debt

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

This is Peter Navarro’s moment. The gadfly economist, whose idée fixe is America’s capitulation to China on trade, joined the Trump administration on Day One, heading up the National Trade Council, a new office created by the new president. But for the first 13 months, Trump did little to advance…

Wouldn't it be nice if voters punished politicians who increase budget deficits? Well, according to one research paper, they do.

Earlier this month, the Trump White House unveiled its budget blueprint, which shifts federal spending priorities from domestic programs to national defense. The Office of Management and Budget proposed cuts of $54 billion to departments like Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and…

Earlier this month, the Trump White House unveiled its budget blueprint, which shifts federal spending priorities from domestic programs to national defense. The Office of Management and Budget proposed cuts of $54 billion to departments like Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and…

It is common knowledge that Puerto Rico is a financial mess and that it arrived at its current predicament due to its government's unwillingness to make difficult decisions. Ex-Governor Luis Fortuno made an attempt to return the island's finances to sanity, but his efforts cost him his reelection…

What would you think of a lender that holds more than one $1 trillion in loans outstanding, targets low income and minority borrowers, has a payment delinquency and default rate in excess of 25 percent, and has postponed repayment on 14 percent of its loans, but is still accruing interest on them?…

George Papaconstantinou has been through hell. His reputation as the finance minister who cowrote and signed Greece’s first bailout agreement with the eurozone in the spring of 2010 cost him his cabinet post the following year and his parliament seat the year after that. He spent the next three…

Donald Trump said unequivocally Thursday morning that "this is the time" for government to borrow money for multiple spending priorities, an unusual position for the standard bearer of a GOP that made fiscal restraint one its signature positions during the tea party wave just six years ago.

When my wife and I bought our condo we also wanted an amazing, new mattress so we got memory foam. It's a terrific mattress, but a little bit expensive. So we put it on our credit card.

Nearly everyone recognizes that student debt has risen to a level that will be difficult to sustain, given the nation’s slow-growing economy and the sagging incomes of too many college-­educated Americans. Nearly 40 million Americans carry some form of student debt; more than 7 million are in…

On Monday, Hillary Clinton is unveiling her solution to college debt. The solution is nothing new — it makes taxpayers pick up the bill.

Is America, or Illinois, or Chicago the next Greece? The answers are “Yes, if .  .  . ,” “No, but .  .  . ,” and “Perhaps.” Greece joined what was then the European Economic Community even though it had no business applying for admission, and the existing members had no business allowing it entry,…

A mass outbreak of syphilis, the radical economist and member of parliament Costas Lapavitsas told an interviewer, is about the only thing the European political establishment did not threaten Greece’s voters with before the country’s early-July referendum. 

One reads of the crisis in Greece.   And the one much closer to home in Puerto Rico.  The crisis, that is, that inevitably comes after spending too much and taking on more debt than it is possible even to service, much less pay down. One thinks of how unfortunate it is for the people who will now…

The subject of debt – how much and how tolerable – slipped into the shadows for a time. But yesterday, it reappeared. As Rebecca Shabad of the Hill reports:

President Obama has reported less than $1,001 in his savings account. The disclosure comes as part of the president's annual Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report.

Kasia Klimasinska of Bloomberg reports that:

In Athens in mid-January, two weeks before the election that would make 40-year-old engineer Alexis Tsipras Greece’s new prime minister, a bunch of cleaning ladies explained to me why they planned to vote for his party, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza, for its Greek acronym). We met where…

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."

New York governor Andrew Cuomo, not content with President Obama’s proposal to make junior colleges free, recently introduced his own plan for New York to essentially waive the first two years of student debt payments for college graduates living in the state.

Under President Obama, $7.5 trillion has been added to the national debt. The number is being highlighted by the Republican National Committee ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address, which will be delivered tonight from Washington. 

