Free Republic

Mayor John Whitmire proposing a 5% cut across the board, except for fire and police departments.. Tax hikes and increased fees for parking and city services are likely .. The Mayor of Houston says the city is 'broke' after overspending for decades. Experts say the problem has existed for years, but COVID handouts from the federal government helped mask them. ... A tax hike through a bond is expected in November. ... The city has been struggling to make firefighters whole, from meeting its contractual obligation to their pension, to paying backpay and wage hikes that have been promised years...

"More than half of the Republican conference voted against GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson's omnibus funding bill, rebuking the leader's efforts to avoid a shutdown ahead of Friday's deadline. The House voted on the spending package brokered by Johnson on Friday, passing the bill by a vote of 286 to 134. The bill needed 280 votes to pass. But while the legislation garnered enough bipartisan support to push it to the Senate, 112 House Republicans and 22 House Democrats voted against it. Only 101 members of Johnson's party voted in favor of the package. "

Americans are strongly dissatisfied with the direction of the country and the economy. According to Gallup, just 19% of the public is satisfied with how things are going, compared with 80% who aren’t. Incredibly, consumer sentiment is lower now than it was during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. It’s easy to see why. Inflation remains elevated above pre-pandemic levels, meaning that real weekly earnings are down by more than 4% since January 2021. Rising interest rates have caused the median mortgage payment to double over the same period. In a good economy, hardworking Americans steadily get ahead as income gains...

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) says he is “tired of caving” on the debt limit and is dialing up the pressure on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) not to swoop in to strike a last-minute deal with President Biden. Scott’s full-court press on McConnell is an extension of their battle last year over the leadership of the Senate GOP conference, which McConnell won in a closed-door leadership election in November. Scott tried to oust McConnell from the top Senate Republican leader’s spot after Republicans failed to win the Senate majority in November and helped lead the fight against passing the...

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is issuing a dire warning about the record U.S. national debt, which has surpassed $30 trillion. "True national debt, including unfunded entitlements, is at least $60 trillion – roughly three times the size of the entire US economy. Something has got to give," Musk tweeted Thursday night in response to a Babylon Bee article titled, "Biden Goes Double Or Nothing On National Debt By Placing $30 Trillion On The Bengals." There is reportedly about $93 trillion of unfunded liabilities over 75 years. Unfunded liabilities are defined as promised benefits to individuals through entitlement programs...

America's national debt just hit another sobering milestone. Total public debt outstanding is now above $30 trillion, according to Treasury Department data published Tuesday. Government borrowing accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic as Washington spent aggressively to cushion the economic blow from the crisis. The national debt has surged by about $7 trillion since the end of 2019. It's impossible to know how much debt is too much, and economists remain divided over how big of a problem this really is. But the latest debt milestone comes at a delicate time as borrowing costs are expected to rise. After many years...

Elon Musk Slams Biden Administration Proposal: 'Delete It' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMWOn7qtQlI

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said Congress should "can" President Joe Biden's multitrillion dollar Build Back Better Act, which Democrats are seeking to pass with budget reconciliation to avoid relying on votes from Republicans. "Honestly, I would just can this whole bill," said Musk, ranked number two on the 2021 Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. "Don't pass it. That's my recommendation."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk assailed a $2 trillion social and climate spending bill, saying he's in favor of scrapping the entire package. "Honestly, I would just can this whole bill. Don't pass it," Musk said at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council, which he appeared at virtually. "That's my recommendation." He swung at a specific provision within the legislation that would authorize a tax credit up to $12,500 for Americans if they bought an electric vehicle assembled by unionized workers with batteries constructed in the US. "I am literally saying get rid of all subsidies," he said. Musk, who said...

“Spending is the real problem,” said the world’s richest man when he dismantled the logic behind the Democratic Party’s latest class warfare tax-the-rich scheme. Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter in response to a Washington Post story promoting the Democrat tax plan, which featured him as the cover photo. The Post said the proposal “would raise billions of dollars from a handful of the richest Americans, attempting to create perhaps the most narrowly focused tax policy in postwar history.” Post NASA and space industry reporter Christian Davenport seemingly celebrated how the “$50 billion” Musk would pay in...

Under a veil of secrecy, Los Angeles city officials and homeless services providers are rushing to move as many homeless people as possible from Echo Park Lake this week in advance of an expected sweep to remove more than 100 tents and fence the entire park for repairs. City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who has said he planned to close the park, has declined to confirm the timetable, but a source with direct knowledge of the process told The Times that the city plans to clear the encampment Thursday, fence the park and close it for renovations. O’Farrell spokesman Tony Arranaga...

