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Teachers’ Pensions Are a Half-Trillion ShortBy Kevin D. Williamson December 14, 2012 11:15 A.M. The habitual overpromising and underfunding of government-employee pensions is a fiscal powder keg in an economy full of sparks — and a new report estimates that teachers’ pensions alone are underfunded by nearly a half-trillion dollars. **SNIP** Note that the savings per teacher derived from the reform of eligibility rules runs $450,000, or more than two and a half times the average net worth of a retirement-age U.S. household. The real value of the average teacher’s retirement benefits in low-cost Wyoming is pushing the $1 million...

Imagine a situation in which the world’s banks have to find as much as $30 trillion to comply with just one new regulation. That might be something of a stretch, given that the gross domestic product of the United States is only $15.8 trillion, and the world’s 10 largest banks hold only $25 trillion of assets. Yet a banking industry group recently looked into a new rule and sketched out a possibility in which banks were forced to come up with as much as $30 trillion in cash. The potential cash call is outlined in a letter the International Swaps...

Ever wonder what 16 Trillion dollars looks like? I created this video to demonstrate the scale of our Debt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSHI9PDh6GM&feature=plcp

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a fourth straight year, but a modest improvement in economic growth helped narrow the gap by $207 billion compared with last year. The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012 budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. Tax revenue rose 6.4 percent from last year to more than $2.4 trillion, helping contain the deficit. The government's revenue rose as more people got jobs and received income. Corporations also contributed more tax revenue than in 2011. Government spending fell 1.7 percent to $3.5 trillion. The decline reflected, in part,...

VIDEO Mitt Romney, Apopka, Fla - Oct 6, 2012 Source

$1.4 Trillion in Pension Fights Foreshadowed in RIBy DAVID KLEPPER Associated Press PROVIDENCE, R.I. October 7, 2012 (AP) Retired social worker Jim Gillis was told his $36,000 Rhode Island state pension would increase by $1,100 next year to keep up with inflation. But lawmakers suspended annual increases, leaving Gillis wondering how he'll pay medical bills and whether he'd been betrayed by his former employer. **SNIP** Nowhere have the changes been as sweeping as in Rhode Island, where public sector unions are suing to block an overhaul passed last year. The law raised retirement ages, suspended pension increases for years and...

CBO reports deficit was $1.1 trillion in 2012By Erik Wasson - 10/05/12 01:07 PM ET The government's fiscal 2012 has now come to a close and the score is in. The budget deficit for 2012 was $1.1 trillion, the fourth year of trillion-dollar deficits under President Obama. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Friday that the $1.1 trillion shortfall, based on Treasury statements, was about $200 billion less than in fiscal 2011. But part of this difference is due to a timing shift that put some final payments in 2011 because Oct. 1, 2011 fell on a weekend. Without the...

By the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2012, the new debt accumulated in this fiscal year by the federal government had already exceeded $1 trillion, making this fiscal year the fifth straight in which the federal government has increased its debt by more than a trillion dollars, according to official debt numbers published by the U.S. Treasury. Prior to fiscal 2008, the federal government had never increased its debt by as much as $1 trillion in a single fiscal year. From fiscal 2008 onward, however, the federal government has increased its debt by at least $1 trillion each...

About Us Resources Send Tips Donate RSS CNSNews.TV On the Spot On the Scene The Schein OTJ Golden Hookah 80% Of Trillion Dollar 'Farm Bill' Spent On Food Stamps, Not Farmers, Senator Says By David James July 20, 2012 Subscribe to David James's posts Last night, radio host Mark Levin interviewed Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) about the recent U.S. Department of Agriculture agreement with the government of Mexico to “help educate eligible Mexican nationals living in the United States about available nutrition assistance,” which includes the US food stamp program. Sen. Sessions explained that the funding for this program came...

