Smoky Mountains Sunrise
Showing posts with label Federal Deficit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federal Deficit. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Americans Would Rather Cut Services Than Raise Taxes to Balance Budget, Poll Shows

To ease surging budget deficits, Americans prefer cutting federal services to raising taxes by nearly 2-1 in a new poll. Yet there is little consensus on specific, meaningful steps -- and a wariness about touching two gargantuan programs, Social Security and Medicare.

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Right and Left Come Together to Eliminate Wasteful Spending

$600 bllion in budget cuts proposed by National Taxpayer's Union and U.S. Public Interest Research Group

From CNSNews.com
By Chris Johnson


With the federal deficit at $1.3 trillion and conservative members of Congress talking about ways to trim government spending, a newly released report by the National Taxpayer Union (NTU) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) proposes $600 billion in federal budget cuts over the next 5 years.

In a "strange bedfellows" confab, the right-leaning NTU and left-leaning US PIRG have highlighted 31 specific examples of wasteful government spending that they say can be eliminated.

In the report, Toward Common Ground: Bridging the Political Divide to Reduce Spending, the 31 examples fall into the categories of ending wasteful subsidies, improving contract and asset acquisition, improving program execution and government operations, ending wasteful or outdated military programs and systems, and aligning military spending with current needs.

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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

U.S. Economy "Close to a Destructive Tipping Point," Glenn Hubbard Says




From Yahoo Finance
By Aaron Task

"America is very close to a destructive tipping point," co-authors Glenn Hubbard and Peter Navarro warn in their new book Seeds of Destruction. "We must change how we conduct our politics and economics...or we will inevitably go the way of all once-great nations and suffer an irreversible decline."

Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, joined Dan Gross and I to discuss the "major structural imbalances" facing America, chief among them being the government's profligate spending.

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Friday, June 18, 2010

Greenspan Says U.S. May Soon Reach Borrowing Limit


From Bloomberg

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. may soon face higher borrowing costs on its swelling debt and called for a “tectonic shift” in fiscal policy to contain borrowing.

“Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading,” and current long-term bond yields are masking America’s debt challenge, Greenspan wrote in an opinion piece posted on the Wall Street Journal’s website. “Long-term rate increases can emerge with unexpected suddenness,” such as the 4 percentage point surge over four months in 1979-80, he said.

Greenspan rebutted “misplaced” concern that reducing the deficit would put the economic recovery in danger, entering a debate among global policy makers about how quickly to exit from stimulus measures adopted during the financial crisis. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said this month that while fiscal tightening is needed over the “medium term,” governments must reinforce the recovery in private demand.

“The United States, and most of the rest of the developed world, is in need of a tectonic shift in fiscal policy,” said Greenspan, 84, who served at the Fed’s helm from 1987 to 2006. “Incremental change will not be adequate.

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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

All in a 24-Hour News Cycle: The Audacity of Barack Hussein Obama

Barack Obama lectured (fellow) socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain today on reining in the country’s debt. This comes from the same man who just tripled the US national deficit in less than one year. Unbelievable.


The federal budget deficit hit an all-time high for the month of April as government revenue fell sharply.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday the April deficit soared to $82.7 billion, the largest imbalance for that month on record. That was significantly higher than last year's April deficit of $20 billion and above the $30 billion deficit private economists had anticipated.


Monday, July 28, 2008

The President Sets A Record


T
he White House presented its Mid-Session Review of the Fiscal Year 2009 budget today
, and with it announced a new record -- a budget deficit of $490 billion. That is quite a record indeed, considering that during the President's first year in office the nation enjoyed a budget surplus of $236 billion.

Much was made of record deficits during the Reagan Administration, but the worst of those, in 1983, was $208 billion. That was a time when defense spending was high in what was ultimately a triumphant showdown with the Soviet Union.

President Bush, on the other hand, has presided over a 60% growth in the size of the federal government.

While the budget figures were being presented to the media, the President enjoyed an expensive lunch with the Prime Minister of Pakistan -- $115 million plus tip in promised aid to the country harboring Osama Bin Laden.