Budget

The federal price tag of Bernie Sanders's proposal is not surprising. But the implications are kind of insane.

Being a big tipper takes more than mere money.

Republicans are pushing a budget-cutting process Democrats say punishes the vulnerable. The real problem is that it's pointless.

The White House released a proposal to "rescind" past funds on Tuesday, but speculation about such an idea had met with skepticism from some Senate Republicans.

The White House released a proposal to "rescind" past funds on Tuesday, but speculation about such an idea had met with skepticism from some Senate Republicans.

The problem is entitlement spending, not appropriations

But at least Paul Ryan told some hard truths about entitlements.

The doomed measure is a nod toward fiscal responsibility.

Paul Ryan, the leading Republican candidate to be the next speaker of the House, will support John Boehner's final budget deal. 

That’s what many defense experts are saying about the two-year budget deal that’s being cut by congressional leaders and the White House.  Byron Callan, longtime analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, which provides research to financial firms, rates the prospective deal as “defense positive.”

That’s what many defense experts are saying about the two-year budget deal that’s being cut by congressional leaders and the White House.  Byron Callan, longtime analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, which provides research to financial firms, rates the prospective deal as “defense positive.”

In at last announcing in detail that it would reduce the size of its active-duty force, currently 490,000, by 40,000 soldiers over the next two years, the U.S. Army seems finally and for a day to have captured the attention of the political class.  In fact this is not news, but the long-anticipated…

A fact sheet on the Defense budget from the Foreign Policy Initiative:

President Obama's proposed defense budget is well below what former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates proposed. 

President Obama's budget is not likely to be passed by Congress. But if it did, the U.S. would be about $26.3 trillion in debt. 

Senator Jeff Sessions, the former ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, says President Obama's proposed budget "raises taxes by $2.1 trillion."

The White House has submitted its latest budget proposal to Congress, and the Republican chairs of the budget committees in both the Senate and the House are criticizing the plan for increasing spending and raising taxes. In a joint statement House budget chair Tom Price of Georgia and Senate…

Yesterday’s presentation by the U.S. Treasury was a comical spectacle—at least for those of us with sardonic senses of humor. The good news? The deficit for FY2014 (which ended September 30) was 29 percent lower than the deficit was in FY2013. Increased corporate tax receipts drove much of the…

Analysis of Congressional Budget Office projections by the Senate Budget Committee finds that Obamacare will increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade.

President Obama addressed the mission to degrade and destroy the Islamic State in remarks today at the Pentagon. "Our strikes continue alongside our partners. It remains a difficult mission," said the commander in chief.

This week senior officials from the Pentagon will testify before Congress on their request for emergency appropriations, known as the Overseas  Contingency Operations funding (OCO in military speak). A decision to maintain troop presence in Afghanistan, a resurgence of radical Sunni terrorism…

An arithmetic riddle: How much money would the U.S. government collect if it were to impose a 5 percent tax on the $2 trillion currently parked in offshore accounts to avoid the high U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent?

Senator Mark Pryor is making entitlements an issue in the Arkansas Senate race. Both Pryor and his Democratic allies are hitting Republican nominee and House member Tom Cotton over his support for a budget proposal that would have, starting in 2022, gradually raised the retirement age for receiving…

Startling charts from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee about male participation in the labor force, particularly men between the ages of 25-54:

Three Republican House members from Georgia, who are also running for the Senate, voted against their conference's budget Thursday. Jack Kingston, Phil Gingrey, and Paul Broun joined nine other Republicans in voting against the budget, authored by chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

A new report from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee finds that "Economic Growth In 2013 Just Half Of What The President Said His Policies Would Deliver." Here's a chart, showing the committee's findings:

When you spend in the trillions and run deficits in the (many) billions, then you look for the millions where you can find them.  

The administration has produced a budget that includes various predictions not least of which concerns GDP growth. The White House, as Jeffry Bartash of Marketwatch reports, is looking for sunny days ahead and:

Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, says that President Obama's budget includes a $1.76 trillion tax hike. 

Here's a rather harsh assessment of the last four years under the Obama administration's economic policies:

Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, slams President Obama's budget in a statement released by his office.

President Obama unveils his budget today. And the numbers aren't likely to satisfy fiscal conservatives and budget hawks, who might have been hoping for a budget that decreases spending and lowers the debt. 

