Budget Battles
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McConnell: Entitlement Cuts Probably Won’t Happen Under Trump
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Republicans Ignore the Obvious Effect of Their Tax Cuts
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Federal Deficit Jumps 17 Percent to $779 Billion
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Trump’s Border Wall: A Christmastime Clash Is Coming
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GOP Lawmakers Push Back on Trump’s Federal Pay Freeze
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Larry Kudlow Wants to Put a ‘Big Dent’ in Government Spending
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Four States That Will Founder When the Next Recession Hits
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Kansas or California as a Model for America’s Future Growth?
By The Fiscal Times StaffIf you had to choose either Kansas or California to serve as a model for America’s future growth, which would it be, Bloomberg’s Barry Ritholtz asks . The answer, he argues, is obvious — yet...
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Kamala Harris' Trillion-Dollar Tax Plan
By Michael RaineyRepublicans aren’t the only ones coming up with trillion-dollar tax plans. California’s Kamala Harris, a rising Democratic star in the Senate, released a proposal Thursday to repeal the $1.9 trillion...
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McConnell: Entitlement Cuts Probably Won’t Happen Under Trump
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) unleashed a storm of Democratic criticism earlier this week by telling Bloomberg News that rising deficits and debt are driven by Social Security,...
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Trump Wants Federal Agencies to Cut Spending by 5%
By Michael Rainey and Yuval RosenbergPresident Trump instructed his cabinet secretaries Wednesday to reduce their departmental spending by 5 percent or more next year. “Some of you will say, ‘Hey, I can do much more than five,’” Trump...
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Hurricane Michael Might Have Damaged More Than $1 Billion Worth of F-22s
By Michael RaineyBy the time Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle last week, most of the aircraft based at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City had been flow out of harm’s way. But between four and 17 F-22...
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Federal Deficit Jumps 17 Percent to $779 Billion
Despite a strong economy and robust job market, the federal budget deficit swelled to $779 billion in fiscal 2018, up $113 billion from 2017, according to final numbers released Monday by the...
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Mnuchin Spins a False Claim About Tax Cuts and the Deficit
The Congressional Budget Office projected last week that the federal government’s fiscal 2018 deficit would total $782 billion. The final numbers will be released by the Treasury Department, but...
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Pentagon Grounds All F-35s
By Michael RaineyThe U.S. Defense Department grounded all F-35 jets on Thursday, on the heels of a crash on September 28 in South Carolina. Investigators examining the loss of an F-35B, the Marine Corps’ version of...
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Trump’s Border Wall: A Christmastime Clash Is Coming
There won’t be much holiday cheer on Capitol Hill this year, Politico’s Playbook warns : “Over the last few days, we’ve seen a massive ramp-up of the ‘build-the-wall’ rhetoric from key Hill...
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How GOP Rhetoric on Entitlements Has Changed
By The Fiscal Times StaffThe Washington Post’s David Weigel describes how Republicans have changed their tune on Medicare and, for this year at least, largely abandoned the idea of entitlement reform: “[O]ver eight years,...
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GOP Lawmakers Push Back on Trump’s Federal Pay Freeze
By Michael RaineyContradicting a plan announced by President Trump, Republican lawmakers have tentatively agreed to give roughly 2 million federal workers a pay 1.9 percent pay hike next year, The Washington Post...
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Larry Kudlow Wants to Put a ‘Big Dent’ in Government Spending
Larry Kudlow, the director of President Trump’s National Economic Council, is once again talking up the economy and talking down the threat posed by rising debt and deficits. And once again, he’s...
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Price Drops for Next Batch of F-35s
By Michael RaineyThe Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have reached an agreement on the financial terms for the next batch of F-35 Lightning IIs. The so-called Lot 11 production will include 141 stealth jets, with 91...
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One Key Way the US Lags Behind Finland (and Denmark and Taiwan)
By The Fiscal Times StaffThe U.S. ranks 27th in a new study that ranks 195 countries based on “expected human capital” — the population’s overall level of survival, health and education, considered a key determinant of...
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Congress Fails to Pass Farm Bill
By Michael RaineyThe federal farm bill expired at midnight on Sunday, leaving dozens of programs in limbo until Congress can pass a new spending package or an extension of the old one. Lawmakers were unable to agree...