Budget

Hurricane Michael Might Have Damaged More Than $1 Billion Worth of F-22s

By Michael Rainey

By 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...
Federal Deficit Jumps 17 Percent to $779 Billion

By Yuval Rosenberg

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...
Mnuchin Spins a False Claim About Tax Cuts and the Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

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...
Pentagon Grounds All F-35s

By Michael Rainey

The 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...
Trump’s Border Wall: A Christmastime Clash Is Coming

By Yuval Rosenberg

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...

How GOP Rhetoric on Entitlements Has Changed

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The 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,...
How the Army ‘Found’ $25 Billion

By Michael Rainey

The U.S. Army has been combing through its existing programs to identify potential sources of funding that can be applied to its ambitious modernization program, and according to Army Secretary Mark...
529 Plans Are Growing — and So Is Their Cost to the Government

By Yuval Rosenberg

Education savings accounts called 529 plans have grown dramatically since 2010, both in terms of the number of accounts and total assets, according to research by The Pew Charitable Trusts . And they...
The Post-Election Outlook: ‘Debt, Debt and More Debt’

By Yuval Rosenberg

The 2018 elections are looking like a lose-lose proposition for the U.S. bond market, according to Bloomberg’s Liz McCormick and Alex Harris : “If Democrats take the House, it raises the odds that...
The Pentagon’s $71 Billion Fiscal Cliff

By Yuval Rosenberg

Late last month, President Trump signed into law a $670 billion defense spending bill for fiscal 2019. Now, Travis J. Tritten writes in the Washington Examiner , the fight over the next such bill is...

Why Democrats Want to Bring Back Earmarks

By Michael Rainey

Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) wants to restore earmarks as part of Democrats’ effort to “ fix government ” should the party win control of the House in November. The use of earmarks — funds for...
Congress Reaches Spending Deal to Avoid Shutdown. Will Trump Go Along?

By Yuval Rosenberg

Congressional leaders have struck a bipartisan deal to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month and put off a divisive fight over funding for President Trump’s border wall with Mexico...
Is Joe Scarborough Right About the GOP and the National Debt?

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Former GOP congressman and current Trump antagonist Joe Scarborough laid into the president and his party this week, finding fault with, among other things, their track record on deficit spending. "...
‘Things Are So Much Worse’ – but Does Anyone Care About the Deficit?

By Yuval Rosenberg

As we told you yesterday , the Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the deficit for the first 11 months of fiscal 2018 totaled $895 billion, or $222 billion more than it was over the...
Pharma CEO: It's a 'Moral Requirement' to Raise Prices

By Michael Rainey

Nostrum Laboratories, a small pharmaceutical firm based in Missouri, raised the price of the antibiotic nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392 a bottle last month. Here is how the CEO, Nirmal Mulye,...