A headline in the Wall Street Journal reads, “U.S. Deficit Shrinks to Level Last Seen in ’07.”  The problem with this headline isn’t its accuracy (although it should say ’08 unless it’s speaking as a percentage of GDP).  The problem is that readers are likely to come away with the false perception…

As I've made pretty clear, I am not a fan of the "explanatory journalism" trend that purports to take an empirical approach to explaining complex issues. Its chief practitioners are a bunch of young, terribly biased journalists who tend to treat politics and policy as some sort of game, even as…

More signs that the dynamism that once characterized the American economy is waning:

Timothy Geithner, the former secretary of the Treasury Department, says the White House wanted him to lie in scheduled appearances on the Sunday TV talk shows. As Geithner writes in his new memoir:

This is not a good time to be young in America, and soon it will be less so.  The generation that elected President Obama will see the price of that college education which was supposed to open so many doors go up. As Janet Lorin of Bloomberg reports:

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee has put together this chart showing that payments on the interest of federal debt will "dwarf virtually every federal expense" in 2024:

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. 

I understand House Speaker John Boehner has just announced to his conference that he intends to bring the floor of the House a clean debt limit increase. Conservative members of the conference had argued for this course. Conservatives will vote against "Obama's debt increase," but expect it to pass…

Beginning at 8:30 a.m., a live video stream of an event co-hosted by the Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) and The Weekly Standard: America's Biggest Threat: The Consequences of Debt, featuring Admiral Mike Mullen
 , 17th chairman, Joint Chief of Staff, Bill Kristol, and Pete Hegseth.

President Obama signed the "deal" to re-open Congress and increase the debt limit, according to the White House. The press secretary sent this out late last night: 

Contradicting the Obama administration, Moody's Investors Service says that hitting the debt limit shouldn't be confused with default. The Washington Post writes:

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee has put together this chart to show that U.S. has added two times more debt than economic output in the last two years: 

Two stories were prominently featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. America either is, or in a few months will be, the world’s largest producer of energy, “a new era of opportunities,” says Adam Sieminski, head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And…

Although the government shutdown continues, it appears President Barack Obama and the White House are not getting any closer to negotiating with Republicans. A quotation from an unnamed senior administration official in today's Wall Street Journal explains why.

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.

The government will be tapped out on Oct 17, according to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.  Unless, that is, Congress takes:

The Hill reports:

All is quiet on the Washington front. But don’t let the lull in partisan warfare fool you. In two weeks Congress returns from its summer recess, after hearing from constituents who hold the institution in lower esteem than used car salesmen, and view eating Brussels sprouts, enduring traffic jams,…

Marisa Schultz of the Detroit News reports:

Tokyo

The headline on this Chicago Sun-Times story is arresting, to say the least:

Marco Rubio, speaking earlier today at an in event in Washington sponsored by Concerned Veterans for America and THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

Student loan debt runs to about $30,000 per graduate of the class of 2013, as Phil Izzo writes in the Wall Street Journal.  And the total amount of student loans outstanding runs to almost a trillion dollars: more than either credit card balances or automobile loans.  More than any form of consumer…

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."

This week Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee is set to release its fiscal year 2014 budget, which promises to balance Uncle Sam’s books in 10 years. Ryan’s offering will elicit lamentations from the usual quarters of the mainstream media: House Republicans have lurched sharply to the right,…

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:

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. 

There will be no grand bargain.

In an interview that was released this morning with former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos on ABC, President Obama talked a little about his view of the debt.

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

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…

Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, more than $6 trillion dollars has been added to the national debt.

The White House has released limited excerpts of President Obama's State of the Union Address: 

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…

In an interview this morning, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi made the case that we don't have a spending problem. Indeed, Pelosi says, it is wrong to say we have a "spending problem":

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…

President Barack Obama used his second inaugural address Monday to offer an aggressive, unapologetic defense of activist government and to call for a new spirit of unity even as he seeks to move the country even further left.

At his press conference today, President Obama showed that he either thinks he can pull the wool over Americans’ eyes through the sheer force of his own outrageous rhetoric, or else he really believes his own rhetoric and is living in a fantasyland.  The guess here is that it’s a roughly even mix…

Barack Obama laughed this morning when NBC's Chuck Todd told the president that Congressman Jim Clyburn compared the debt ceiling to the Emancipation Proclamation:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said yesterday that "deficit reduction is not a worthy goal unto itself":

Barney Frank admitted this morning on MSNBC that he has asked Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick to pick him to replace John Kerry in the Senate:

Having avoided the "fiscal cliff," we will now be in jeopardy of breaking our necks when we collide with the "debt ceiling." The responsible thing to do, we are already being told by the New York Times is ... to raise the ceiling:

Metro stops in Washington, D.C. will now feature advertisements that warn of overspending. "Talk Is Cheap," the tagline on a series of ads reads. "Overspending Is Not."

Among the many items bundled into the fiscal cliff fix there was another delay in implementing cuts to physician payments for Medicare services.  It wasn't hard, though.  Congress has had plenty of practice handling what is called the "doc fix," since it has been doing it almost routinely for the…

After hailing the passage of the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama laid down a marker on the debt ceiling: It will not, he said, be up for negotiation.

Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, explains why he voted in favor of the "fiscal cliff" deal last night in the House of Representatives:

After Congress agreed temporarily to avert the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama hailed the deal in brief remarks delivered from the White House, and then headed to Air Force One to take a midnight flight to Hawaii. Obama had left his family days earlier to return to Washington to…

A Democratic member of Congress is moving to block President Barack Obama's congressional pay increase. The move, led by John Barrow of Georgia, is to prevent the pay increase that Obama issued through an executive order from going into effect.

It is important to understand that the fiscal cliff is a charade. There are, to be sure, many conscientious debt reformers working to avert our proclaimed year-end epic fall​—​along with many cynics who are using the occasion to advance pet projects that will make the debt problem worse. But all…

The fiscal cliff is a diversion, designed by politicians to conceal their inability to come to grips with the fact that they continue to spend too much, and refuse to reform a tax structure that reduces the competitiveness of American companies in world markets. No matter what deal is cut, whether…

"President Obama's 'Plan' Adds $8.6 Trillion to the Debt," the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee contends. Here's a chart put together by the Republicans on the committee to explain how Obama's plan adds to the debt:

Senator Jeff Sessions continues to argue against the secrecy of the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations with an op-ed this morning in today's Wall Street Journal. Sessions argues that the secrecy is inherently anti-Democratic, and similar to the "Russian Duma, where officials meet behind closed…

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Barack Obama from the Senate floor this morning for not offering any specifics on spending cuts.

Seventy-five percent of the new revenue pulled in by President Barack Obama's "fiscal cliff" plan would go toward new spending, not toward deficit reduction, the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee contends. Here's a chart, detailing how money from the new tax hikes would be distributed:

In this week's Republican address, Florida senator Marco Rubio suggests there are much bigger problems than marginal tax hikes, which President Obama strongly supports.

President Barack Obama wants to raise the debt limit "without drama or delay," a White House official tells Reuters. 

In an email to supporters, Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign tries to raise the final funds needed to retire debt incurred from Clinton's failed presidential bid.

MSNBC host Chuck Todd reported that a "very smart White House aide" told him that "with this Republican, with the way politics of Washington are today, there'd still be slavery." Watch here:

Household debt jumped once again to $2.7 trillion, according to the New York Fed. "[T]he Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced that in the third quarter, non-real estate household debt jumped 2.3 percent to $2.7 trillion," reports the fed. "The increase was due to a boost in student loans ($42…

Under current law, the U.S. economy will tumble over the so-called fiscal cliff at the start of the new year, when roughly $500 billion in across-the- board tax hikes and $100 billion in spending cuts are scheduled to take effect. Numerous economists predict the automatic tax increases, the result…

A dedicated libertarian, William Niskanen was also a dedicated pot-stirrer. For him the two vocations—pressing the case for small government and, at least intellectually, making trouble—were inseparable. He was best known as an original member of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, one of…

President Barack Obama used his new political politician coming off his reelection win to assert his political position ahead of fiscal negotiations with Congress.

