Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts

Monday, July 20, 2009

A trillion here, a trillion there........

A trillion here, a trillion there........pretty soon it starts to add up to real money. JC

: In an Ideas piece, Bobby Jindal says Washington is trying to tax and spend our way back to prosperity. Photo: AP

POLITICO 44

Things in Louisiana are looking up. We are announcing major economic development wins and private capital investment and reducing government spending in order to live within our means. We just completed a grueling legislative session where we all had to work together, Democrats and Republicans, to find a way to do more with less.

We trimmed government spending, protected vital services and refused to raise taxes. (As is the case in any legislative body, some gave it a try). I can’t say our legislative session was much fun, but it was necessary, and it is the American way. Or, at least we thought it was.

In the meantime, I’ve been catching up on the news in Washington. I wish I had not.

Let’s review: the Troubled Asset Relief Program, bailouts for American International Group

and others, CEOs of bankrupt businesses that receive billions of tax dollars running off with millions in bonuses, a $ 3.5 trillion budget, a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated, unemployment continuing to climb, government in the banking business, and of course, the U.S. government now making cars.

We have record deficits, which are unprecedented in recorded world history. We have debt that is even causing our creditors in the Middle East and China to be worried. Oops, I almost forgot the new national energy tax that just passed the House. If it isn’t bad enough that you may have lost your job and been fighting off foreclosure, the government now wants to make sure you, and every other American, pay more in energy costs so former Vice President Al Gore can be happy. This here is a fine pot of gumbo.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

How Much is $100,000,000??? VIDEO

Hat Tip: Ree

Obama is going to save the economy with these stringent cuts /sarc

Pass it on

© Janet Crain

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Oh, the best laid plans...........

by Janet Crain
So many of Obama's plans would detrimental to this country, it may be a bessing in disguise that we're too broke to implement them.

Obama’s Revenue Plans Hit Resistance in Congress

CARL HULSE
Published: April 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama is running into stiff Congressional resistance to his plans to raise money for his ambitious agenda, and the resulting hole in the budget is threatening a major health care overhaul and other policy initiatives.

The administration’s central revenue proposal — limiting the value of affluent Americans’ itemized deductions, including the one for charitable giving — fell flat in Congress, leaving the White House, at least for now, without $318 billion that it wants to set aside to help cover uninsured Americans. At the same time, lawmakers of both parties have warned against moving too quickly on a plan to auction carbon emission permits to produce more than $600 billion.

The unwillingness to embrace some of the major White House tax and revenue proposals has frustrated administration officials. They note that lawmakers, many of them supporters of the president’s ambitious agenda, clamor to hold down the deficit while balking at the proposals to finance his program.

Clint Stretch, a top tax policy analyst for the consulting firm Deloitte Tax, said, “The president and the budget committees have set very ambitious targets for revenue raising, and they did it against a set of proposals that are going to be very hard to enact.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/politics/20tax.html?_r=1&hpw

Friday, March 27, 2009

NEW ERA OF SPEND & BLAME

by Charles Hurt

"If you and a buddy are walking through the woods and encounter a hungry, angry bear, you don't have to outrun the bear. You simply have to outrun your buddy."

Last updated: 3:37 am
March 27, 2009
Posted: 2:40 am
March 27, 2009

FOR a guy who talks so much about wanting a new era of re sponsibility, President Obama spends an awful lot of time blaming Republicans for all the wild and reckless spending he crammed into his own budget.

After running a campaign against the $1 trillion deficit he "inherited" from President Bush and the Republicans, Obama quickly matched it. During his first 50 days in office, he and his Democratic-controlled Congress spent $1 billion an hour.

Under Obama's proposed budget, the overall national debt doubles in five years and triples in 10.

Not exactly "moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest," as he promised.

How does Mr. Responsibility explain the disconnect between this reality and his absurd claims? By insisting that Republicans were worse.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03272009/news/columnists/new_era_of_spend__blame_161557.htm

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Obama Budget More Pie in the Sky Than Chicken in Every Pot

by Janet Crain

There is entirely too much speculating and extrapolating and counting chickens before they hatch to make this budget work. And now Obama's chickens are coming home to roost as his Democratic Barons are expressing these cold hard facts. You can discuss these lofty ideas in academia until the cows come home, but whether they will work in the real world is the question. You simply cannot buy, buy, spend, spend now based on money you expect and hope will materialize in the future. Of course many did. That is what got us in this mess.

Obama’s Budget Faces Test Among Party Barons

By JACKIE CALMES and CARL HULSE

Published: March 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — What the Democratic barons of Congress liked best about President Obama’s audacious budget was his invitation to fill in the details. They have started by erasing some of his.

The apparent first casualty is a big one: a proposal to limit tax deductions for the wealthiest 1.2 percent of taxpayers. Mr. Obama says the plan would produce $318 billion over the next decade as a down payment for overhauling health care.

But the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees, Senator Max Baucus of Montana and Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, have objected to the proposal, citing a potential drop in tax-deductible gifts to charities.

Billions in savings from cutting government subsidies to big farmers and agribusinesses? No dice, said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, who heads the Senate Budget Committee.

Mr. Conrad also panned the limit on tax deductions. And his criticisms of those savings proposals aside, Mr. Conrad said Mr. Obama’s 10-year plan would not do enough to reduce future debt.

Shrink spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested Mr. Obama’s proposals did not go far enough.

Cap industries’ emissions of the gases blamed for climate change? Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, who leads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will have to contend with dissent on a panel with Democrats from coal and manufacturing states.

“The legislative process requires compromise and being open to different alternatives,” Mr. Waxman said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/politics/10chairmen.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper