our deficit has been quadrupled in one year. The unemployment rate is in double digit territory, the highest its been since 1982. We’ve lost 16,000 jobs a day since the stimulus package was passed. The public debt is around $11 trillion. None of this keeps Democrats from spending money like Marie Antoinette on meaningless projects. The latest example? Congress blew $50 million on a park in the Caribbean — St. Croix, to be exact. The vote was almost exclusively along party lines, with every Republican and five Democrats voting against it,...

Danny Flood said he just came to pay his respects to a pillar of the community. Flood, who owns a Johnstown defense contract that received millions in earmarks to develop a laser-guided musket, will join hundreds of other area bureaucrats and sycophants who will mourn the passing of a giant check. The giant check has been welcomed into inefficient businesses and unneeded government offices since 1969. "I'm gonna miss that guy," said Flood, wiping away a tear. "He really propped us up."

Two weeks ago, on a near party line vote, a huge Democratic majority in the House agreed to spend $50 million to buy the former cotton plantation on the island of St. Croix.

Absolutely...The funniest joke ever... AND IT’S ON US ! Let it sink in. Quietly... we go like sheep to slaughter. Does anybody out there have any memory Of the reason given for the establishment Of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY During the Carter Administration? Anybody? Anything? No? Didn't think so! Bottom line ... We've spent several hundred billion dollars In support of an agency ...the reason For which not one person who reads This can remember. Ready??????? It was very simple .. And at the time everybody thought It very appropriate... The 'Department of Energy' Was instituted on 8-04-1977 TO LESSEN...

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman played media critic on Friday, asserting that the media have gone from sensible to sensationalistic on the long-term federal budget deficit forecasts. The most notable part came when he insisted that the media’s presentation of a deficit threat is a lot like the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (and will be just as damaging). Isn't this a little odd in an article titled "Fiscal Scare Tactics"? Or was Krugman being self-referential? And is this a great analogy, since the Iraqi WMD ended up missing, and the trillion-dollar deficits have hardly vanished? Krugman...

Earl Ofari HutchinsonFebruary 05, 2010In 2008 and 2009, 50 separate Federal programs offered $23 trillion in loans, grants, or asset guarantees to the financial sector. Huh! This item was buried in paragraph 11 of 12 paragraphs in a joint statement that California Senator Barbara Boxer and Virginia Senator Jim Webb issued demanding taxing TARP monies executives used to compensate themselves. That´s more than 30 times more than the official $700 billion that Congress authorized to bail out the big banks and failed Wall Street financial houses. The $700 billion figure tossed out quickly became etched in financial stone. Then President...

Hold on to your wallets tight, The Government will be dipping into them again very soon. This Sunday the government will shell out 2.5 million taxpayer dollars to fund a 30 second Super Bowl Commercial to inform Americans about the 2010 census.

Yesterday, in Nashua, New Hampshire, Obama said he hopes to take money repaid by Wall Street banks as part of the TARP $700 billion bank bailout to create the Small Business Lending Fund, which would provide capitol to community banks to spur economic growth on Main Street. "These are the small, local banks that work most closely with our small businesses – that provide them their first loan, and watch them grow through good times and bad. There is only one major thing wrong with that proposal, it is unconstitutional. The congress has directed that money to be used for...

Don't look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system. A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits. Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation's biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing -- in other words, a taxpayer bailout. No one has officially announced that Social...

WASHINGTON —The federal government announced on Monday that it would reimburse American hospitals who treat Haitian earthquake victims with life-threatening injuries, making it possible for more hospitals in states outside Florida to consider taking those patients. The announcement came as a C-130 cargo plane was being sent to carry at least 10 Haitians seriously injured in the earthquake from Port-au-Prince to Palm Beach, Fla., the first military airlift of wounded Haitians since a controversial suspension of the flights last week.

THE EDITORS JANUARY 26, 2010 Freezing Conditions Even before Scott Brown’s remarkable election to the Senate, the Obama administration was making noises about the need to get serious about the deficit. Last year’s shortfall was $1.4 trillion. This year’s is projected to be $1.35 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that cumulative deficits over the next ten years will reach $9.3 trillion, and the amount of federal debt held by the public will reach 82 percent of GDP. Economist John Taylor has noted that without deep spending cuts, taxes would have to go up by 60 percent in...

WASHINGTON -- Last year's $787 billion economic stimulus bill is going to be even more expensive -- $75 billion more. The new Congressional Budget Office estimate, released Tuesday, provides more ammunition for Republicans who say the stimulus has been long on spending and short on creating promised jobs. The additional cost also eats into the savings forecast from the budget freeze President Barack Obama is expected to propose Wednesday night during his State of the Union address. Almost half of the additional cost, $34 billion, is because the food stamp program won't be able to take advantage of lower-than-expected inflation...