"Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed cutting the government’s budget by 5.6 percent for the coming Iranian year while more than doubling military spending, state media reported. Ahmadinejad presented a draft budget of 5,100 trillion rials ($450 billion) to parliament today for review, the state-run Mehr news agency reported." (02/01/12)
http://buswk.co/xvjPLj
Cato Institute "Recent sharp increases in interest rates on European government debt have forced Greece, Spain, Italy, and other nations to adopt austerity policies involving deep cuts to their social insurance programs. This should serve as much-needed notice to U.S. lawmakers, especially liberal-leaning ones: If they continue to make outlandish demands for more revenue, and the policy deadlock continues until U.S. debt valuations begin to slide, it will be too late to avoid a fate similar to that of the fiscally strapped Europeans facing forced austerity policies." (01/20/12)
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14032"The U.S. Department of Agriculture will close 259 domestic offices, labs and other facilities as part of an effort to save $150 million per year, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Monday. While the closures and other cost-cutting steps will affect the USDA headquarters in Washington and operations in 46 states, the savings will be relatively small in the context of the agency's $145 billion budget." (01/09/12)
http://tinyurl.com/6rsfgog Cato Institute "In August, the Congressional Budget Office projected that national discretionary defense spending -- 96 percent of military spending outside of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- would cost $5.3 trillion over the 2013-2021 period. That is the spending trajectory that the White House and its updated strategy supports. After sequestration, that spending will instead total $4.8 trillion, a difference of less than 10 percent. In nominal terms, sequestration is not even a cut; it would see nonwar military spending grow by about 10 percent from today, as opposed to the 18 percent the administration wants." (01/06/12)
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13989"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is preparing to unveil his strategy that will guide the Pentagon in cutting billions of defense dollars, leaving the U.S. no longer able to maintain its traditional ability to fight two sustained ground wars at the same time .... the new defense doctrine, driven by fiscal reality, would instead leave a military that is able to fight and win a major conflict, while being able to 'spoil' an adversary's ambitions elsewhere in the world." (01/03/12)
http://usat.ly/wCXqUV"Spain's public deficit for 2011 may be higher than the 8 percent of GDP forecast by the new government, the economy minister said Monday, fuelling fears the country faces a prolonged period of tight budgets and economic contraction. Spain had originally targeted a 2011 deficit of 6 percent of gross domestic product, but the newly elected conservatives said Friday the deficit would be 8 percent." (01/02/12)
http://reut.rs/sAk1qP"The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government's debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday. ... Under the agreement struck in August during the showdown over the government's debt limit, the cap is automatically raised unless Congress votes to block the debt-ceiling extension." [editor's note: Congress has 15 days to say "no" -- and they're in recess until January 17th - TLK] (12/27/11)
http://reut.rs/srInXO"The Senate on Wednesday voted against changing the Constitution to require a balanced budget as Congress hit yet another dead end in its search for a way out of its fiscal morass. ... All but one Republican voted against a Democratic measure, and every Democrat opposed the GOP-backed version. Amendments to the Constitution must be approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and three-fourths of state legislatures." (12/14/11)
http://usat.ly/sS1n5n"The Pentagon’s budget for the Blue Angels is $37 million. But the mission of the Blue Angels is purely promoting naval aviation and recruiting instead of actually contributing to national defense, so some have begun to call for the squadron’s elimination because of the budget deficit and potential cuts in military spending." (12/13/11)
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1112m.asp"As CBS news correspondent Ben Tracy explains, California announced about a billion dollars in cuts .... California Gov. Jerry Brown said: 'We don't want to dig ourselves into a hole that becomes virtually impossible to climb out of.' He said a stronger economy has helped increase tax revenue, but the state's current budget is still short $2.2 billion. The automatic cuts will now slash budgets for schools, in-home support for seniors and the disabled, libraries and prisons." (12/13/11)
http://bit.ly/vucEhK
Authority! "Few Americans were surprised when the so-called congressional 'Super-Committee' failed to come up with a recommendation to cut $1.2 trillion in government spending over the next ten years. The national debt right now today exceeds $15 trillion yet Congress can’t even agree to cut $1.2 trillion in ten long years. The United States government is addicted to spending like a heroin addict is addicted to smack." (12/04/11)
http://authoritycon.blogspot.com/2011/12/spending-tales.html Cato Institute "While proponents of the balanced budget amendment argue that it would also reign in spending, almost all the states possess balanced budget requirements and that hasn't stopped state spending from continuing to increase. In fact, the balanced budget amendment would actually end up solidifying the oversized and overbearing federal government we have today." (11/23/11)
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13886