A Capitol Hill source source says that Senate Democrats will not produce a budget this year. The news is expected to come from Senator Patty Murray's office at 3 p.m. today, as part of a Friday afternoon news dump. Murray is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

President Obama's budget marks the end of "austerity," reports the Washington Post. 

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Ryan-Murray Budget deal, Obamacare Delays, and Obama's Nelson Mandela speech.

On Thursday evening, House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the budget deal crafted by Republican congressman Paul Ryan and Democratic senator Patty Murray, chairs of their respective budget committees.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the Ryan-Murray budget deal and "selfies" as a sign of perception over reality.

The Foreign Policy Initiative has released this statement from its board of directors in support of the Paul Ryan-Patty Murray budget deal:

The budget deal announced today is a good deal for conservatives and Republicans.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the unwillingness by President Obama to lead on the budget, debt, and the continuing resolution.

In 2012, the Department of Defense spent a total of $651 billion, including the costs of fighting in Afghanistan. According to the budget plan submitted by the White House a few months ago, projected 2014 spending will be $547 billion. If, as seems nearly inevitable, the “sequestration” provision…

During his opening remarks at today's House Budget Committee hearing on the Department of Defense and the 2014 budget, Paul Ryan said, "The first duty of government is to keep us safe. And to keep us safe, our strategy should drive our budget. But under this administration, the budget is driving…

Two charts on food stamps spending, provided by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee, just as the Senate is voting the food stamps program (which is part of the so-called farm bill):

At a Capitol Hill hearing today, IRS commissioner Steven Miller said a bigger budget would be helpful:

A new report by the Regulatory Studies Center at the George Washington University finds that the cost of regulatory rules in 2012 exceeded the cost of all rules in "the entire first terms of Presidents Bush and Clinton, combined."

With President Obama, there’s always a catch. In the 2014 budget he announced last week, Obama proposed a more accurate way of calculating the inflation rate for annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security. It’s a technical change in pursuit of honesty and good government. And if adopted, it…

Jeff Zients, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, recently wrote an op-ed that appeared in newspapers around the country, and was also reproduced on the White House blog.  Zients touts the 2014 budget belated released last week by President Obama:

Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman representing Hawaii's Second Congressional District, responds to President Obama's proposed budget by expressing concern over missile defense cuts. "It would also cut our missile defense budget, even as Hawai‘i and the rest of the country face direct and heightened…

When President Obama released his first budget — entitled with no hint of irony, “A New Era of Responsibility” — he projected that deficit spending over the next five fiscal years (2010-14) would total $3.767 trillion.  Now, Obama has released his fifth budget (which doesn’t seem to have a name). …

President Barack Obama introduced his budget today by saying "There's not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here":

Mark Knoller from CBS News reports this morning that President Obama, in a statement in the Rose Garden, “will stress his budget’s top objective is to boost the economy and create jobs.” To do that, he’ll have to contradict what he previously described as “the consensus among people who know the…

The U.S. will be spending less, in the coming months and years, on defending itself from missile attacks.  As Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg reports:

In his weekly radio address, President Obama explained the budget he'll rollout next week, and said, "the truth is, our deficits are already shrinking."

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee is breaking down President Obama's budget with this preliminary analysis:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said at today's press briefing that the president's proposed budget, which should be released next week, is not what Barack Obama would do if were king:

At a Democratic National Committee fund raising event in Atherton, California Thursday morning, President Obama declared that the United States government still needs to get its fiscal house in order:

At a speech this morning at the White House to outline a new science initiative, President Barack Obama named himself "Scientist-in-Chief."

In a statement released at 5 a.m. today, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasts the budget the Senate passed very early this morning. Sessions's main concern is that the budget "has zero real deficit reduction" and "never balances."

As it turns out, Vice President Joe Biden's London stay in February was not the most expensive part of his trip. A government document released on February 14, 2013 shows that the contract for the Hotel Intercontinental Paris Le Grand came in at $585,000.50.

Every single U.S. senator is expected later today to have to vote on whether the federal budget should be balanced, senior Senate aides tell me. The vote will be for support of an amendment to the Democratic budget, which is currently not balanced, and which will be debated on the Senate floor…

Robert Samuelson's fine column in the Washington Post, “America the retirement home,” argues that “The budget debate’s central reality is that federal retirement programs, led by Social Security and Medicare, are crowding out most other government spending,” and that this is endangering the other…

There are times when the absence of really, really bad news passes for good news. This is such a time here in America, at least for those who worry that our fiscal deficits of over about $1,000,000,000,000 per year will soon have historians referring to the glory that was Washington.

