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The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday a finding that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are a public-health danger won't necessarily lead to government regulation of emissions, an apparent about-face for the Obama administration. The new position follows revelation of a White House document that warns the EPA of the wide-ranging -- and potentially economically harmful -- consequences of an agency finding last month that proposes declaring greenhouse gases are a danger to the public. The White House memo also undermines the EPA's reasoning for the "endangerment" proposal. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has previously said such a...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release April 23, 2009 Please find below the complete text of a Memorandum signed by President Obama on January 30th and published in the Federal Register on February 3, 2009. Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies SUBJECT: Regulatory Review For well over two decades, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has reviewed Federal regulations. The purposes of such review have been to ensure consistency with Presidential priorities,...

Limited the overall size of the Federal Government by restraining non-security spending, simultaneously focusing on key priorities and limiting non-security spending growth to 3 percent, slightly above the rate of inflation.

The White House budget office said yesterday that it has decided not to incorporate mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the federal budget, citing the temporary nature of the Treasury Department's takeover and "the level of federal ownership" of the firms. The decision affects the way public expenditures on the two companies will be reflected in official budget projections. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has pledged to invest as much as $200 billion to keep the firms solvent. On Tuesday, two days after the takeover, officials at the Congressional Budget Office announced that the deal had bound...

While the preceding discourse is certainly the longest extant presentation of the LDS doctrine of God and man from the Mormon Prophet, it is certainly not all he said on the subject. Indeed, in the few years before his death in 1844, Smith spoke often of this concept. He encountered a good bit of opposition, even from within his own movement, especially on this point. This would seem to indicate that it was, indeed, a development that took place over time, and that had been absent from the earlier forms of the Mormon faith. Note his words from June 16,...

After his surprise trip to Iraq yesterday where he met with the troops in Anbar Province President Bush flew to Sidney, Australia to attend the APEC summit Today President Bush commended the Senate for confirming Jim Nussle as OMB Director I thank the Senate for its strong bipartisan vote confirming Jim Nussle as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Jim's confirmation comes at a critical time for our Nation's budget as Congress considers this year's annual spending bills. With less than a month until the new fiscal year begins, Congress has not sent any of the twelve appropriations...

White House budget director Rob Portman is stepping down and will be replaced by former Iowa Republican congressman Jim Nussle, senior administration officials said today. The president is scheduled to make the formal announcement at the Roosevelt Room later this afternoon. Administration officials described the decision as motivated by Portman's desire to spend more time with his wife and three teen-aged children. Since returning to Washington as a congressman 14 years ago, Portman has been commuting weekly to his Cincinnati home, and his press secretary said he had tired of that. SNIP Still, the news of Portman's departure seemed to...

With Gov. Chris Gregoire introducing her 2007-09 spending plan for the state last month, taxpayers may be wondering what $70 billion in government spending will buy. For the curious, you’ll need to read through the hundred-plus pages of the state operating, capital and transportation budgets while wading through numerous state Web sites and publications to learn the details. There is, however, an easier, more transparent way: a searchable budget database modeled after a recent federal reform. Recognizing the need to be accountable to Americans for the nearly $1 trillion in discretionary spending the federal government allocates each year, President Bush...

The Army has lost an extraordinary bid to capture a larger share of the fiscal 2008 Defense budget, with Office of Management and Budget officials agreeing to give the heavily deployed military service $121 billion next year -- nearly $18 billion below what senior officers say they need, several defense sources familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday. Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker has said that the service needs $138.8 billion next year to continue plans to transform the force and pay burgeoning personnel, operations and maintenance bills. Pentagon leaders issued fiscal 2008 budget planning guidance earlier this year that...

Air Force Association August 2006, Vol. 89, No. 8 By Robert S. Dudney, Editor in ChiefBack to Demolition Derby? The Air Force should prepare itself for budget combat. Critics frequently dispute USAF’s claim that it needs to modernize its aircraft fleets. For anyone who may have harbored an honest doubt, though, the question was answered by a June exercise in Alaska. Twelve super-sophisticated F-22s, in simulated combat, posted a startling 108-to-zero record against current-generation “enemy” fighters, reported Gen. John D.W. Corley, USAF’s vice chief of staff. Against the same foes, older F-15s and F/A-18s did one-tenth as well as the...

