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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A compromise with Republicans on spending cuts will be necessary in order to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, President Barack Obama said in an interview with the Associated Press on Friday. Obama, a Democrat, said some questions about such cuts would have to be left for after the 2012 presidential election, when he hopes to win a second term in office. Obama said the world could plunge into a new recession if the United States were to default on its debts, according to the AP. He voiced confidence that Congress would lift the nation's debt ceiling, AP...

Barack Obama tried to make the case for tax hikes yesterday as a means to close the budget deficit and reduce debt, but a new poll from the Associated Press shows that new taxes will be a tough sale. Voters prefer spending cuts to tax hikes by a 62/29 margin, a much more significant divide than between those who believe their tax levels to be fair or not: Not that they’re cheering. Fewer people expect refunds this year than in previous years, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. But as Monday’s filing deadline approaches, the poll shows that 54 percent...

President Obama, seeking to reframe the debate after a budget battle driven by spending cuts, will call for a “balanced approach” to reducing the nation’s debt and deficits in a speech in Washington on Wednesday. As the Republican-controlled House prepares to vote on both the 2011 budget compromise and its own austere 2012 proposal, which calls for major changes to entitlement programs, Obama will set out his own commitment to deficit reduction while pledging to maintain investments he says are needed to keep the economy strong. “The president will make clear that while we all share the goal of reducing...

Since everybody seems to be coming up with plans on how to cope with the skyrocketing national debt, let me try my hand at it too. The liberals’ easy solution is just to increase taxes on “the rich.” But, if you do the math, there aren’t enough of “the rich” to cover the huge and record-breaking deficit. Trying to reduce the deficit by cutting spending runs into an old familiar counterattack. There will be all kinds of claims by politicians and sad stories in the media about how these cuts will cause the poor to go hungry, the sick to...

A new Rasmussen poll shows that now 57% of Americans are ok with the Government shutting down if it leads to cuts. A majority of voters are fine with a partial shutdown of the federal government if that’s what it takes to get deeper cuts in federal government spending. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters think making deeper spending cuts in the federal budget for 2011 is more important than avoiding a partial government shutdown. Thirty-one percent (31%) disagree and say avoiding a shutdown is more important. Twelve percent (12%) are not...

Washington (CNSNews.com) – House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that conservative Republicans who oppose anything less than the significant budget cuts they promised their constituents were acting like “dictators” and were to blame for stalled budget negotiations. Harkening back to the government shutdown of 1996, Hoyer blamed what he called the “perfectionist caucus” for refusing to compromise, then and now. “The last time government shut down President Clinton was President of the United States,” Hoyer told reporters at his weekly media briefing. “And what happened then was the perfectionist caucus thought they would be the dictators and do it...

Senate John Kerry (D-Mass.) warned Tuesday that spending cuts could wipe out future government achievements, like the invention of the Internet, which Kerry credited to Washington. “A lot of people don’t think about that. But the fact is the government invented the Internet,” Kerry said in a 30-minute floor speech. Kerry said the Internet was first conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a communications system in case of nuclear war. “The private sector saw the opportunities and took those opportunities and translated them into what we have today, which has revolutionized the way people communicate and...

As Shakespeare, or someone else, said, “Consistency, though art a jewel.” The jewels of the House of Representatives include locals Ed Royce, John Campbell and the man who should have been governor, Tom McClintock. The folks over at Heritage Action for America sum it up this way: . . .

Among the biggest flashpoints in the House Republicans’ $1.2 trillion bill for financing federal programs through Sept. 30 are provisions to: † Cut $60 billion from last year’s spending on domestic programs, including education, environmental protection and community services. † Block money to implement President Obama’s health-care overhaul. † Bar federal funds for Planned Parenthood. † Prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing regulations curbing emissions of gases that cause global warming. † Reduce Pell Grants for low-income college students $5.6 billion, which the White House says would reduce the maximum $5,550 grant by $845. † Cut $747 million in...

The tenuous political harmony between Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature disintegrated Thursday when the DFL governor vetoed $901 million in proposed budget cuts aimed at paring the state's $6.2 billion deficit. Republicans had wanted to push the partial deficit solution ahead of Dayton's first budget presentation Tuesday, arguing that the state's fiscal crisis needs quick action. Dayton, however, said the proposal was too hasty, had major problems and would effectively give Minnesotans a $428 million property tax increase over the next two years. He said a rush to adopt the cuts -- DFLers complained many provisions did not have...