John Boehner laid out the House Republican position in the upcoming legislative debate on the fiscal cliff in remarks Wednesday afternoon. "Mr. President, the Republican majority here in the House stands ready to work with you to do what's best for our country," Boehner said, calling the massive…

A chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that "U.S. Per Person Debt [Is] Now 35 Percent Higher than that of Greece."

From December 1941 to August 1945, the United States of America joined the other Allied powers and fought against the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific, during the greatest and most destructive war in all of human history.  Victory required the complete dedication of the American citizenry, as…

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…

The $831,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” that President Obama spearheaded and signed into law requires his administration to release quarterly reports on its effects.  But “the most transparent administration in the history of our country” is now four reports behind schedule and has so far not…

A new report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service finds that the largest federal budget item is spending on welfare programs. To support the 83 programs that CRS identified as welfare programs, the federal government spends $745.84 billion. 

In the wake of the Treasury Department’s newly released summary of federal spending for 2012, it’s now possible to detail just how profligate the Obama years have been.  Here’s the upshot:  Under Obama, for every $7 we’ve had, we’ve spent nearly $11 (or, to be more exact, $10.95).  That’s like a…

Former presidential candidate Ross Perot has endorsed Mitt Romney, according to the Republican nominee's campaign.

As Mike Warren highlights, moderator Martha Raddatz apparently didn’t think Obamacare was important enough to make the cut as one of the nine topics she brought up during the vice presidential debate.  Two other closely related topics that didn’t make her cut were federal spending and the national…

In May 2009, President Obama released his updated budget estimates, which projected that the federal deficit for fiscal year 2012 would be $557 billion (see table S-1).  The Congressional Budget Office now says that the deficit for fiscal year 2012 (which ended on September 30) was about $1.1…

A new study by Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum finds that President Barack Obama's spending plan would raise taxes on the middle class.  "[T]axpayers making as little as $30,000 will carry $1,500 more in taxes annually over the next 10 years," the study finds.

It’s a couple days old, but nevertheless worth watching: Here’s the clip of President Obama’s interview with David Letterman (which Steve Hayes discusses in greater detail here), during which Obama shows that he apparently has no idea how big our national debt is — apparently even to the nearest…

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…

On Monday, the Romney campaign trumpeted a plan to change the campaign's direction and "reinforce more specifics" on policy. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a copy of a memo from GOP political veteran David Smick, addressed to the Romney campaign, with advice on how to "revamp" the television ad…

In his speech Wednesday night, Bill Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president—not me or any of my predecessors—could have repaired all the damage in just four years." Yet, under FDR, who inherited a much weaker economy than Obama did, real GDP growth…

Always looking "forward," President Obama has asked Bill Clinton—who was elected to the presidency 20 years ago—to speak tonight and suggest to the American people (whether explicitly or implicitly) that this is really a choice between Clinton and George W. Bush, rather than between Obama and Mitt…

The United States Treasury reports that the total public outstanding debt is: $16,015,769,788,215.80. This is the first time in American history debt has eclipsed the $16 trillion mark.

President Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, said today on Fox News Sunday that, under Obama, we've had "29 straight months of job growth." Yet, according to the federal government's own figures, 29 months ago, 58.5 percent of Americans were employed. Today, only 58.4 percent of Americans are…

The Republican convention will highlight a debt clock, the party announced: 

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…

The Washington Times reports:

Regardless of one's precise political peccadilloes, most of us agree this is one of the most important elections of our lifetime. However, one gets the feeling the Romney campaign, and even the RNC, either aren't aware of the stakes or, perhaps, just not sure of the best way to convey those stakes…

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…

Senator Mike Lee criticized President Obama's and the Democrats' plan to raise taxes, saying that "their proposal would leave 94% of this year's deficit intact, which makes it an inherently unserious proposal insofar as it relates to deficit reduction."

