The Administration has already missed many deadlines imposed in ObamaCare. Know that Obama’s own number crunchers have said that the bill will cost more than originally estimated to implement and will not decrease the deficit, this may be a good thing. When will there be a consensus for repeal?
Posts Tagged ‘debt’
Administration misses ObamaCare deadlines
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away
Friday, May 21st, 2010An editorial from Investors Business Daily paints an accurate picture of our budget situation – Congress admits that they will fail to pass a budget this year, and no one sees this as a problem despite record annual deficits and a growing federal debt? Here’s their policy: ignore it and it will go away.
The Party of Debt
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Reality is encroaching upon, and paralyzing Washington. They can’t ignore it but they won’t respond to it.
Democrat leaders in Washington admit it us likely that they will NOT pass a budget resolution this year. Incidentally, there’s a reason why passing a budget resolution is so important. Once a budget resolution is passed, increasing spending in any appropriations bill beyond the limit set by the budget resolution requires 60 votes in the Senate. It’s called the Byrd Rule, and it’s hugely important, but it can not be invoked without a budget resolution.
California: A Not So Golden State
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
One of the themes of our Foundation is that what is going on in Washington – huge deficit spending, government policies that frighten and discourage entrepreneurs – violates far more than conservative principles and goals. These actions violate what used to be consensus thinking across the political spectrum, and they undermine what everyone wants to achieve.
California is the poster child for what we are saying. What philosophical agenda has been advanced in California? For that matter, what interest has really been advanced? In the short term, perhaps, the public employee unions get more money and power. But the gravy train has to hit a wall sometime, and when it does, the government workers and retirees will suffer like everyone else. And what about the schools whose funding will be cut? The vulnerable people who will be less safe as law enforcement budgets go down? The loss of opportunity for California’s young people? What part of the political spectrum – from the left to the right – benefits from bankrupting the government and destroying the economy?
And what will happen to our country if the current leadership in Washington makes the whole country look like California?
Reduce the debt through spending cuts, not new taxes
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010The President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility is under way and it appears that tax increases will inevitably be the recommendation of the Commission. They are missing the point. The budget crisis wasn’t created by not taxing people enough, it was created by the government’s irresponsible spending habits. When you are in a hole and you want to get out; stop digging.
National Debt Forum Transcript
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010American Freedom and Enterprise Foundation Partners with Heritage Foundation for Online Forum on the Growing Federal Debt
Thursday, April 8th, 2010Media Advisory
Contact: Katie Smith 314.625.5107
Tax Day is quickly approaching and Americans are sending their hard earned money to Washington in the form of a federal income tax. While American families are tightening their belts and making tough choices about their budgets, leaders in Washington are spending beyond their means. This reckless spending is putting our government in peril and it has real impacts on the economy. Renowned budget expert, Brian Riedl, The Heritage Foundation’s lead budget analyst will join former Sen. Jim Talent and Ambassador Ann Wagner for an online town hall to discuss federal spending. Riedl is a well-known policy expert and has built a solid reputation for interpreting, explaining and reforming the often arcane realm of federal budget policy and its impacts.
Who: Brian Riedl, Budget Expert with the Heritage Foundation; Former Sen. Jim Talent; Ambassador Ann Wagner
What: Online Town Hall on the Growing Federal Debt
When: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 11:00 CDT
Where: www.FreedomSolutions.Org
Side effects continue
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010I mentioned yesterday that the new health care benefit program will probably never happen because the government is bankrupt. But the tax and regulatory features of the law will definitely go into effect. The results will not be pretty, as this article in the Wall Street Journal shows.
And does anybody else feel that it’s time for the Obama Administration to stop scolding people in the private sector who say things they don’t like?
The debt finally draws attention
Monday, April 5th, 2010Note this title from an article in the SF Chronicle: “National debt seen heading for crisis level.” So someone has noticed? Let me repeat what I said in National Review Online: there will never be a health care benefit because the President and the Congressonal leadership have spent all the money. True, even they can’t tell you what they spent it on; certainly not on defense, or transportation infrastructure, or stockpiling vaccines in case of a terrorist attack using bioweapons, or even on their own top priority, which was health care. But it’s gone.
The federal government doesn’t have to balance its budget, but that doesn’t mean there is no limit to what it can spend. The limit is what it can borrow at low interest rates. It is reaching that limit, and certainly will have reached it long before the planned implementation date of the “historic” health care benefit, which will turn out not to have been a “big bang” as the article says, but a dud.
Remember two things as you read the article. First, the numbers which the article uses are the Administration’s own projections. The actual situation will certainly be even worse than that. Second, none of the projected deficits include the cost of the health care bill, which was supposedly “paid for”.
We will be producing more on the deficit throughout April.
Death Spiral for the Federal Budget
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010The whole health care debate is moving further and further away from reality.
Yesterday the Moody’s rating agency announced that, to preserve the government’s AAA rating on its debt, the United States needs to make deep spending cuts, or, as Moody’s put it “fiscal adjustments of a magnitude that, in some cases, will test social cohesion.” Losing the triple A rating will substantially increase the cost of further borrowing and the interest payments the government will have to pay, which will in turn worsen the debt picture, which will cause the rating to go down further, which will raise the cost of borrowing further, etc.
It’s the death spiral for the federal budget.
So it doesn’t really matter how Congress votes. There will be no health care legislation because there is no money left. Budget cuts are coming, by compulsion if necessary. The creditors of the United States, not the government, will be in control of fiscal policy. But the Administration and Congressional leaders are proceeding as if reality isn’t happening. I honestly don’t know what words or messages can penetrate their state of denial.