A big obstacle for House Republicans eager to slash the federal budget deficit may be that Republicans nationally tend to shy away from spending cuts in many major government programs. Budget cutting is a top priority for the GOP, with 70 percent of Republicans in a new survey by the Pew Research Center saying the federal government should focus on reducing the deficit, not new economic stimulus. And in many cases, more Republicans now support cuts than did so two years ago. But across 18 areas of federal spending, a majority of Republicans support decreasing spending in just one: aid...

After a fumbling start, the House GOP appears back on track to achieve one of its signature promises from the midterm Pledge to America. The caucus has agreed to a much larger round of budget cuts, spread across the next twelve months, than first proposed — and then withdrawn after a revolt by the Republican freshmen: House Republicans emerged from an emergency meeting about the budget Thursday night sounding unified around a newfangled stop-gap spending measure that would achieve cuts of $100 billion.Freshmen, once again, were the driving force that sent the GOP leadership to head back to the drawing...

Sarah Palin talks to Judge Napolitano about the crisis in Egypt and suggest that supporting democracy in Egypt only makes sense if the people we support truly want democracy, and not simply to use it as a means to take away more freedoms (...ie Muslim brotherhood. We got to make sure We know who side to be on. Palin also talked about Foreign Aid given by U.S. to many countries. That it should not be a "Holy Grail" that cannot touch but must be put on the table to discuss and pull back any money that isn't doing any good...

Acknowledging the public has a right to be angry at both parties, Republican leaders responding to President Obama‘s State of the Union speech implored Americans to trust them to lead the country out of its economic malaise. Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican chosen to give the party’s official response, said both sides face a “tipping point” in addressing the problems of federal spending and ballooning national debt. “Americans are skeptical of both political parties, and that skepticism is justified - especially when it comes to spending. So hold us accountable,” said Mr. Ryan in a televised GOP rebuttal...

For weeks, Rep. Michele Bachmann has touted $450 billion in spending cuts to help get the country’s debt under wraps. A detailed list of the cuts, which actually add up to a little more than $430 billion, reveals a conservative wish-list of federal programs to be downsized or outright eliminated. Bachmann’s spending cuts span across the government spectrum, slashing everything from agriculture to Homeland Security to science funding. Some of her ideas, like defunding federal abortion grants, are red meat for conservatives. Others, like abolishing the Department of Education, would be considered more controversial. The time period for the cuts...

The best part of this poll? The sampling follies at CBS don’t even really matter, although this poll’s sample is closer to reality than most. When given a choice between tax hikes or spending cuts, it turns out that 77% of Americans are Tea Partiers, as Jammie Wearing Fool says: [A CBS] News poll finds that Americans strongly prefer cutting spending to raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit. While 77 percent prefer to cut spending, just nine percent call for raising taxes. Another nine percent want to do both.Yet most Americans could not volunteer a program they’d be willing...

A New Year approaches. Along with it comes a brand new Congress. There are many things Congress needs to do next year. However, I believe there are five that are of the utmost importance; things that the new Congress should make New Years Resolutions.

Almost everyone, it seems now, understands that the economy isn’t growing significantly, certainly not enough to get the kind of job creation necessary to lower unemployment. What policies do Americans want taken to kick-start it back into high gear? Gallup polled over a thousand general-population adults, and found that Keynesianism is in fact dead as a strategy: Americans do not show a strong consensus for any of the approaches, but clearly reject additional economic stimulus spending. Theincreased government spending in late 2008/early 2009 to bail out major U.S. corporations and attempt to jump-start the economy concerned many Americans and helped...

Republicans are giddy about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi becoming Minority Leader of House Democrats. It was her legislative agenda that got the Dems hammered in the election. Republicans should seize the opportunity to drive a wedge between Pelosi and nervous Democrats who fear another drubbing in 2012: They should force a vote on spending cuts for abortion. Apparently the historic election thrashing has reduced testosterone levels of House Democrats, except for 32 women backing Pelosi who share her abortion zealotry. Most of the male Democrats are behaving like Madame Bovary's lovesick husband, who remained loyal to her despite her unfaithfulness....

After their big election gains, congressional Republicans must now commit to getting the federal budget under control. Unfortunately, some have advocated cutting the defense budget as part of the solution. Reducing defense spending now would be a dangerous mistake. It’s important for conservatives to get this issue right. To that end, here are a few observations. First, the framers of the U.S. Constitution envisioned national defense as the priority obligation of the federal government. The first power granted to the president in Article 2 is “Commander-in-Chief of the Armies and Navies of the United States, and of the Militias of...