Reason "The reason politicians don't balance the budget is that they and their constituents aren't ready for the unthinkable realities this option would entail: higher taxes, reduced government benefits, or both. Those choices won't get any less excruciating if a balanced-budget amendment is ratified. Given that reality, we could expect elected officials to find ways to evade the restriction. " (11/28/11)
http://tinyurl.com/79dwbw8
KN@PPSTER "Now that the 'Super Committee' has failed, congresscritters are already talking about ways to get around the $2.2 trillion in automatic across-the-board budget cuts that start kicking in come 2013 if a deal doesn't get done. Anyone remember Gramm-Ruddman-Hollings? Much deficit-cutting sound and fury, signifying nothing. The difference, if he sticks to his guns, is President Barack Obama ..." (11/21/11)
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2011/11/advantage-obama.html"A few months ago, Washington's big bad wolf was Republicans' refusal to compromise by supporting any deficit reduction plan that included tax increases. Republicans were unreasonable, editorial pages fulminated, obstructionist and standing in the way of meaningful reform. On Monday, the supercommittee admitted it had failed to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit over 10 years. Citizens Against Government Waste spokesperson Leslie K. Paige called it 'the unpardonable turkey.' At least this turkey cannot be laid on the GOP's doorstep." (11/22/11)
http://tinyurl.com/86xn82h
Freedom's Phoenix "This week marks the deadline for the so-called congressional Super Committee to meet its goal of cutting a laughably small amount of federal spending over the next decade. In fact the Committee merely needs to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill. This is only cutting proposed increases. It has nothing to do with actually cutting anything. This shows how unserious politicians are about our very serious debt problems." (11/21/11)
http://bit.ly/vkpeo8 KN@PPSTER "A 220-odd-year-old monopoly government isn't a business startup trying out a new product or service and hoping people like it and buy it. It has a captive market and great latitude as to which products and services it will force people buy and how much it will charge them (collecting at gunpoint if necessary) for those products and services. In other words, a 220-year-old monopoly government has no excuse -- save, perhaps, unexpected war -- for failing to balance the checkbook in any given year, let alone for decades at a time." (11/20/11)
http://bit.ly/uEywQB"As a Congressional 'super committee' tasked with cutting the deficit was on the verge of failure, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist insisted in a series of interviews Monday that it wasn’t his fault. Norquist told CNN’s Carol Costello that Republicans were willing to 'compromise' with Democrats as long as additional tax revenues were off the table. At least 279 Republican members of the current Congress have signed Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes." (11/21/11)
http://tinyurl.com/76vznxb"Some are decrying this as a failure; I’m celebrating it as a victory. Clearly, much more must be done to cut federal spending and avert a fiscal crisis. But real spending cuts were never on the table. What was on the table was a disastrous tax hike that would have undermined our economic recovery and given Washington politicians even more money to spend, undermining the goal of cutting spending." (11/21/11)
http://tinyurl.com/7nw84bb"Barring an unforeseen breakthrough, the congressional 'super committee' is expected to concede failure on Monday in its bid to reach a deal to cut the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillion, senior congressional aides said on Sunday." (11/20/11)
http://trib.in/uZv91k KN@PPSTER "Politicians who talk about 'deficit reduction' are not, to co-opt one of the commentariat's favorite terms, serious, nor should they be taken seriously." (11/16/11)
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2011/11/let-me-reiterate.html Cato Institute "As the 'supercommittee' on deficit reduction tries to hammer out an agreement to trim the growth of future spending by $1.2 trillion (a mere $120 billion a year), the first proposal from the Democrats was to start by raising taxes $1.3 trillion. Recent reports suggest they might settle for trading $1 trillion in new taxes in exchange for $1 trillion in seemingly nebulous spending cuts in the distant future. The role model for that sort of 'balanced' deal was the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA-90)." (11/11/11)
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13843"With just two weeks before a Nov. 23 deadline, Congress’s 'supercommittee' broke new ground this week, as Republicans ... offered a plan that includes tax hikes. It’s not the last word. Aides say that Democrats rejected the measure, which proposes cutting tax breaks in exchange for extending the Bush-era tax cuts, saying it was too tilted toward the rich. But the GOP move to put tax hikes on the table could mark a turning point in the push for a deal –- that is, if Democrats come up with a plausible counteroffer." (11/10/11)
http://tinyurl.com/6mqnxpq"In the spring fight to avert a government shutdown, Republicans promised $100 billion in real cuts but then compromised for $38.5 billion in future savings. In reality, the Congressional Budget Office found the deal still resulted in an increase of more than $170 billion in federal spending from 2010 to 2011. The 'largest spending cut in history' ended up being a spending increase." (11/08/11)
http://bit.ly/uo6BCQ
Four questions about defense spending
by James Wilson
"The federal budget can never, ever be balanced. Why? Because defense spending must be cut, and that's sancrosanct to the Republican criminal gang. If you want the budget balanced, you need to shame the 'Pork Hawks.'" (02/08/12)
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