Free Republic

In many ways, Speaker Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he did his own Republican members.The outline of the spending agreement House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cut with Democratic leaders sounds bad on its face. But the underlying reasons for that agreement seem far worse.As I wrote last week, “Speaker Johnson and Republican ‘leadership’ … bailed the Democrats out of the predicament they put themselves in last May.” To which I should make an important addition: In many ways, Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he...

When Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called (again) for "national divorce" this week, a common retort among her detractors on Twitter was to claim that so-called red states are heavily dependent on so-called blue states to pay for pretty much everything.Reporter Molly Knight claimed, for example, that "Red states get their money for roads and cops and schools from blue states. You cut off that gravy train and you e [sic] got a third world country."Others claimed that red states would be "entirely broke" without blue states. America's social democrats have apparently fully gone over to pushing the narrative that the...

The analysis exposed the inherently gimmicky nature of using permanent tax increases to pass temporary increases in spending.In the second installment of news the Biden administration didn’t want to hear about Friday (the first being the record-breaking inflation report), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis of making permanent the programs in Democrats’ Build Back Bankrupt spending spree. Democrats immediately claimed the bill they want to pass through Congress doesn’t resemble the CBO’s parameters in the slightest. In that case, Republicans should respond by bringing a legislative proposal resembling those parameters to the Senate floor, and forcing Democrats to...

A bill introduced on Tuesday would allow for another increase in the debt limit, and forestall expected Medicare reductions that are a sole result of Democrats’ agenda.Just when Democrats and their agenda continue to flounder, along comes Mitch McConnell to give them another lifeline. Rather than using the mismanagement of the Senate by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to extract concessions, McConnell gave two huge concessions to bail Schumer out of his self-inflicted wounds. A bill introduced on Tuesday would allow for another increase in the debt limit, and forestall expected Medicare reductions that are a sole result of Democrats’ disastrous...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is frog-marching her vulnerable members to a political suicide vote on a bill that’s likely dead on arrival in the Senate.On November 2, five House Democrats—enough to block the passage of the spending spree that the party hopes to enact via the budget reconciliation process—wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, urging her “to only bring a bill to the floor for which we have a strong level of confidence…will be ruled in order by the Senate parliamentarian and earn passage in the U.S. Senate.”The lawmakers have justifiable reason for concern. Major pieces of the 2,135-page...

At some point in the near future—whether a few days or a few weeks—the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will release a complete score of the spending spree legislation Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and House leaders introduced on Nov. 3. The document will represent the first complete CBO analysis of any of the multi-trillion-dollar spending bills that Democrats have spent the fall writing, then re-writing. Two budgetary analyses suggest CBO could find the most recent version of the legislation increases the deficit. A Penn-Wharton analysis of the White House’s policy framework concluded it would spend $1.87 trillion over ten years while...

By this year’s standards, the process that led to Obamacare seems like a veritable exercise in transparency and open government.How quickly Democrats forget. A dozen years ago, President Barack Obama faced strong and justified criticism for backtracking on his promise, made numerous times during the 2008 presidential campaign, to televise health-care negotiations on C-SPAN:By this year’s standards, however, the process that led to Obamacare—the law that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said we had to pass in order to find out what’s in it—seems like a veritable exercise in transparency and open government. It’s gotten so bad that press reports...

Despite recent hedge fund disasters and almost every economic indicator pointing to a potential stock crash, Biden’s administration has completely ignored a potential equities bubble.Since March 2020, $5.9 trillion in so-called relief spending authorized by Congress, as well as $3.3 trillion in quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve, has been pumped into the U.S. economy. America’s pandemic response resulted in 22 million jobs lost in a matter of months, and we still have 10 million fewer jobs than before March of last year. The fiscal and economic repercussions of going from stronger than expected job and wage growth in January...

GAO has no option other than to find that President Biden’s pause of the border wall funds is unlawful and should issue an opinion stating the Biden administration has broken the law.Last Congress, many Democrats, including Rep. John Yarmuth, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, claimed the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) broke the law when it paused the obligation of funds to Ukraine for 50 days to determine the best use for them. On the very first day of his administration, however, President Biden directed that funding specifically appropriated to build the wall along the...

Washington’s welfare-industrial complex both discourages work and leads people to expect that government will solve the problems government has created.Even before President Biden’s new $1.9 trillion COVID “stimulus” package goes into effect, multiple news stories make clear the flaws in its approach. Washington’s welfare-industrial complex, which the “stimulus” will bloat even further, both discourages work and leads people to expect that government will solve the problems government has created.The coronavirus pandemic caused very real economic hardship for millions of American families. But many of the well-meaning efforts to address those hardships—along with welfare expansions Democrats proposed long before COVID hit...