If Governor Romney is embracing Congressman Ryan's budget, that would lead to huge scalebacks ... in access to Pell Grants. We can't cut off our nose to spite our face.  We need a lot more young people having a great start at life. We need a lot more young people having the opportunity to go to…

A new chart, set to be released later today by the minority office of the Senate Budget Committee, finds that, in the next five years, "U.S. Per Person Debt To Increase 7 Times Faster Than Italian Debt."

The House Financial Committee just concluded grilling banker Jamie Dimon on risky financial bets his firm, JPMorgan Chase, made that resulted in losses of at least $2 billion last month. Today’s hearing follows up on last week’s Senate Banking Committee grilling of Dimon on the same bad bets.

According to figures provided by the International Monetary Fund, and compiled into this easy to read chart by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, America will "spend 60 percent more per person than Spain over [the] next 5 years."[img nocaption float="center" width="500"…

The eurozone might be cracking up, but as far as debt goes, America appears to be in worse shape than the entire eurozone in the long run. According to a new chart set to be released later today by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, America is on track "to add three times more debt…

New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie blasted President Obama in a speech earlier today at a conservative conference in Chicago

A new chart produced by the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee shows that, according to Congressional Budget Office data released yesterday, debt per American is "on track to triple in a generation":

Debtors of the world, unite—you have nothing to lose but your IOUs!

On July 24, 2008, candidate Barack Obama toured Europe and drew 200,000 spectators to a rally in Berlin. On May 5, 2012, President Barack Obama officially launched his reelection campaign—which he unofficially launched over a year ago—but couldn’t fill a 19,000-seat basketball arena in Columbus,…

The tide sweeping from Greece across Europe and into the United States is washing away support for austerity, in some cases reinforcing opposition to it, largely from the left. President Obama is delighted at this support for his refusal to cut spending in the face of mounting deficits, and the…

If you ever find yourself engaged in a debate over why our national debt — now $15.7 trillion —has risen $5.9 trillion over the past four years and $15.4 trillion over the past fifty years, NPR has released a useful chart (based on figures provided by the White House Office of Management and…

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."

This business with Greece goes on and on, and one begins to think, automatically, of Sisyphus and his rock. Only in this case, you start pulling for the rock.

Bloomberg reports: 

Bill Kristol writes about the Obama campaign’s spiffy new, one-word campaign slogan—“Forward”—and jokingly suggests that the slogan may have been lifted from Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” Or, on the other hand, maybe it was a steal from MSNBC’s “Lean Forward.” From the sublimely bloody to the bloody…

A report issued last week by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) finds that the average tax burden on income in the United States has been declining in recent years, in sharp contrast to the trend in the other OECD countries. Naturally, progressives have been quick to…

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 cost of President Obama is $5,027,761,476,484.56 (so far!), according to CNS News:

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will release this chart later today, clearly showing that America's debt is greater than the combined debt of the entire Eurozone and the U.K.:

Last year, in an article for THE WEEKLY STANDARD I discussed the growing number of existential threats to unions. One of the major challenges facing unions is that their multi-employer pension plans are deep in the hole, and the problems were being masked by accounting standards that allowed them…

Last year, in an article for THE WEEKLY STANDARD I discussed the growing number of existential threats to unions. One of the major challenges facing unions is that their multi-employer pension plans are deep in the hole, and the problems were being masked by accounting standards that allowed them…

Over the next ten years, Obamacare will add more than $340 billion to the federal deficit, according to a new study reported on by the Washington Post: 

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 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:

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

In a book review of White House Burning titled, "The Endless Spending Spree: America's debt is $15.6 trillion and growing. Instead of raising taxes, here's an idea: Let's try capitalism," James Grant writes:

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:

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…

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."

Doomsayers have denounced consumer debt for decades. But today, for the first time since the 1930s, consumer chickens have come home to roost, with a debt crisis in the housing markets and a looming student loan debt disaster. Debtor Nation digs through a century of trade publications and…

President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing. 

