Free Republic

Never before have presidential candidates offered voters so much “free” stuff.Kamala Harris wants you to “collect up to $500 a month.”Elizabeth Warren says, “We need to go tenfold in our research and development in green energy.”No one has tracked the cost of all of the promises. So my video team did!Who will spend the most?Here are the new spending proposals from the five most popular (according to ElectionBettingOdds.com) candidates.In my latest video, we break it down by category, education spending first:Joe Biden wants to “triple the amount of money we spend for Title I schools” ($32 billion) create “universal pre-K”...

The city of Baltimore received $16 billion in grants in 2018! The city is a dump. Where did the money go? Does Representative Cummings know? Great thread here covering the Baltimore mess the Democrats are facing – (see more in tweets)

There is one interest that almost all elected officials in Washington, D.C., share. It does not matter what state they come from. It does not matter what party they belong to. It does not matter whether they serve in the House, Senate or White House. They want to be reelected. A key tactic they often employ to achieve this shared strategic aim is sometimes celebrated by apologists as "bipartisanship." In practice, bipartisanship less often involves members of both major parties coming together to serve some great national interest and more often involves them coming together to serve their personal political...

The White House projects that the federal deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year, the only time in the nation's history the deficit has exceeded that level, excluding the four-year period following the Great Recession. "The 2019 deficit has been revised to a projected $1.0 trillion," the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote in its midyear review. As a candidate, President Trump promised to wipe out not only the deficit but the entire federal debt, which has surpassed $22 trillion. Republicans cast aside projections that their 2017 tax reform law would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit...

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its mid-year update on the federal fiscal situation, and it portends a debt avalanche. But don't bother to tell Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that. They're busy advocating tens of trillions of dollars in new federal spending. The new report shows that budget deficits are expected to remain in the $1 trillion territory for years to come. It appears that 13-digit deficits are the new normal in Washington, as spending inexorably keeps rising by hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This spend-and-borrow forecast ranges from troublesome to panic-room sheer terror —...

WASHINGTON - The political battles raging across the federal government seem to be consumed by trade wars, immigration and of course impeachment. Those issues will run their course in due time, but there is a much bigger problem that seems to be attracting little if any attention here at the highest levels of government. President Trump rarely mentions it, if at all. Congress, for most of the year, sweeps it under the rug as it goes about its business of recklessly spending other people’s money. Newspapers and the nightly news programs all but ignore it entirely. We’re talking about wasteful...

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, blocked a disaster relief bill in the House on Friday by objecting to a unanimous consent vote. The Texas Republican who previously worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), argued the House should not have recessed before debating the legislation and holding a vote. “I'm here today primarily because if I do not object, Congress will have passed into law a bill that spends $19 billion of taxpayer money without members of Congress being present in our nation's capital to vote on it,” he said on the floor. “Secondly,...

Today states that withdraw find resettlement continues without any oversight from state authorities yet with states continuing to be forced to pay. Tennessee is the first state to tell the federal government that it can’t be forced to pay for the federal refugee resettlement program on the constitutional basis of federalism and the Tenth Amendment. It is suing the federal government over its continuation of refugee resettlement in Tennessee after the state withdrew from the program. When the state withdrew more than 10 years ago, the federal government turned program administration over to the federal contractor, Catholic Charities of Tennessee,...

Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy. Can we conservatives agree — at least among ourselves — on that much? Maybe not. Confession: I am not much of an ideologue. And I don’t think “Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy!” is an ideological position, exactly. And there’s no need to be fanatical about it: Running a deficit during a serious economic downturn, a war, or a national emergency? I’m flexible. You show me Hitler invading Poland and my response is not going to be: Stop spending money you don’t have, dummy. Whip those Nazis. And, then: Stop spending money...

On Wednesday, the House and the Senate both passed a massive 1,159 page spending bill that they were given less than 24 hours to read. There was a concerted effort by the leadership of both parties to rush this bill through before the American people could be mobilized to oppose it. We are being told that this spending package represents a compromise, but as you will see below, the wording of the bill is so restrictive that it is going to make it just about impossible for President Trump to get anything built on the border. At this point I...

