|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Sheldon S. Wolin
$19.77
By John W. Dean
$15.00
$22
|
|
|
|
|
By Joe Conason — We could easily slip into another Great Depression if our leaders continue to heed the chattering class on the deficit. But cutting spending is not just bad economics; it’s bad politics, too.
|
|
If you thought tea party politics were just for rabid wingnuts and certain Twitter-prone politicians, think again or else you may miss out on some hot stock market action before the November elections.
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — This is no time for retrenchment, but the deficit projections coming out of the Congressional Budget Office are alarming and will only get worse if we dawdle.
|
Wikimedia Commons
|
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is again attempting to eliminate the state’s welfare-to-work program as his Republican administration tries to cut spending while not raising taxes, a move intended to save $1.6 billion at the expense of 1.3 million poor people.
|
|
By Joe Conason — The collapse of American infrastructure is a shamefully old story by now, featuring scary statistics that must be updated regularly as the situation worsens.
|
|
David Letterman didn’t exactly lob any hardballs in his interview with Idaho tea party activist Pam Stout on Tuesday night’s show, opting instead to have a light and informative exchange on Stout’s own history and where she believes the movement might be headed ... (continued)
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — Democrats are delighted with the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of their health care bill, but the Republicans have good reason to be skeptical.
|
|
By David Sirota — Amazon has sent a message to states buckling under budget deficits: If you make us play by the same tax rules as other businesses, we’ll punish you.
|
|
RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch —
|
|
By David Sirota — For 30 years, Republicans and conservative Democrats have precluded factual debates about spending priorities for fear of antagonizing defense contractors, seniors and the wealthy.
|
|
For all their talk of deficits, conservatives don’t ever want to pay for them. Rush Limbaugh says people making more than $250,000 a year—who may just have to brace for a tax hike to keep our budget shortfalls somewhere in this galaxy—do not qualify as wealthy.
|
whitehouse.gov
|
President Barack Obama on Monday announced his proposed 2011 budget, which includes boosted spending for creating jobs and waging wars, a potential tax on big banks, funding for infrastructure on the state and city levels ... and a whopping $1.6 trillion deficit for the fiscal year.
|
|
Courtesy of C-SPAN, watch the whole (and at times, lively) exchange between President Barack Obama and Republican House members at a GOP retreat in Baltimore on Friday.
|
youtube.com
|
Turns out that Barack Obama’s extemporaneous critique of the Supreme Court during his State of the Union speech Wednesday wasn’t the only such (apparently) unscripted moment he’d spend this week. On Friday, the president engaged in a frank exchange with Republican House members at a retreat in Baltimore, where he ... (continued)
|
|
By Joe Conason — There are many reasons why Barack Obama’s spending freeze, which appears to be nothing more than pandering to the angry right, will not work as policy or politics.
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
As part of his State of the Union address Wednesday, the president is expected to call for a three-year freeze on non-military, non-entitlement discretionary spending that amounts to a small fraction of the budget. It’s a stunt, for the most part, aimed at soothing budget-conscious independents. (continued)
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If you held a contest to pick the worst thing a politician could be called at this moment, my nominee would be Wall Street Liberal—which is why President Obama’s new fees on the biggest banks comes just in time.
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — There was a nice, albeit fleeting, moment in the spring when hospitals, doctors, drug companies and insurers came together at the White House, pledging to do their part to get health care costs under control.
|
|
By David Sirota — Save $110 billion, or spend $6.3 trillion? In recent months, tea party protesters and Congress’ so-called fiscal conservatives chose the latter.
|
Flickr / ThisParticularGreg
|
Executing people is expensive. A new report by the Death Penalty Information Center says California is spending more than 10 times as much on capital punishment—$137 million a year—as it would on an alternative life-without-parole system. New York and New Jersey repealed ...
|
White House / Lawrence Jackson
|
The House speaker is thrilled to hear from the Congressional Budget Office that all three versions of the public option under consideration in the lower chamber would be cheaper than expected and would actually reduce the deficit over 10 years.
|
0-60mag.com
|
If you thought last year’s federal budget deficit was pretty big, you were right—and it’s three times as big now! Thanks to the magic of the recession, as well as the government’s attempts to rescue various sectors of the economy (and throw money at others, or so it appeared), the deficit for the 12 months ending last month was a whopping $1.42 trillion.
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
By Joe Conason — If the president and Congress don’t come to the aid of workers, the political consequences will be severe, and deservedly so.
|
|
Should this ever actually happen, The Onion gets credit for its prescient mock-up of a hostile takeover of the American government by a militant, yet strangely familiar, enemy organization bent on ... completely obliterating the ever-increasing U.S. debt.
