Budget

Why $21 Trillion in Debt Doesn't Bother the Credit Agencies

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The U.S national debt has surpassed $21 trillion, up 2.8 percent since the start of the year, but two of the leading credit agencies aren’t worried about the country’s ability to keep up with its...
How the US Government Saved $178 Billion Since 2011 — and Could Save Billions More

By Yuval Rosenberg

Congress could save tens of billions of dollars by acting on recommendations to improve efficiency and reduce duplication, overlap and fragmentation within government programs, the Government...
A Plan to Save $25 Billion at the Pentagon

By Michael Rainey

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) released a plan last week to cut $25 billion in spending at the Pentagon, largely through reductions in what the lawmaker says are...
Why the Deficit Outlook Could Be Even Worse Than It Seems

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The Congressional Budget Office warned earlier this month that the U.S. will start running $1 trillion deficits in 2020, and that the national debt will be nearly as large as the economy in a decade...
Why Republicans Won’t Even Try to Pass a Budget for 2019

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Budget expert Stan Collender at Forbes slams Republicans for not even attempting to pass a budget for the fiscal year that starts October 1. “The House and Senate Budget Committees only have one job...

Deficit Owls Say You Shouldn’t Give a Hoot About $1 Trillion Budget Shortfall

By Yuval Rosenberg

As warnings rise about the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the federal budget deficit is on pace to top $1 trillion in 2020, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein on Friday highlighted a...
How Congress Cheats with Our Money — and How We Can Stop It

By Marc Goldwein and Zach Moller

The U.S. is on course to top its record debt levels set after World War II, and permanent trillion-dollar deficits — meaning, forever — are likely to return within two years . And unlike after World...
Will Work for Food? Republicans Push Stricter Rules for SNAP

By Michael Rainey

Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps, is provided in the farm bill, a massive spending and regulatory package Congress passes every...
April Is Financial Literacy Month. Someone Tell Congress.

By Joseph J. Minarik and Caroline L. Ferguson

February is Black History Month, March is National Women’s Month, and April? Well, it’s Financial Literacy Month, of course! The U.S. government gave financial literacy its own month in 2003. April...
Why All the Warnings About Unsustainable National Debt Could Be Wrong

By Michael Rainey

International economists are warning about rising global debt levels and deficit hawks in Washington are increasingly worried about what they see as unsustainable debt levels in the U.S., but a new...

US Borrowing Nearly $300 Billion This Week

By Michael Rainey

The Treasury Department plans to sell a record $294 billion worth of bills and notes this week, according to Bloomberg . The tax cuts signed into law by President Trump are causing a decline in...
A Surprise Winner in the $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill

By Michael Rainey

President Trump had plenty of complaints about the massive spending package Congress sent him last week, at one point even threatening to veto the bill before finally signing it into law on Friday...
What We Learned from the Omnibus Spending Deal

By Yuval Rosenberg

Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes at The Washington Posts’ Monkey Cage that the deeper lesson...
Trump Brings Some Reality-TV Drama to the Spending Deal

By Yuval Rosenberg

After injecting some late drama and suspense into the $1.3 trillion spending bill, President Trump on Friday signed the legislation, avoiding a government shutdown by funding federal operations...
The Spending Deal: $1.3 Trillion, 2,232 Pages, One Messy Process

By Yuval Rosenberg

One vote down, one to go. The House on Thursday easily passed a bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending bill, setting the stage for a Senate vote that would avoid a government shutdown after midnight on...