President Trump will take dramatic actions to fund his long-promised border wall and declare a national emergency, which will enable his administration to move $8 billion from various federal agencies to fund the project, a senior administration official told Fox News late Thursday. The news comes as Trump is expected to sign a House border security package that provides $1.4 billion for the project, which is far below the $5.7 billion Trump insisted he needed and would finance just a quarter of the 200-plus miles he wanted. Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said earlier today that Trump will...

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) called on his Democratic colleagues to give President Trump the funding for his long-desired border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, saying its construction is inevitable. “Give Trump the money,” Peterson told KFGO’s “News & Views” on Tuesday. “I’d give him the whole thing … and put strings on it so you make sure he puts the wall where it needs to be. Why are we fighting over this? We’re going to build that wall anyway, at some time.” The 15-term congressman said top Democrats look at him “cross-eyed” when he makes this suggestion. The funding...

Several Republican senators introduced legislation Friday to permanently end government shutdowns by creating an automatic continuing resolution for any appropriations bill, allowing the federal government to remain open even when budget agreements break down. Currently, when Congress fails to meet a deadline to pass a government funding bill, the agencies which remain unfunded shut down. Often, Congress chooses to pass what's called a continuing resolution (CR) to delay and extend the deadline to pass funding bills, which keeps funding operations at their current levels. CR funding would be reduced by 1 percent after 120 days, and would be reduced by...

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) is urging President Donald Trump to help reduce “shootings and homicides” in Chicago by increasing federal investment in housing, economic development, job training, education, public health and “community policing.” “As you prepare your Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Request, I urge you to use this budget framework as an opportunity to support efforts to help reduce gun violence in Chicago, rather than scapegoating the city’s challenges to promote ideological political agendas,” Durbin told Trump in a letter sent on Dec. 13. “I urge you to prioritize federal support and resources that will help Chicago reduce...

Can the government spend money that has not been specifically authorized by Congress? In theory – no. In practice? Absolutely. Each year the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on things that are not specifically authorized by Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this practice. President Donald Trump, to his credit, has worked hard to get his wall funding properly authorized. But he may ultimately do exactly what presidents before him have done: take advantage of the broken Congressional process.

“They don’t even tell you – what does that mean, ‘the government shut down’? First of all, that phrase is a lie; the government doesn’t shut down. You’ll be long dead – your children and your grandchildren too – before this government shuts down, unless it shuts down from a financial and economic collapse. But, legally? No. “‘Seventy-five percent of the government[’s] already been funded’ – are you aware of this? – as they point out at CNSNews.com. “He signed a minibus appropriations bill – the president did – ‘that funded the Department of Energy; Military Construction [and] Veterans Affairs;...

Anchor Neil Cavuto asked, “Are you of the mindset that reallocating funds from another department, let’s say Defense, is a wise strategy, or would that be rejected out of hand?” Thune responded, “I’m not a big fan of moving money. I think Defense ought to — we ought to be building airplanes and ships and all the things that we need to do to defend the country. But there are always dollars in budgets that you can move around, and in the Homeland Security budget, for example. And that’s the way that the appropriators came up with a mechanism that...

No wall funding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Tuesday in front of the White House that there will be a government shutdown if President Donald Trump refuses to budge from his demand for $5 billion of wall funding. He spoke after the tense meeting with President Trump.The bottom line is simple. The President made clear that he wants a shutdown. His position, if he sticks to his position for a $5 billion wall, he will get no wall and he will get a shutdown. The bottom line is very, very simple. That is, we want border security. We offered him border security....

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz with three other senators introduced a bill Wednesday that is aimed at fully funding a wall along the US-Mexico border... The WALL Act would fully fund the border wall by closing existing loopholes that provide illegal immigrants with federal benefits and tax credits, without affecting the benefits and tax credits used by Americans.