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — Does President Obama care about passing health care reform that truly gets costs under control and getting the nation’s fiscal house in order or does he care more about getting re-elected?
|
AP / Alex Brandon
|
On Monday, after two of President Obama’s economic sidekicks, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, made noises over the weekend about the possibility that middle-class Americans may pay higher taxes in the near future, the White House went into damage control mode.
|
Wikimedia Commons/Revisorweb
|
America’s spend-a-thon has brought some inevitable consequences, not the least being that we now are looking at a federal budget deficit of more than $1 trillion for the first time ever, and that number is projected to nearly double by October.
|
White House / Pete Souza
|
President Obama once said the deficit “keeps me awake at night.” He’s not alone. Three recent polls show that while Obama’s approval ratings remain high, most Americans are preoccupied with the deficit and many question about whether the president is willing and able to rein in spending.
|
|
Fox News gasbag Sean Hannity and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura tackle the state of our nation before and after Bush. Watch them finger-point, talk over each other and play the deficit blame game in their debate on Monday.
|
Flickr/Sam Ruaat
|
Although the congressional GOP contingent wanted nothing to do with it, President Barack Obama’s $3.53 trillion budget package made the Senate cut on Thursday evening, passing with a 55-43 vote.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The most significant moment of Obama’s news conference concerned taxes: his defense of proposed limits on the benefits that the well-off get for their charitable contributions and mortgage payments.
|
mariopiperni.com / Mario Piperni
|
The current year’s federal budget deficit, according to congressional economists, will top $1.8 trillion, the biggest ever by far. And their projection for the fiscal 2010 budget shortfall is tickling $1.4 trillion, putting both estimates much higher than they were in forecasts back in January.
|
|
In his weekly address, President Barack Obama makes the case for his proposed budget scheme, arguing that while it might rankle the likes of Washington lobbyists, it will deliver on the promises he made during his campaign.
|
AP photo / Darin McGregor, Pool
|
Despite the fact that he’s looking at a trillion-plus deficit for 2009 as he settles into his second month as president, Barack Obama has plans to cut the annual deficit by half by the time his first term ends.
|
osmoothie.com
|
California has the biggest economy in the union, but the state is in a real hole. With major shortfalls and a $40 billion budget in legislative gridlock, Sacramento has laid off some workers, furloughed others and slashed wages. Now the governor is threatening to, er, terminate 20,000 more employees.
|
economistmom.com
|
With news of a $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit and continually rising unemployment numbers, President-elect Barack Obama is facing an economy that has the constitution of a sickly cat. A remedy for what ails it may be coming in a restructuring of Medicare and Social Security, which Obama said will be central to efforts in how he will curb spending.
|
AP photo / Ron Edmonds
|
George W. Bush rode into office with a budget surplus, courtesy of his predecessor. When he leaves in January, he will not return the favor. The White House estimated the budget deficit for next year at a record $482 billion—and that doesn’t include the full cost of two wars, the potential bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the full stimulus package or the loss of tax revenue from an economy in the toilet.
|
|
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, a figure that includes interest for putting war costs on the proverbial credit card. To date, the two conflicts have cost more (adjusted for inflation) than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
|
targikielce.pl
|
By Robert Scheer — President Bush’s outrageous military budget has nothing do with fighting terrorism but everything to do with pumping up the profits of the administration’s generous political donors in the defense industry. So, the question is: Will the Democrats have the guts to stop this betrayal of the public trust?
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Although President Bush recently feigned interest in income inequality and the deficit, his whopper of a budget makes it clear that his heart is still with his base: the haves and the have-mores.
|
|
The same George W. Bush who presided over record deficits and never vetoed a spending bill made an effort on Wednesday to co-opt the Democrats’ goal of balancing the budget by 2012. Exactly how he’ll reconcile that aim with making his tax cuts permanent remains a mystery, although Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., has an idea: “Talk is cheap.”
|
|
It goes like this: Make artificially gloomy budget forecasts at the start of the year; then, at the end of the year, when the numbers outperform your disingenuousness, announce that the economy is on the upswing. The L.A. Times has the lowdown…. (more)
Posted on Jul 11, 2006
READ MORE 
|
|
Congress just raised our debt ceiling—the amount we’re allow to borrow—by $781 billion. It was either that or default on our treasury notes. This is the fourth debt-ceiling increase since Bush took office—some $3 trillion in total. Dick Cheney may have said that deficits don’t matter, but try telling that to the next generation of Americans, who are going to have one helluva credit card bill to pay off.
|
|
But this total does not include money for some relatively small costs—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after this year.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Greenland’s Great Melt Is Pinned On Climate Change
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