The Democratic budget, released yesterday by Senate Budget Committee chair Patty Murray, passed out of committee this evening on a party line vote, 12-10. In response, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Jeff Sessions, released this blistering statement:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Fred Barnes. Hosted by Michael Graham.

At the New Republic, Jonathan Cohn writes,“Paul Ryan has released his new budget proposal, ‘The Path to Prosperity.’ It looks almost exactly like his old budget proposal.” Cohn continues, “That tells us a lot about Ryan’s priorities — and how little interest he and his allies have in moderating…

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee claims the budget released today by Senate Democrats will raise taxes by $1.5 trillion. Before being released today, it had been reported that the Democrats' budget would raise taxes by $1 trillion, but number appears to have been far enough. 

Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee, finally released a budget today. Year over year, in this proposed budget, spending jumps dramatically. 

Eric Edelman, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and Dan Senor, all board members of the Foreign Policy Initiative, released the following statement this morning: 

Barack Obama is fond of saying that “the majority of Americans” agree with him on his “balanced approach” to deficit reduction—which these days seems to mean increasing tax revenues through rate hikes and big defense spending cuts with relatively insignificant cuts elsewhere. At the beginning of…

In an interview with ABC News, President Obama says his budget won't be balanced:

White House spokesman Jay Carney roasted reporter Mara Liasson who asked whether entitlement reforms would be in the president's budget:

Jay Carney, speaking today at the press briefing:

When it comes to deficit reduction, President Obama and the mainstream press seem to have a fascination with the figure of $4 trillion.  During last year’s first presidential debate, Obama falsely claimed, “I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan,” even though he’d done…

President Obama has grown fond of saying that he’s “not a dictator,” “not a king,” and “not the emperor,” but is instead “the president.”  Whether his tendency to clarify a seemingly obvious point reveals his inner desires or not, his actions in a variety of ways suggest that he doesn’t think the…

Democratic representative Bruce Braley is running for the Iowa Senate seat being vacated by fellow Democrat Tom Harkin, but he might want to learn how the upper body functions first. In an interview on a local news station, Braley was asked about why the Senate has not passed a budget in nearly…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, hosted by Michael Graham, with Bill Kristol:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, hosted by Michael Graham, with Bill Kristol on why President Obama's sequester isn't the answer -- reform is.

The president has returned from Florida and is back in form, warning against the imposition of the drastic spending cuts called for by what is known as the "sequester."  

In a memo sent to fellow Republicans, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama outlines how he plans to change the terms of the budget debate with Democrats. The memo outlines how the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee plans to bring the fight directly to Democrats. 

Politicians are not known for originality. In their public speech, most cling to the security of clichéd stock phrases the way toddlers hold fast to threadbare blankets. Thus Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney posed before an enormous national debt clock and intoned that the nation’s…

The planned cuts to the defense budget as a result of the sequestration could mean reductions in benefits fo active members of the military and their families. Adam Kredo reports:

Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, blasts President Barack Obama in a statement for breaking the law by refusing to submit an annual budget. "President Obama is required by law to submit his budget request for Fiscal Year 2014. For the fourth time in five years, however, he will…

Chuck Hagel, who has been nominated by President Obama to be the secretary of defense, does not understand the defense budget. Gary Schmitt explains:

House Republicans earlier today proposed a plan to raise the debt ceiling for only enough time (three months) to allow for Senate Democrats to produce a budget. The reason Democrats, who run the Senate, need to be prodded to propose a budget is simple: The Senate has not passed a budget in 1,360…

In today’s New York Times, David Brooks argues persuasively that Chuck Hagel has been nominated to help Barack Obama dramatically cut defense spending.

From a left-wing bumper sticker seeking to make its point with an absurdity: "It'll be a great day when the schools have all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, is releasing a statement this evening that claims President Barack Obama's "secret" plan "increases spending by more than $1 trillion above the current baseline."

The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, revealed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD that he “burst into laughter” when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined President Barack Obama's fiscal cliff plan yesterday. McConnell believes the plan is "completely unserious."

Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, responds to reports of Barack Obama's fiscal cliff "plan" by calling it a "fabrication."

In remarks on the Senate floor today, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions blasted President Barack Obama and congressional leadership for holding "secret" fiscal cliff negotiations.