What makes Trump look worse before the election: trying to get a deal with no success, or pointing out that the other side doesn’t want a deal for political reasons and pulling out of talks? President Trump announced on Twitter that he was shutting down stimulus talks with Democrats until after the election because they were “not negotiating in good faith.” “Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19,” wrote Trump.The president continued: “Immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill...

Three Republican senators said they will oppose the massive stimulus package aimed at helping to offset losses suffered during the CCP virus pandemic unless a drafting error is fixed in the legislation, saying that the issue will provide businesses with an incentive to lay off employees. “A massive drafting error in the current version of the coronavirus relief legislation could have devastating consequences: Unless this bill is fixed, there is a strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work,” Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a joint statement...

Congressional leaders are likely to put a very ugly deal in front of the American people, and if it passes, America may be unrecognizable after this pandemic. But there is a way to stop it, if people on the populist left and people on the populist right work together. Here’s the situation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the Trump administration are negotiating a bailout package to address the coronavirus crisis. There’s been a lot of chatter about the need to support workers as the economy goes into a freeze.... But in the United States,...

Lawmakers from both parties told Pentagon leaders on Wednesday that the Defense Department is undermining its own efforts to get military money by diverting billions of dollars for the construction of President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the committee’s top Republican warned Defense Secretary Mark Esper that overturning congressional funding decisions to shift money for the wall is an enormous problem that will have consequences. The plan to shift money has triggered rare Republican opposition to one of Trump’s priorities. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said the result may be that Congress...

The Trump administration announced Monday night that it will ask Congress for "at least $2.5 billion" in additional funding to fight the coronavirus. The request indicates that the administration is seeking to step up its response to the virus as it spreads to more countries. However, the request met quick resistance from Democrats. Just $1.25 billion of the request is for new funding, with the rest requested to be taken from existing health programs, including $535 million from fighting Ebola. "The Trump administration’s request for emergency funding is woefully insufficient to protect Americans from the deadly coronavirus outbreak," said House...

President Trump's block-grant plan is a bold call to congressional Republicans to not squander their next opportunity to relieve U.S. education of bureaucracy like they did in his first two years of office. President Trump has become the first president to incorporate into his budget one of the few good federal education policy ideas: Sending Americans’ money back to their states to decide how to use it.Federal education programs have wasted trillions, enriching contractors and bureaucrats who lobby for open taps while arm-twisting Americans into trusting them with their dollars and children against all evidence that trust is deserved. Even...

President Donald Trump's proposed fiscal year 2021 budget has been released. Generally, budget documents are more of a statement about priorities and aspirations than of anything else. This proposal is typical: It's full of unrealistic assumptions, as well as "savings" that will never happen. It is, in short, a testament to fiscal irresponsibility. Unfortunately, when you use more realistic assumptions and take politics into consideration, you are left with a lot of spending. What this budget tells us is that this Republican president is a big spender. Under it, the federal government would spend $4.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021....

President Donald J. Trump Has Secured Critical Funding to Strengthen Our National Defense and Secure Our Borders "My mission is to put our country on the very best footing to thrive, excel, compete, and to win." - DONALD Trump STRENGTHENING OUR DEFENSE: President Donald J. Trump is signing funding legislation that provides vital support for our military. The funding legislation signed by the President provides a historic $738 billion in funding for defense, a $22 billion increase over last year. Included in the funding legislation is a 3.1 percent pay raise for our Nation’s great military members, the largest such...

If you read the text of the continuing resolution the House passed Tuesday to fund the federal government for a month, you will find an interesting passage on page 4. "Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act," it says, "there is hereby appropriated for fiscal year 2020 for payment to Maya M. Rockeymoore, widow of Elijah Cummings, late a Representative from the State of Maryland, $174,000." What did Rockeymoore do for the taxpayers to earn this money? A Washington consultant and former Maryland gubernatorial candidate, she recently resigned as chair of her state's Democratic Party to seek the House seat...

Never before have presidential candidates offered voters so much “free” stuff.Kamala Harris wants you to “collect up to $500 a month.”Elizabeth Warren says, “We need to go tenfold in our research and development in green energy.”No one has tracked the cost of all of the promises. So my video team did!Who will spend the most?Here are the new spending proposals from the five most popular (according to ElectionBettingOdds.com) candidates.In my latest video, we break it down by category, education spending first:Joe Biden wants to “triple the amount of money we spend for Title I schools” ($32 billion) create “universal pre-K”...