It is bad enough that, after more than 1,000 days since passing a budget resolution, the Senate has decided to forgo this fundamental obligation once again this year. Even worse is the absurd excuse by Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D–NV) that a budget resolution is unnecessary because Congress already has one—in the form of the Budget Control Act (BCA). Reid and other Senate leaders contend that the spending cap in the BCA, the product of last year’s debt ceiling debate, is a sufficient proxy for a budget resolution. This …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Budget and Economic Outlook for years 2012 to 2022 yesterday, and as Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen shows, the numbers add up to a dismal fiscal future. As the government continues its fiscal irresponsibility, 2012 will be the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits. This trend is on track to continue as a result of increasing federal spending on health care, which will more than double between 2012 and 2022. The CBO estimates that by 2022, the government will spend $1.8 trillion on health care, …
At the close of business, the federal government’s debt limit will increase by another $1.2 trillion, the final installment in a series of hikes that started last summer. This last increase, from $15.194 trillion to $16.394 trillion, was essentially granted in the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, passed August 2 at the culmination of the debt limit debate. Last week, the House rejected the debt limit increase in a resolution of disapproval, but the Senate blocked that legislation. The BCA states that unless both legislative bodies agree to reject …
President Obama will release his annual budget proposal late yet again. Choosing the date is not merely a convention. By law, the President must release the budget by the first Monday in February, which falls on February 6 this year. Yet yesterday the Administration announced it will release its fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget a week late, marking the third such delay in four years. Right now, when the economy is struggling, annual deficits consistently exceed $1 trillion, and Americans are demanding that Washington govern responsibly, this delay is beyond …
America’s total debt now tops $15.2 trillion—the size of the entire economy. While this is a real concern, the greater problem is the growth of spending and debt in the future. Spending on entitlements is the real driver of future debt. In this clip from the documentary film “I Want Your Money,” Heritage expert Alison Fraser reveals why the national debt is a catastrophic crisis, stating: “We’re right on the cusp of 77 million baby boomers retiring into these entitlement programs, and that is absolutely unsustainable.” When Moody’s threatened to …
With fiscal year 2012 spending bills now at the brink of completion, The Heritage Foundation’s Appropriations Tracker: FY 2012 has been updated to reflect the final tally. Combined with three bills enacted in November, the massive “megabus” legislation under consideration today brings total base discretionary budget authority to $1.0429 trillion, effectively equal to the excessive level allowed by the Budget Control Act (BCA), the product of the summer-long debt ceiling debate. It is $31.6 billion above the House-passed budget resolution (H. Con. Res. 34). The House budget, passed in April—a …
With the failure of the super committee to recommend at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, Congress’s latest attempt at budget control has collapsed. There will be many analyses of why the process did not work, but it’s worth stepping back to recall what generated the need for this extraordinary procedure and what the exercise actually produced. From early in the year, it was generally accepted that the divided Congress would be unable to agree on a budget through regular procedures. Republicans chose to use a necessary vote on the …
The congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, called the Supercommittee, announced today that it has failed to meet its statutory duty to recommend deficit reduction to Congress. But the overspending problem is still here. Congress does not get to quit on the American people or stall for more time. Congress must still act to get federal spending under control, in a thoughtful, intelligent manner that meets the needs of the American people. Mindless across-the-board cuts to government spending — especially cuts that gut the nation’s defenses when America already …
This week, the U.S. national debt clock hit a nightmarish milestone: a record $15 trillion. Words can’t even begin to describe the scope of borrowed federal spending, but it is no doubt a staggering figure that has risen dramatically in the last decade and is more than $4 trillion higher than when President Barack Obama took office less than three years ago. Unfortunately, Washington does not appear poised to take action to rectify the problem, and those with their hands on the wheel are ignoring the root of the problem: spending. …
What’s a supercommittee to do? Total national debt just hit a new record at $15 trillion, an increase of approximately $700 billion since the Supercommittee’s August inception. Hard as its members try, they just do not seem to be able to deliver the required $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction measures. The situation has deteriorated so badly that even some Republicans are offering up tax hikes. While this is precisely the wrong solution, it has created another insidious problem. Squabbles over the size of tax hikes are overshadowing the more vital …