Mitt Romney needs a big idea. And it’s not the one he cited at the beginning of his speech after his humiliating loss to Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary Saturday. Executive experience matters, Romney said. He has it and Gingrich, like President Obama, doesn’t.

Liz Cheney appeared on Fox News this morning to discuss President Obama's cuts to the military:

The New York Times reports that "President Obama will ask Congress this week for $1.2 trillion in additional borrowing authority, which would raise the federal debt limit to $16.4 trillion and avoid the need for further increases before the 2012 elections, administration officials said Tuesday."

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.

Washington Post: "Bloomberg rebukes Obama over collapse of debt talks"

Tim Cavanaugh: "NYT Defines Obamacare Success: Fewer Options, but Better Coordinated"

The National Debt Clock now shows the national debt of the United States of America is higher than $15,000,000,000,000.00. According to the White House, when President Obama was elected — just three years ago — the national debt was less than $10 trillion (see table S-9 on p. 134).  At a campaign…

On the issue of public debt, Washington is experiencing what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” The financial news is so relentlessly terrible that people have become numb to it and assume nothing can be done to regain control over our fate.

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

The Congressional Budget Office’s recently released scorecard for fiscal year 2011 begs a simple question: Why is the federal government spending nearly one-third more money now than it did just five years ago? The CBO says that the federal government spent $2,729,000,000,000.00 in 2007 and…

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 20 percentage points (56 to 36 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. This marks the first time since the spring of 2010, shortly after Obamacare’s passage, that 3-straight Rasmussen polls have shown at least…

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…

The New York Times reports that credit rating agency Standard & Poor's has downgraded America's long-term debt: 

None. That’s the total of on-the-other-hand good news I have to report this week. Lest you think I am overlooking the debt deal cut in Washington last week, consider this:

With the debt ceiling debate behind us, now might be a good time to get back to the biggest problem currently facing the world economy: the eurozone. While the European debt crisis may have slipped off Americans' radar screens in the past weeks, its significance has not diminished.

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:

John Bolton has just issued a thoughtful statement raising “serious questions ... about the national-security implications of the proposed deal to raise the Federal debt ceiling.” Bolton calls attention to the worrisome short-term defense cuts that the deal makes likely, and to the huge medium- and…

As the truth-or-dare battle over raising the debt ceiling moves toward a resolution of some sort, we are witnessing a unique political moment, with attention finally riveted on our nation’s fiscal future. We are about to learn whether there is such a thing as fiscal responsibility in a democracy…

Until it was amended in 1994, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act included an exception for universities, permitting them to set a mandatory retirement age of 70 for tenured faculty. Out of all America’s employers, universities were among the handful that Congress worried would be overburdened…

Economist Thomas Sowell endorses the Boehner plan: 

To govern is to choose. To vote is to choose. To vote against John Boehner on the House floor this week in the biggest showdown of the current Congress is to choose to vote with Nancy Pelosi. To vote against Boehner is to choose to support Barack Obama. It is to choose to increase the chances that…

President Obama portrays himself as the nonpartisan adult in the room in the struggle over raising the debt limit. In his nationally televised speech Monday, he placed himself above Washington’s “three-ring circus,” as someone who has “put politics aside” and is desperate for a bipartisan…

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…

I was struck by these sentences in President Obama’s speech:

House speaker John Boehner’s new plan to cut spending while raising the debt limit faces two obstacles. It must win the votes of most of the 240 Republicans in the House. And the plan, or something like it, needs to be accepted by Senate majority leader Harry Reid. At the moment, overcoming the…

President Obama, at a speech earlier today at the National Council of La Raza, indicated that he "need[s] a dance partner here -- and the floor is empty."

NPR reports, “Former President Bill Clinton said if faced with default, he would single-handedly raise the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment and he’d do it ‘without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me.’”