Portman, formerly the U.S. trade representative and a Republican congressman from Ohio, was nominated in April by President Bush to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. He was confirmed by the Senate and took office May 29. Portman released OMB's Mid-Session Review July 11 showing a 30 percent drop in the deficit figures forecast last February. He was interviewed July 12 by Insight section editor Robert J. Caldwell. For the first time in years, the news on budget deficits is good. To what do you attribute this? The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have been successful....

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday nominated Trade Representative Rob Portman (news, bio, voting record) as the White House budget director, turning to a Washington insider and longtime friend as part of an effort to re-energize the administration and boost the president's record-low approval ratings. Bush said more changes are in the works under his new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten. "With a new man will come some changes," the president said. But he emphasized anew that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's job is safe, despite calls for his resignation from a half dozen retired military commanders. "I hear the voices...

President Bush talked about American competitiveness in Maryland and welcomed, along with Secretary of State Rice, Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon to the WH. He nominated Rob Portman as OMB Director and Susan Schwab for USTR. Vice President Dick Cheney visited troops at Ft. Riley, Kansas. Laura Bush visited with the Lebanese PM's wife at the WH. Welcome to Sanity Island!

The White House is looking at a list of cost-cutting candidates to head the Office of Management and Budget, and Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, may be on it. The former House majority leader, who announced he will resign from Congress and is under a state indictment on political money laundering charges, is listed as a possible replacement for Josh Bolten, the U.S. News and World Report said. Bolten has been named incoming White House chief of staff.

WASHINGTON -- Everybody in Washington's Republican political community was well aware that any changes George W. Bush made in his White House staff would not constitute a shake-up. What nobody expected was that Josh Bolten, in essence a professional bureaucrat, would be promoted to chief of staff. Yet, this selection becomes understandable as a confirmation of Karl Rove's supremacy in the White House.Rove holds the mundane titles of senior adviser to the president and deputy chief of staff, but scarcely anything happens in the Bush administration without his approval. Now he is more influential than ever. Andrew Card, the departing...

While Katrina relief has now jumbled the numbers, the rapidly declining federal deficit projections this past summer revealed a critical challenge for national economic policy making. Once again, they showed that the scoring of the effects of major policy changes performed by the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office were highly erroneous. The errors were not random. They were strongly and consistently biased against pro-market, pro-growth reforms, and they are the long-recognized results of outdated methodologies employed by federal scoring agencies. The end result is that such errors greatly hamper or prevent Congress from adopting policies...

The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity. Army officials said Saturday that the first phase of the program, called Future Combat Systems, could run to $145 billion. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the "technological bridge to the future" would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers, or about one-third of the force the Army plans to field, over a 20-year span. That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the Army, does not...

Kinda depends on how you figure it. Somebody help me with my math here. Would anybody disagree that the amount of annual increase in our overall DEBT should be the measure of our overall DEFICIT (this would also include SS, interest, etc.)? On that premise, according to the numbers from the Tresury link here: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm The current debt is: 7,601,173,485,023 debt 1-13-05 7,379,052,696,330 minus debt on fiscal close on 9-30-04 =221,120,788,693 over 3-1/2 months = 63,463,082,483 per month, times 12 months =761,556,989,796 linear projection for funding shortfall this fiscal year. This would appear to be roughly consistent with acceleration of...

...When the president released his Fiscal 2005 Budget in February calling for a disciplined budget, some politicians and pundits dismissed it as "dead on arrival." They warned that its spending limits could not be met or would require devastating reductions in key priorities. They were wrong. To the credit of key leaders, the Congress stayed within budget limits and met key priorities. While the appropriations bills are not perfect, they honor the goals President Bush set last February: overall discretionary spending in Fiscal 2005 will rise only 4%, the same as the average increase in American family income. The budget...

...The end of the last fiscal year on September 30 brought good news on the deficit front. And there's a fighting chance that the current lame-duck Congress will actually exercise some restraint in its appropriations for 2005. The media Furies and partisans are all astir because Congress voted to raise the debt limit again this week, as if not lifting the borrowing cap and defaulting was a viable option for the U.S. But the real story emerging this week is that the White House finally seems serious about holding the line on its budgetary spending strictures -- and won't stand...