Bad Idea

"I thought it over, and putting the American at economy in grave peril once a year would solve all my issues, so I figure, let's do it six times a year."

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The False Sense of Balance of a Balanced Budget Amendment

With federal borrowing rapidly approaching its statutory limit, Washing politicians are falling all over themselves to figure out how to extract more budget concessions from President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in exchange for not throwing the world's financial markets into a panic.

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Spending Caps: The House Budget Resolution by Another Name

As the date approaches when the Treasury will meet the debt ceiling, the demands of the hostage takers House and Senate conservatives who are playing hard-to-get for their vote to up the ceiling are becoming known. And naturally, rather than put forth ideas that would make a serious attempt at reducing the federal budget deficit, these MOCs are demanding budget mechanisms designed to only limit spending.

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CBO Monthly Budget Review, April 2011

Same Report, Different Month

Last Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for April. If you've been keeping an eye on this blog, you'd know that the $830 billion deficit Uncle Sam has racked up over the first six months of fiscal year (FY) 2011 is unsurprising and isn't really newsworthy. Of course, that's not the way it's likely to play out in the media or on Capitol Hill.

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Paul Ryan's 'Path to Prosperity' ... for the Rich

Hack

Released Tuesday morning amid great fanfare, Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget proposal is turning out to be a grab bag of right-wing economic crankery. In fact, that's too nice: the proposal is flat out awful. And when I say "awful," I don't just mean evisceration-of-two-very-popular-social-safety-net-programs or two-thirds-of-proposed-spending-cuts-from-low-income-programs awful, but tax-hikes-on-middle-and-low-income-folks-combined-with-tax-cuts-for-the-rich awful.

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The Ryan Plan: Budgeting for Big Business

The House Budget Committee approved last night Rep. Paul Ryan's budget resolution proposal. What would House Republicans' do given their way? Write big checks to big businesses, cut taxes for the rich, and cut off health care, nutrition, and housing assistance for the poor.

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CBO Monthly Budget Review, February 2011

Congressional Budget Office

The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for February is out and it has piqued deficit hawks around Washington. The thing is, though, February's MBR is just like all the rest of CBO's recent monthly budget reports: it reveals that the country spent a lot more money than it took in over the previous thirty-day period.

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Is our Country Broke?

Why do I thirst for an Orange Julius when I look at this picture?

At a news conference yesterday morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), shrugged off criticism that his party's proposed spending cuts would cost thousands of federal workers their jobs, saying, "In the last two years, under President Obama, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs. If some of those jobs are lost, so be it. We're broke." Boehner has rightly been criticized for the first and second parts of his comments, but what about the last part?

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House GOP Learns Cutting Spending is Hard

Remember back in September of last year, when the House Republicans released the “Pledge to America,” stating their agenda should they win the House in coming election? If not, here was one line which stuck out to us: “we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone....” Now that they are in control of the House, Republicans are quickly working to make good on that promise. Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released their new spending plan for fiscal year 2011, which contains cuts of... $35 billion. Looks like it isn’t quite as easy to cut spending as the new House majority thought.

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This is What Happens When You Extend Unpaid-For Tax Cuts

'Martha's polishing the brass on the titanic.  It's all going down man...'

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – Congress' nonpartisan fiscal scorekeeper – released their revised budget and economic outlook for fiscal year (FY) 2011 through FY 2021. The most newsworthy element of the new estimates is this year's revised deficit projection. As most media outlets noted, Uncle Sam's predicted budgetary shortfall for 2011 went from just over $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Extension of the unpaid-for Bush tax cuts comprises almost the entire additional shortfall.

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