The intentions of Democrats are only the best. They want all of the old to have lavish retirements, all of the young to have scholarships, verse-penning cowboys to have festivals funded by government, and everyone to have access to all the best health care, at no cost to himself. In the face of a…

Here's an unusually lively Panel Plus discussion, the additional Internet-only segment of Fox News Sunday, highlighted by the boss volunteering the opinion that "the rating agencies are idiots."

If you want to have a relaxed summer break, definitely do not include on your beach reading list This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Based on a massive multi-nation data base covering 800 years the authors conclude that, in the case of…

As Bill Kristol writes, the House Republicans have been the only responsible players in the debt-ceiling debate, having passed actual legislation in the light of day, to increase the debt limit.  Now, with all due respect, it’s time for House leaders to stay away from the White House.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced the failure of "Cut, Cap and Balance" on the Senate floor: "We just completed a very important vote. We've now demonstrated that the House Republicans' Cut, Cap and Balance is over, done, it's dead."

O tempora, o mores! O Cicero, if thou couldst be with us now! The corruption of our age is approaching that of your own! But who speaks for the ancient Roman—and modern American!—virtues of civic duty and personal responsibility?

Senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), a member of the so-called Gang of Six, slams the Senate for dodging votes and offers support for the House Republicans’ recently passed legislation to raise the debt limit in exchange for cutting, capping, and balancing federal spending.  The House plan is the only…

In a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes, “Next to generalized distemper in Republican circles over their presidential candidates, the second most-offered opinion on the race is that people wish Paul Ryan were running. The Wisconsin congressman and House Budget chairman…

Paul Ryan says: 

In response to a question about whether now would be a good time for the president to present his own debt ceiling budget plan, White House spokesman Jay Carney had this to say: "Leadership is not proposing a plan for the sake of having it voted up or down and likely voted down..."

President Obama repeatedly insists that the debt ceiling must be raised by at least $2.4 trillion. Why this particular amount, rather than, say, an even $1 trillion or $2 trillion? Because $2.4 trillion is Obama’s estimate for what it would take to get him through the next election without needing…

Business Insider: "Wynn CEO Goes On Epic Anti-Obama Rant On Company Conference Call"

This afternoon Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) unveiled his own proposal to reduce to deficit. The plan, which purports to reduce the deficit by over $9 trillion over the next decade, does so by cutting discretionary spending and entitlements as well as by raising some revenue and counting savings on…

"President Obama Calls for Shared Sacrifice and a Balanced Approach to Reducing America’s Debt," from the Democratic National Committee website, July 15:

One of the least covered aspects of the debt limit negotiations has been defense spending. Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats have indicated that the White House would like to include significant defense cuts as part of an eventual deal, even beyond the $400 billion in cuts…

Bill Kristol, with John Podesta, Liz Cheney and Juan Williams, yesterday on Fox News:

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

It was bad enough when Moody’s Investor Services placed America’s credit rating under review for a downgrade because our politicians can’t agree to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Now Standard & Poor’s has taken an even tougher stance. It is putting U.S. debt on “Credit Watch negative,” with…

On a conference call with bloggers today, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich offered advice to congressional Republicans who are currently in the middle of debt limit negotiations, saying it was their “moment to stand up to Obama.”

In his press conference today, President Obama shamelessly and condescendingly said, “Congress has run up the credit card, and we now have an obligation to pay our bills.” Yet Obama’s average annual rate of deficit spending in his first three years in office (including his 2012 budget) has been 9.7…

At his press conference Friday, President Barack Obama repeatedly claimed that the American people support a “balanced approach” and “shared sacrifice” when it comes to a debt and deficit solution.

This morning, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Paul Ryan blasted the president for not doing what needs to be done to avert a crisis. “The president is just unwilling to go anywhere close to the kind of spending cuts we’re going to have to have if we want to avert a debt crisis," Ryan said.

In this week’s newsletter, Matt Continetti writes:

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.  

CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley asked President Obama whether he “can tell the folks at home that, no matter what happens, the Social Security checks are gonna go out on August the 3rd?” President Obama replied that it wasn’t just Social Security checks that would need to go out and that “I…

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.