Free Republic

Eager to meet its target of 80,000 new soldiers without compromising quality, last fall the U.S. Army expanded its signing-bonus pool by hundreds of millions. Time will tell if the Army succeeds in its endeavor, but that’s arguably not the point. The point of the story is to remind readers that governments don’t tax and borrow dollars in order to stare lovingly at the money. Just as we civilians seek “money” for what it can be exchanged for, so do governments. The money they spend is an explicit sign of how much control they have over the economy. The more...

Saturday, in response to an improvised explosive device (IED) that wounded 4 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers near the southern part of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Air Force (IAF) fighter jets struck at least 18 Hamas targets throughout Gaza, including weapons manufacturing infrastructure, the IDF said. The Israeli reprisal came after an explosive device detonated near IDF troops adjacent to a security fence in the southern Gaza Strip, earlier on Saturday. The IED was attached to a flag, which was used to mask the explosive device. During the riot, soldiers from the Golani Brigade and the Engineering Corps approached the...

Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you’re crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn’t yours and you owe it back. Now imagine that this happens every minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three years, you owe back...

Last week, Congress passed an outline of the 2019 budget. This week, President Trump rolled out his own budget plan, which would fill in some of the spending details. While most proposals in President Trump’s newly released 2019 budget are unlikely to become law, the fiscal framework does show the White House’s priorities for government over the coming year. And those apparently don’t include support for older adults, younger people with disabilities, or their families. For example, the Trump budget would: * Restructure the Medicare drug benefit to reduce costs for some beneficiaries but raise them for others. * Reduce...

The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan falls short of the strategic imperative. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation with a great goal: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” “Before this decade is out.” This nation used to be able to do great things in a short period of time, when it thought it was important. This past week the U.S. Navy, with its 30-year shipbuilding plan, fell short of the standard of national greatness....

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed on Wednesday an election-year budget that relies on a politically questionable shift of pension costs to colleges, universities and local school districts. "The simple truth is this: We have to change the way we manage pension costs and group health expenses. If we don't, our finances will continue to deteriorate, our economy will remain sluggish and our tax burdens will stay high and keep rising," Rauner said in his fourth budget address. "Our FY19 budget addresses the problem head on and creates a surplus that we can use to pay down some of our...

When Donald Trump was running for president he promised to end the sequestration caps on military spending and rebuild a depleted America military strained to the limit to meet the threats of radical Islamic terrorism, a rising China, a resurgent Russia, a lunatic North Kora, and a fanatical Iran. That $150 billion Obama released to Iran was roughly equivalent to the money lost to sequestration and Obama budget cuts, money that otherwise would have gone to military modernization to meet, among other threats, that of Iran.

President Trump unveiled a budget Monday that seeks $3 trillion in cuts over the next decade. What a difference a week makes. The president signed a bill authorizing increases in domestic spending to secure larger increases in defense spending last week. This followed a State of the Union address petitioning Congress for various spending hikes, including $200 billion in federal funds for a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. This week, he targets 12 departments for cuts. The Departments of Agriculture (-16 percent), Commerce (-6 percent), Education (-10.5 percent), Energy (-3 percent), Health and Human Services (-21 percent), Housing and Urban Development...

RUSH: “Feds Collect Record Taxes in First Month Under Tax Cuts.” When I saw this, I wondered how many people are gonna say, “Rush was right.” I wonder how many people are gonna say, “Rush told us this was gonna happen.” I wonder how many people are gonna remember for the last 30 years, “Yep. This is exactly what works every time it’s tried. Rush told us.” Quote: “The federal government this January ran a surplus while collecting record total tax revenues for that month of the year, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released [Monday]. January was the first...

Trump wants to slash food stamps and replace them with a ‘Blue Apron-type program’ By Caitlin Dewey February 12 at 6:57 PM The Trump administration wants to slash food aid to low-income families and make up the difference with a box of canned goods — a change that Office of Management and budget director Mick Mulvaney described in a Monday briefing as a “Blue Apron-type program.” “What we do is propose that for folks who are on food stamps, part — not all, part — of their benefits come in the actual sort of, and I don't want to steal...

President Trump on Monday rolled out a White House budget that includes deep cuts to some federal agencies, an increase in funding for the Pentagon and $18 billion for a wall on the Mexican border. It includes proposals to cut deficits by more than $3 trillion over a decade and lower debt levels as a percentage of the gross domestic product, but does not balance by doing away with annual deficits.

Ohio Representative and Freedom Caucus Co-founder, Jim Jordan, blasted the recently passed budget deal on Fox News Sunday for failing limit federal spending. Rep. Jordan told host Chris Wallace that “the swamp won and the American taxpayer lost” after Congress passed a bill that increased federal spending by $300 billion. These comments echo similar statements by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). On CNN this past week, Paul blasted the hypocrisy of Republicans in Congress. “The other thing is, there's a huge hypocrisy factor. Republicans lambasted President Obama to no end for trillion-dollar deficits and now they have put forward a trillion-dollar...

Conservatives in Congress and in the hinterlands are bitterly complaining about the massive insult to fiscal sanity the budget deal passed on Thursday morning represents. Even worse, some Republicans are offended by the pushback. Their target is Senator Rand Paul who, almost alone, tried to stand in the way of the budget deal in the Senate. GOP political analyst Susan Del Percio said on MSNBC that it was the day "the tea party died." DEL PERCIO: And it’s amazing we’re not even coming close to talking about entitlement reform, so I kind of look at today as the day the...

<p>Trump tweeted, “Just signed Bill. Our Military will now be stronger than ever before. We love and need our Military and gave them everything — and more. First time this has happened in a long time. Also means JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!”</p>

McConnell Bows to Schumer: Budget Contains No Reconciliation Instructions for Obamacare Repeal

I am worried that Republicans in Congress have been eating Tide Pods lately. Tide Pods can kill you and Republicans are in the process of killing the Republican Party with this latest budget agreement. There is no other explanation.What else explains the irrational and liberal policies that Republicans pushed in the latest budget agreement? This agreement is a complete sell-out of the pillar of the 2016 Republican Party platform, which reads in part:“Our national debt is a burden on our economy and families. The huge increase in the national debt demanded by and incurred during the current Administration has placed a...

Without more Republicans in Congress, we were forced to increase spending on things we do not like or want in order to finally, after many years of depletion, take care of our Military. Sadly, we needed some Dem votes for passage. Must elect more Republicans in 2018 Election! 8:47 AM - 9 Feb 2018

During a brief halt in government funding early Friday morning, the Senate voted 71-28 to pass a budget deal, pushed by Republican and Democrat leaders, that will raise caps on spending by $300 billion over two years. The Senate approved the deal at about 1:30 a.m. Friday, and the House passed it 240-186 around 5:30 a.m. President Donald Trump, who signed the bill Friday morning, voiced his support on Twitter.

Warning: This post contains numbers that may upset anyone who dreams of a smaller government. With the Senate budget deal announced yesterday, congressional Republicans have proved that they aren't merely big spenders: They bear primary responsibility for Washington's complete lack of fiscal responsibility. At the same time, they have reaffirmed the fact that bipartisanship means a determination to spend us into oblivion. The bipartisan budget deal that the senators proclaimed so proudly yesterday would add $300 billion over two years to discretionary spending, not counting emergency funds and other add-ons. It would yet again burst the budget caps that Republicans...