In a decade, federal spending to pay for the interest on America's debt will exceed total spending on the defense budget by $125 billion, or 20 percent, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Budget Management. The projections are based on President Barack…

In 2008, Barack Obama promised to cut federal spending, cut wasteful programs, reform Medicare and Social Security, and create "5 million new jobs" in a "new energy economy." At Buzzfeed, Andrew Kaczynski has four videos of Obama making those promises at the town hall debate in 2008. Here, for…

At a townhall-style event in Iowa, Paul Ryan was asked to provide more specifics about the Romney-Ryan economic plan, and he proceeded to talk about Romney's 5-point plan for about eight minutes. Buzzfeed posts the video: 

In an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, President Barack Obama suggested that most of the country’s debt was accumulated under George W. Bush, pretended that he has offered a solution to these problems, said that he does not know the total U.S. national debt, and claimed that the…

By the end of this year, the federal debt is expected to be $16.2 trillion, which is $6.2 trillion more than when President Obama first came into office four years ago. Moreover, new analysis by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee finds that, over the next 4 years, if Barack Obama…

In the short week since Mitt Romney announced Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential pick, many are scrambling to figure out just what exactly is the Ryan budget plan.

President Obama and the Democrats have been ambushed. They blindly walked into the political trap Republicans set for them on Medicare.

Bill Bennett suggested on his radio show this morning that the Romney-Ryan campaign (or someone else) cut an ad to make famous these remarks (delivered a year ago at the University of North Carolina) about Paul Ryan by Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles:

President Obama's campaign uses its Tumblr page to introduce supporters to vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan: 

Mitt Romney, the cautious candidate, wary of being specific, and counting on the bad economy to defeat President Obama – forget all that! The Romney who picked Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is an entirely different person. He’s prepared to take the fight to Obama on the biggest…

Tomorrow will mark a milestone: It will be 1,200 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget, during which time Congress amassed $4.8 trillion in new debt.

In an interview on March 22, two weeks before Mitt Romney would win the Wisconsin primary and effectively end the race for the Republican nomination, Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes asked about his embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget.

In a recent campaign television ad, President Barack Obama states, "I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way." The last part--committing to pay down the national…

President Obama yesterday cited an "independent, non-partisan" economic study by the Tax Policy Center. The president used the group to buttress his argument against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's tax plan. (This, despite the fact that a former staffer for President Obama helped…

The House of Representatives voted 414-2 Wednesday to pass the Sequestration Transparency Act, a bill requiring President Barack Obama to release to the public a plan to implement the forthcoming automatic budget cuts, including drastic cuts to the Department of Defense. Paul Ryan, the House Budget…

Defending Defense, a group made up of the Foreign Policy Initiative, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, just published “Sequester’s Shadow on the Defense Industrial Base,” a joint paper that examines how the looming threat of even deeper defense cuts is already starting…

Colorado's wildfire has exploded into an "epic firestorm," in the words of Colorado Springs fire chief Richard Brown. Over 30,000 people have evacuated, and already hundreds of homes have been consumed. Ironically, the U.S. Air Force Academy has also been evacuated, at the very time that Colorado…

Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire, took to the Senate floor—along with Senators John McCain and John Thune—to warn against looming Department of Defense cuts.

Former President Bill Clinton had plenty of praise for President Barack Obama, as the two traversed New York City last night hauling in campaign cash. “I don't think it's important to reelect the president; I think it is essential to reelect the president—if we want this country to have the kind of…

Senate Democrats and Republicans unanimously rejected President Obama's proposed budget this afternoon. The final vote tally was 99-0.

The United Auto Workers union is sending out a letter from its legislative director, Josh Nassar, urging senators to vote against several budgets pending in the Senate. One of the budgets UAW apparently opposes is President Obama's own budget. 

The Republican Senate Budget Committee will release this new chart later today, showing that the "U.S. Spends More Per Person Than Portugal, Italy, Greece, Or Spain."

With the House of Representatives set to vote this month on a bill to reverse the trillion-dollar “sequestration” cuts to the military, Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia) will be launching his “Defending Our Defenders” listening tour in Chesapeake, Virginia, on May 14, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.  Forbes,…

The people at Public Notice have a new, 30-second television ad excoriating the U.S. Senate on the third anniversary since the body last passed a budget. The ad, which will air on D.C.-area broadcasts and on national cable stations on Sunday, urges senators to "stop pointing fingers and start doing…

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) delivered the following remarks today during a hearing on replacing the budget sequester:

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes about the similarities between President Obama’s campaign message and that of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1936 reelection message. Henninger argues that Obama won’t be nearly so successful as FDR was in championing a big government…

The staff of Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) sends along this photo of the committee's meeting today:

No budget, just now, says Senator Conrad. The timing isn't right.

Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) indicated late Monday he was prepared to hold a markup on a budget proposal Wednesday afternoon. But at a press conference in the Capitol on Tuesday, Conrad said tomorrow would only be “the beginning of a markup” and that a vote on the budget…

The latest chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, showing that under President Obama's budget plan, debt would be $73,000 per American in 2022:

The latest taunt in the world of playground politics seems to be “Social Darwinist.”  Which, if you don’t know what it means, would be the theory that the toughest do not merely survive, but prevail, and deservedly so.

Earlier this week we wrote that the chairman of the Joints of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, had “provoked a public confrontation” with House Budget Committee leader Rep. Paul Ryan. It appeared that Dempsey had made a grievous error by claiming that Ryan had “called [the JCS], collectively, liars.” 

The latest chart from the Senate Republican Budget Committee, pointing out that under President Obama's budget, the U.S. government will be spending more in 2019 to pay the interest on the national debt than it will be to defend America:

The Miami Herald's Marc Caputo reports that Florida congressman Connie Mack IV, a candidate for the GOP nomination for Senate in 2012, called the budget recently passed by the House of Representatives a "joke."

An alarming chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee showing the "rate of debt increase during presidents' 4-year terms." 

At a lunch time speech today, President Obama is expected to attack Paul Ryan's budget by calling it "a Trojan horse."

The boss, Arthur Brooks, and Ed Feulner, writing in today's Wall Street Journal: 

President Obama’s budget cuts defense by $487 billion over the next ten years. Furthermore, the president has not led an effort to avoid an additional $500 billion of cuts under the so-called “sequestration,” which will likely result in what Obama’s secretary of defense predicts will be “smallest…

Senior White House advisor David Plouffe — President Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 — told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that, when it comes to dealing with our colossal deficits and debt, “the right approach is the president’s approach.” That approach, Plouffe added, “gets our deficit on a…

Matt Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon:

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz continued for demagogic attacks on Paul Ryan's budget in Florida earlier today. The Palm Beach Post reports:

Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, released the following statement on the House Republican budget:

John Engler, the former three-term governor of Michigan and current president of the Business Roundtable, calls the House Republican budget proposal a "courageous exercise" and says it has "intriguing ideas" regarding tax and entitlement reforms.

While the spending side of the House Republican budget plan is getting most of the media attention, the revenue portion of the plan deserves just as much attention for what it achieves—the resumption of a healthy debate over just what tax reform should entail.

The Club for Growth put out an odd statement in response to Paul Ryan's proposed budget. "Despite containing several important reforms and pro-growth policies, the Ryan Budget falls short in two critical respects," president Chris Chocola said.

Fox News host Bret Baier had a straightforward question last night for Obama advisor David Axelrod: "Why haven't Senate Democrats passed a budget resolution in 1,040 days?" It's the sort of question that's probably not asked enough, especially considering Republicans in the House have passed a…

Looking back at the day's news, I must admit I'm having trouble maintaining my customary good cheer.

The bipartisan Medicare reform plan proposed by Republican House member Paul Ryan and Oregon senator Ron Wyden is dead. At least, that's the perception Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid may be trying to create.

At the end of 2008 — the year President Obama was elected —our national debt was $9.986 trillion. It’s now $15.542 trillion and counting — a increase of $5.556 trillion, or 56 percent, in just over three years.  With that staggering — and unparalleled — record of fiscal profligacy in mind, let’s…

House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon praised the Republican budget released earlier today in a statement. "Chairman Ryan has drafted a budget that puts us back on the path to prosperity," says McKeon. "His plan is full of tough choices, but I am pleased he recognizes that our men and…

Paul Ryan explains the Republican budget in an oped in today's Wall Street Journal: 

"[T]he latest version of Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, released today, does far more than defeat a rival who’s decided to forfeit the field," AEI expert Jim Pethokoukis writes. "It presents a bold and sweeping solution to America’s twin problems: too much debt and too little economic growth."