America's big cities and habitually blue states have suffered a pre-existing condition for a long time: their left-leaning government control.America’s big cities might be the ultimate victims of COVID-19. Leftist policies have raised their spending beyond self-sustaining levels, making them increasingly dependent on external revenues. Beyond interrupting these external revenue streams, the Wuhan virus threatens a long-term disruption that might be irreversible. A recent border budget battle in leftist New England demonstrates COVID-19’s growing strain on America’s big cities. In October, New Hampshire filed suit with the Supreme Court to stop Massachusetts from continuing to tax 80,000 of its residents...

When President Trump signed the 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill last month, he was emphatic that it wouldn’t happen again.Referring to the fact that no one could possibly have had time to read this mammoth piece of legislation, he said, “I will never sign another bill like this again.”The implication, of course, was that nothing could be done about this latest round of massive overspending. Like it or lump it, there it is.But that’s not exactly true. The president can, in fact, do something. He can pursue what’s known as a rescissions package.Don’t let the wonky word cause your...

WASHINGTON - Democrat Doug Jones is outspending embattled Republican Roy Moore by nearly 10 to one in Alabama’s closely watched Senate race, but his message on the airwaves over the past three weeks hasn’t completely focused on the sexual misconduct scandal that has enveloped Moore. According to the ad-tracking group Advertising Analytics LLC, Jones’ campaign has shoveled $5.6 million into television and radio ads during the general election, compared to about $600,000 by Moore’s team. That 10-to-1 advantage for Jones is almost unchanged from two weeks ago. The outside group Highway 31 has contributed another $512,000 to pro-Jones ads during...

Apparently, protecting the President of the United States and his family is a massive burden on the government budget, and according to USA Today, it’s because President Trump makes so many trips. But where was this concern for overspending when the nation was racking up over Twenty Trillion Dollars of Debt? Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles is saying that 1000 secret service people have already hit their federally mandated pay caps, and that “The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,” Alles said. “I can’t change that. I have no flexibility.” Apparently the problem...

Russia is expected to spend more money on its military in 2015 than in any previous year in its entire post-Soviet history. According to an analysis conducted by Forbes Magazine, Russia will spend an estimated 5.34 percent of its economic output on defense in 2015. This estimate is based on the assumption that the Russian economy will contract by 3 percent and a 15 percent hike in the real value of the military budget. However, another estimate quoted in the Wall Street Journal based on Russian government data notes that country’s GDP may even decrease by 4.6 percent largely due...

The Queen’s household finances were at an “historic low” with just £1 million left in reserve, MPs said on Monday. Her courtiers were advised to take money-saving tips from the Treasury. A report by the Commons public accounts committee found that the Queen’s advisers were failing to control her finances while the royal palaces were “crumbling”. MPs said her advisers had overspent to such an extent that her reserve fund had fallen from £35 million in 2001 to just £1 million today. …

In a Sunday morning report which tries to put the best possible face on a project which appears to be on track to make the $22 billion "Big Dig" in Massachusetts look like a petty cash disbursement, Juliet Williams at the Associated Press claimed that the $68 billion involved thus far "would span the state." No it wouldn't, unless all of the formerly Golden State north of the San Francisco Bay Area — roughly one-fourth of the state's land mass — were to secede. Williams also wrote: "Voters in 2008 approved $10 billion in bonds to start construction on an...

The state’s auditor said today despite its critical report last year on the high-speed rail project, the rail authority’s “funding situation has become increasingly risky and the authority’s weak oversight persists.” . . . “The cost estimates for phase one increased to between $98.1 billion and $117.6 billion—of which approximately $12.5 billion has been secured,” the auditor says. Remember when the cost was about $35 billion? Then about $45 billion? Then about $98 billion? And now, the auditor says it’s up to $117 billion?

Gov. Jerry Brown, in his annual State of the State message, said Wednesday that "California is on the mend." But what the still-ailing state needs, he said, is more medicine in the form of higher taxes, intrusive regulations and more debts to pay off. Someone needs to tell Dr. Brown that bleeding patients kills them, as the medical profession discovered long ago. The governor said not only must Californians increase sales taxes on everyone and income taxes on the most-wealthy, but he also proposed increasing the state's debt by issuing bonds for a high-speed train that polls say voters don't...