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will later today release the following chart, detailing the rising projected cost of President Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare: The latest estimate, as the chart details, is that Obamacare will cost $2.6 trillion dollars in its first real decade. The bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, therefore the estimate begins with that year. "President Obama promised a joint session of Congress in 2009 to spend $900 billion over ten years on his health care law: 'Now, add it all up, and the plan that I’m proposing will

<p>Of course, rounding off, they're about the same. But don't we all think that the first number seems so much smaller and more manageable than the second?</p> <p>The first number incorporates a tidy unit of measurement called a "trillion." We can get our heads around the word "trillion," and so we think we understand what we're looking at. In this case, it is the size of our national debt.</p>

“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable … rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.” (CNSNews.com) – The federal government is not making much headway reducing poverty despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a study by the libertarian Cato Institute. Despite an unprecedented increase in federal anti-poverty spending, the national poverty rate has not declined, the study finds. “[S]ince President Obama took office [in January 2009], federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year,” the study says. Federal welfare spending...

Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap. “The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate. “The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said. The hidden shortfall between new spending and new taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court justices grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance...

Nation might reach $16.4 trillion debt limit close to Election DayBy Peter Schroeder - 02/23/12 02:46 PM ET The $16.4 trillion debt ceiling could be reached just weeks after Election Day, according to a new report. The analysis raises the possibility that lawmakers might have to raise the nation's borrowing limit before the election, a scenario they took pains to avoid in the debt deal passed in August. Now, partially due to lower than expected tax receipts, the nation could reach the $16.4 trillion debt limit as early as late November, according to an analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center...

Obama budget sees increased deficitBy Erik Wasson - 02/10/12 06:07 PM ET President Obama’s 2013 budget due out Monday will estimate the deficit for 2012 to be $1.33 trillion, higher than the $1.29 trillion deficit in 2011, according to senior administration officials. The increase happens largely because the budget assumes enactment of a $350 billion stimulus package, including extension of the payroll tax cut. That package is a scaled-down version of the $447 billion American Jobs Act that Obama proposed in the fall. The budget estimates that the deficit in 2013 will be $901 billion. This means that Obama will...

There’s been a lot of discussion over whether we should have had a smaller or larger stimulus package. But a lot of these arguments leave a key question unanswered: How much stimulus did we actually pass? There was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, of course. That was the big gun. But after that, there were dozens of smaller measures passed. For instance: The White House only put a single year of expanded unemployment insurance into the original stimulus. They did that, in part, because they expected they would be able to get unemployment insurance extended on its own. That...

Fed chief Bernanke issues debt warningBy North America correspondent Jill Colgan, ABC February 3, 2012, 11:08 am United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that the US economy could face the same fate as troubled European countries if it fails to curb its growing debt. Mr Bernanke delivered a sobering assessment of the economy that defies recent attempts by the Obama administration to talk up the economic turnaround. Testifying before a House Budget Committee, he said the pace of recovery had been "frustratingly slow". He urged lawmakers to be more aggressive in reducing the nation's $15 trillion debt...

Senate Dems plan to move $1 trillion omnibus in DecemberBy Alexander Bolton - 11/28/11 08:32 PM ET Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to move a $1 trillion spending bill in December, a strategy that will spark a backlash from Tea Party conservatives. If conservatives torpedo the omnibus measure, Reid and other Democratic leaders would likely be forced to accept another long stopgap spending measure or risk a government shutdown when funding runs out at midnight Dec. 17. The federal government has been operating on stopgap spending measures since the fall of last year, and many lawmakers are tired...

The total of U.S. state debt, including pension liabilities, could surpass $4 trillion, with California owing the most and Vermont owing the least, a new analysis says. The nonprofit State Budget Solutions combined states' major debt and future liabilities, primarily for pensions and employee healthcare, unemployment insurance loans, outstanding bonds and projected fiscal 2011 budget gaps. It found that in total, states are in debt for $4.2 trillion. The group, which follows state fiscal conditions and advocates for limited spending and taxes, said the deficit calculations that states make "do not offer a full picture of the states' liabilities and...

"I’m talking about a jobs program of a trillion dollars or more. We’ve got to put Americans to work. That’s the only way to revitalize this economy. When people work they earn money, they spend that money, and that’s what gets the economy up and going," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) told NBC's "Meet the Press."