Paul Ryan unveils the House Republican budget proposal Tuesday, as Illinois Republican primary voters go to the polls. I dare say the Ryan budget will be much the more consequential of the two events, and that victory or defeat in the intellectual and political battle over Paul Ryan’s budget will…

President Obama’s budget for 2013 is pure Obama. How do we know? Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, was once asked how to become a budget expert. “You have to read the budget,” he said. To know Obama, it’s similar. You have to read the speeches and look over the budgets. 

President Obama is cutting future defense spending. It is both a conscious choice to divert funds elsewhere, away from the military, and a consequence of last year’s congressional budget agreement, which alone will likely result in an automatic sequestration of at least $500 billion from future…

Hot Air: "No money for D.C. voucher program in Obama’s gigantic new budget. Meanwhile, White House to boost subsidies for Chevy Volt"

The New York Times: "In his new budget blueprint, President Obama is proposing to tax dividends of the wealthiest taxpayers as ordinary income subject to their top income-tax rate"

ABC News: "Senate Democrats Say Obama ‘Reinforced’ His Stance on Contraception Mandate at Democratic Retreat"

It has been 1,000 days since the Senate has produced a budget, and congressional Republicans are getting fed up.

House Armed Services Committee chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon: 

The failure of the supercommittee marks a good time to highlight just how out of control our federal spending really is. To see the matter in a clearer light, let’s leave aside all disputes over tax revenues for the time being, and focus purely on spending.

CNN: "GOP rejects Dems offer in 'super committee,' negotiations 'deadlocked' over taxes"

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates that the federal deficit for the recently completed fiscal year (2011) was $1.3 trillion, or 8.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This is historic stuff: Prior to the year that President Obama was inaugurated, the only deficits in…

The Hill: "Obama wants $35 billion for teachers, first-responders first"

At a House Armed Services Committee yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey warned against making further reductions to future defense spending, telling lawmakers that further cuts will “truly devastate our national defense.”

Hot Air: "Report: At least 200 murders in Mexico now linked to Fast & Furious weapons"

President Obama, whose annual deficit spending has been more than twice as high as any other recent president’s (even as a percentage of the gross domestic product), has now released his new deficit plan. As the Wall Street Journal notes, “It is the president’s fourth package of deficit-reduction…

A host of liberal politicians and pundits have taken House Republican leader Eric Cantor to task for daring to insist that any disaster spending allocated to pay for the damage done by Hurricane Irene be offset in the budget elsewhere. They view Cantor as injecting politics into the country’s…

The American Enterprise Institute, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and the Heritage Foundation are holding an event on Capitol Hill tomorrow called "Defense Spending and the Super Committee." The all star lineup includes the boss, Tom Donnelly, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator…

General David Petraeus, at his military retirement ceremony, said "that the nation’s leaders, faced with tough budget decisions, should be careful not to cut the military’s budget too deeply in the years ahead," the Washington Post reports.

In an op-ed at foxnews.com, John Bolton defends defense:

With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an…

House Budget chair Paul Ryan, along with House Committee on Armed Services chair Buck McKeon and Bill Young, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, have written a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and OMB director Jack Lew, urging the Obama administration officials not to…

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan responded to Standard & Poor’s downgrading of America’s long-term debt by explaining to host Chris Wallace that Republicans in the House “passed a budget, which according to somebody from S&P yesterday, would have prevented this downgrade from happening in…

Jeff Anderson argues at National Review Online that Congressman Paul Ryan "has outgrown his office" and should run for president. "If Ryan wants to change America, he needs to change jobs," Anderson writes.

The Heritage Foundation has created a useful chart, showing that even if military spending were completely eliminated, the U.S. would still face major financial problems:

Steve Hayes, with Charles Lane and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Now that the Great Debt Ceiling Deal has become the law of the land, it’s time to consider what just happened to America, and in particular to America’s armed forces. On the one hand, it’s complicated. On the other hand, it’s ugly.

Here’s the situation with respect to defense spending, which Speaker Boehner fought for yesterday, with some (very limited) success:

As of this writing, the president has pulled off a great political trick, with the help of some kamikaze Republicans. He has refused to offer a deficit-reduction plan, or submit a budget, or allow the Senate Democrats to do either—and has the public persuaded that he is the man who is seeking a…

President Obama's nominee for the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this week that defense budget cuts would be "extraordinarily difficult" and "very high risk."

