The Republican Study Committee (RSC) has released a 10-year budget blueprint that reins in federal spending, balances the budget, and modernizes the federal budget process. While President Obama’s budget would bury the nation in $9.5 trillion of additional debt over the next decade, the RSC would accumulate just $1.8 trillion …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has completed its initial review of President Barack Obama’s budget request and found that the White House significantly understated the cost of and red ink in its budget. While President Obama claimed his budget would produce $7.2 trillion in deficits (a staggering figure) over the …
The federal government made at least $125 billion in improper payments last year. It spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties. Rife with duplication, Washington runs 342 economic development programs, 130 programs serving the disabled, 130 programs serving at-risk youth, and 90 early childhood development programs. Government …
House and Senate leaders are caught in a debate over real and phantom discretionary spending cuts. Senate leaders have proposed freezing 2011 discretionary spending at 2010 levels. Because this rejects the President’s proposed $39 billion increase, they are calling their yet-to-be-released proposal a $39 billion cut—essentially, claiming credits for “cuts” …
House Republicans are now pledging to reduce fiscal year 2011 discretionary spending to $100 billion below President Obama’s original request. As reported, this new budget proposal would: Unwisely reduces security spending by $16 billion relative to President Obama’s request; and Reduce non-security spending by $84 billion relative to President Obama’s …
Following the Democratic Senate’s recent failure to push through a massive, 1,924-page omnibus spending bill stuffed with runaway spending and pork, cooler heads seem to be prevailing. The Senate now appears poised to pass a basic continuing resolution that would freeze fiscal year (FY) 2011 discretionary spending at FY 2010 …
As recession-weary Americans continue to tighten their belts, not even trillion-dollar deficits can persuade Senate Democrats to stop their spending spree. In a single 1,924-page bill—which was crafted in secret and will be voted on before anyone has read it fully—Congress is set to spend a staggering $1.1 trillion on …
Preliminary figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that Washington ran a $1.291 trillion deficit in 2010, just slightly less than last year’s $1.416 trillion. To put these figures in perspective, the annual budget deficit between 1789 and 2008 never reached $500 billion. As a percentage of the gross …
In his Monday “Hey Small Spender” column, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman bizarrely denied that federal spending has significantly expanded over the past two years. He asserted that “[t]here never was a big expansion of government spending” and “the big government expansion everyone talks about never happened.” Yet for …
