Posts belonging to Category Budget
The General Services Administration blew through $820,000 in taxpayers’ money in a lavish ”team building” trip to Las Vegas, and President Barack Obama is “apoplectic” at the news, according to the president’s campaign advisor, David Axelrod. Obama, he says, has devoted his efforts to saving “tens of billions of dollars” in cutting waste, fraud and inefficiency in government. Yet under President Obama’s leadership, government spending keeps growing irresponsibly, and neither he nor his allies in Congress are doing anything about it. The latest example came last week when Democratic leadership in the … More
No Comments »
The Senate Budget Committee stretched a few definitions in announcing yesterday’s “Mark-Up of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013.” Turns out it’s not really a budget resolution, per se, and there will be no formal committee action on it—no amendments, no vote, no real committee-adopted fiscal plan. Thus, April 29 will complete the third full year since the Senate last passed a budget resolution. “I had considered presenting a budget that reflected the general consensus among the Democratic Members of the Committee,” explained Senate Budget Committee … More
No Comments »
In a speech yesterday in Elyria, Ohio — a small town just outside Cleveland sitting at the forks of the Black River — President Barack Obama delivered a politically charged speech in which he hearkened back to the country’s roots, saying that his opponents “don’t seem to remember how America was built.” In his view, taxpayers want their money spent in ways that will help further “the larger project we call America.” In other words, more spending and bigger government paid for with higher taxes. In a city quite unlike … More
No Comments »
New research suggests that legislators should cut spending and enact growth-inducing policies. The reasoning? According to the study, spending cuts can positively affect economic growth and are the only historically reliable way to lower deficits and debt. The authors of the study, Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, write that “spending-based consolidations [spending cuts] accompanied by the right polices tend to be less recessionary or even have a positive impact on growth.” (emphasis added) These findings confirm what was certainly true in past U.S. recessions. Alesina and Giavazzi also add that … More
No Comments »
A new poll by Reason-Rupe shows that Americans support the structural reform of a premium support model for Medicare. The current Medicare program has made $38 trillion of unfunded promises to seniors over the next 75 years, and the Part A trust fund is predicted to be bankrupt as soon as 2024. The gravity of Medicare’s fiscal mess makes reform inevitable. With premium support, the government provides a contribution toward the cost of a health plan of the beneficiary’s choosing. Reason states, “For people not yet in the program and … More
No Comments »
Buried deep in the President’s hyperbolic assault on the House-passed budget last week—with all that “radical vision” and “social Darwinism” rhetoric—was one kernel of truth: “This isn’t a budget supported by some small rump group in the Republican Party,” the President said. “This is now the party’s governing platform. This is what they’re running on.” Exactly right. The fiscal plan authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R–WI) is not just a blueprint for spending. It’s a vision for governing that deliberately and self-consciously seeks to advance “the timeless … More
No Comments »
What do you do when you’re losing a debate? Change the subject. That’s really all you need to know to understand President Obama’s resuscitation of his infamous “Buffett Rule” that would impose a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate on businesses and families earning $1 million. The Supreme Court gave Obamacare a nasty audition two weeks ago, leaving even staunch defenders of the law grasping for straws while the former constitutional law professor now in the White House outrageously flailed the court for doing exactly what the Constitution intends. So … More
No Comments »
On Tuesday, President Obama criticized Representative Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) budget proposal as making “draconian cuts” to federal spending programs. In particular, the President said, “If this budget becomes law and the cuts were applied evenly, starting in 2014, over 200,000 children would lose their chance to get an early education in the Head Start program.” The clear implication is that over 200,000 children will somehow be harmed by not attending Head Start—a “Great Society” preschool program intended to provide a boost to disadvantaged children before they enter elementary school. This … More
No Comments »
Hats off to the Senate parliamentarian, who apparently has rebuffed the Democratic leadership’s latest excuse for failing to bring a budget to the floor—something the Senate hasn’t done for nearly three years. Since February, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D–NV) and his lieutenants have claimed the Budget Control Act (BCA)—spawn of last year’s debt ceiling agreement—constitutes a budget resolution for fiscal year 2013. “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year,” Reid contended, citing the BCA’s $1.047 trillion ceiling on annually appropriated spending for fiscal … More
No Comments »
If you’re looking for an iron-clad indictment of Barack Obama’s failed fiscal policies, you don’t have to look much farther than the President’s own words in a speech he delivered yesterday at the Associated Press luncheon in Washington, D.C. In what was seemingly an attempt to criticize House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) FY2013 budget plan — the only such proposal to emerge from either the House or the Senate — the President dredged up his stale complaints about President George W. Bush’s policies — many of which he … More
No Comments »