Despite Nancy Pelosi's obsession with political language, the former Speaker never seems to be able to contain herself from tossing off bits of rather embarassing hyperbole:

In his speech last night, President Obama once again did his reverse Harry Truman impression, showing that the buck stops anywhere but with him: “For the last decade, we have spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off…

Why, exactly, do we need to extend the debt limit to the point where the federal government can borrow another $2.4 trillion (hardly a nice round number) — about the same amount of money, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, that we borrowed to fight all of World War II? Because, as Treasury…

Senate majority leader Harry Reid introduced a proposal today that he says would give Republicans everything they want in a debt ceiling deal: It would reduce the deficit by $2.7 trillion over 10 years, without raising taxes. But the plan was light on details of what gets cut--and when.

“Be afraid,” Max Boot warns about the so-called Gang of Six budget proposal. “Be very afraid.” Boot is here referring, specifically, to the drastic budget cuts in the proposal, and what that might mean for America’s future role in the world: “If, like me, you care about the future of American…

The foremost obligation of the federal government is to provide for the safety of the American people. Yet as the budget debate continues, it’s becoming increasingly clear that certain politicians want to trim the defense budget in order to repurpose money for social entitlement programs, such as…

Stand still in Washington these days and you're likely to be hit by a deficit reduction plan. There's the Bowles-Simpson plan, the Coburn plan, the Coburn-Lieberman Medicare plan, the Rand Paul plan, the Paul--Graham–Lee Social Security plan, the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan, the Ryan plan, the Gang…

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Budget Committee, has just released a statement today that criticizes both Senate Democrats and President Obama for lacking leadership on producing a budget. Noting the Gang of Six plan's "serious flaws," Sessions says the president needs to show…

Detainee policy and "Seven Errors in Today’s New York Times Editorial"

The problem with socialists, according to Margaret Thatcher, is that “they always run out of other people’s money.” We haven’t hit that point just yet, but we have hit our nation’s legal credit limit of $14.3 trillion. To avoid defaulting on our loans, policymakers must raise that limit.

President Obama and the Democrats claim that the Medicare reforms proposed by Paul Ryan and the Republicans would shift the burden of health costs onto the backs of seniors. This has been the central—and essentially the only—argument the Democrats have made against the GOP plan. But the Democrats’…

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Budget Committee, spoke today on the Senate floor about his plan to raise points of order against all appropriations bills until the Senate passes a budget. Here's an excerpt of Sessions's remarks explaining the procedure:

Mitch McConnell’s plan, as Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint said tonight, is “going nowhere.” Which is where it deserved to go. It was too clever by half, transparently cynical, probably unconstitutional, and Rube Goldberg-like in its incomprehensibility.  

Senate Republicans mounted a bold offensive today against President Obama’s effort to force them to accept a tax hike as part of a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit.

After going more than 800 days without releasing a budget, the Senate Budget Committee has leaked a draft of a preliminary budget “blueprint” to the Washington Post. 

President Obama repeatedly insists that we need a “balanced approach” to dealing with our annual deficits, which have been twice as high during his tenure as during any other post-World War II presidency. In a memo sent yesterday to Republican colleagues, Paul Ryan responds to Obama’s claim with…

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell challenged President Obama’s claim to support trillions in serious spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling – cuts the president says show he’s ready to anger Democrats to get a deal.

Politico's Manu Raju reports: 

Politico reports that Republicans are standing up for a strong national defense:

In a 75-minute meeting Sunday night, President Obama once again demanded that more than $1 trillion in tax increases be part of any deficit reduction package attached to a vote on the debt ceiling. In the session, Obama rejected a Republican proposal to seek $2.5 trillion in spending cuts and…

Omri Ceren writes at Commentary, 

The House Budget Committee on Thursday released a report “demonstrating that economic hardships have been made worse by Washington’s misguided interventions and the lack of a credible plan to lift the crushing debt burden."

We are $14.481 trillion (and counting) in debt.  That’s up from $293 billion 50 years ago.  It’s up from $9.986 trillion when President Obama was poised to take office at the end of 2008 (see Table S-9).  Heck, it’s up $14 billion (more than the annual profits of Coca-Cola, Disney, or…

There is a possibility that Republican congressional leaders will capitulate Sunday to President Obama and the forces of the status quo, by agreeing to a deal in which 1) we take on trillions more debt without any guarantee of fundamental structural budget reforms; 2) our tax burden is increased,…

Reality-based community?: "Top Obama adviser says unemployment won't be key in 2012"

"Obama campaign to go on the offensive against conservative critics of Israel stance"