deficit

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Deficit Chickens Coming Home to Roost

...for both parties

(Newser) - The deficit rage we’re seeing ahead of the midterm elections is a “strange and wonderful thing, about the only thing that gives me hope that our country may yet escape ruin,” writes venture capitalist Bill Frezza for Real Clear Markets . Until now, elections have always hinged on...

GOP Is Extorting Middle Class
 GOP Is Extorting Middle Class 
Paul Krugman

GOP Is Extorting Middle Class

Krugman: Mitch McConnell might as well be a gangster

(Newser) - Mitch McConnell knows he doesn’t have the votes to blow up the budget by extending big tax cuts for the rich. “So he’s trying to get what he wants by pointing a gun at the heads of middle-class families,” writes Paul Krugman of the New York ...

When It Comes to Global Competitiveness, US Is ... 4th

Large deficits, bleak economic outlook to blame

(Newser) - Today is not a great day for US dominance : For the second year in a row we've taken a hit in the global competitiveness rankings, this time falling from second to fourth due largely to our government debt and weak economic outlook. In first place until two years ago, we've...

GOP's Policies Are Cheap, Incoherent

 GOP's 
 Policies 
 Are Cheap, 
 Incoherent 
Ruth Marcus

GOP's Policies Are Cheap, Incoherent

John Boehner isn't the kind of opposition leader we need

(Newser) - Sometimes, Ruth Marcus thinks it would be nice if the country had a divided government. It would force the GOP to quit posturing and start governing, and allow Democrats to make hard choices on entitlement spending. “That’s the theory. Then there’s John Boehner,” she laments in...

Budget Deficit Will Be $1.3T: CBO
Budget Deficit Will Be $1.3T: CBO

Budget Deficit Will Be $1.3T: CBO

But analysts expect it to improve soon

(Newser) - Congress' budget analysts are estimating that this year's federal deficit will exceed $1.3 trillion, slightly below last year's total but still a huge ocean of red ink. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the enormous shortfall is a result of the still staggering economy, which has meant lower federal...

Social Security Is Just Fine

 Social Security Is Just Fine 
Paul Krugman

Social Security Is Just Fine

There's no crisis, conservatives just hate the program

(Newser) - Social Security turned 75 last week, but nobody felt much like celebrating, because the program is under an “unnecessary, unfair and—let’s not mince words—cruel attack,” writes Paul Krugman of the New York Times . Some Democrats and most Republicans claim social security is in crisis, and...

Geithner to World: Relax, We're Raising Taxes

Axing the Bush tax cuts is just the start

(Newser) - Tim Geithner said something pretty interesting about the Bush tax cuts in his speech yesterday at the Center for American Progress. The Treasury secretary explained why the administration was letting the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans expire now. “The world is likely to view any temporary...

Bush's Tax Cuts Need to Go

 Bush's Tax 
 Cuts Need 
 to Go 
Ruth Marcus

Bush's Tax Cuts Need to Go

Republicans seem to have lost touch with fiscal reality

(Newser) - Republicans seem to have two beliefs about taxes: First, taxes can go down, but never up, and second, no matter how high taxes are, they’re too high. That stance is “intransigently divorced from reality,” writes Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post . Just as Democrats have to accept...

Voters Support Helping Jobless, Despite Deficit

Polls show support for extending benefits

(Newser) - Most voters are in favor of helping the unemployed even if it means adding to the deficit, writes Arthur Delaney at the Huffington Post , who rounds up recent polls:
  • A CBS survey found that 52% of respondents—including 35% of Republicans—supported extending unemployment benefits at the cost of increasing
...

G20 Leaders Head Home, Vowing to Cut Deficits

Economic powers set goals for reducing public debt

(Newser) - The leaders of the Group of 20 nations wrapped up their 2-day summit today in Toronto, striking an agreement to reduce deficits over the next 3 to 6 years without endangering the global economic rebound. The major economic powers vowed to cut their deficits in half by 2013 and "...

Deficit Hawks Impervious to Math, Logic
Deficit Hawks Impervious to Math, Logic
Paul Krugman

Deficit Hawks Impervious to Math, Logic

It's the '30s all over again as Germany, US cut spending

(Newser) - Paul Krugman is in Germany, and he’s sparring with deficit hawks, in this case supporters of Angela Merkel’s new austerity plan. It “feels a bit like arguing with US Iraq hawks back in 2002,” he writes in the New York Times . “They know what they...

Why We Need a Bank Tax
 Why We Need a Bank Tax 
OPINION

Why We Need a Bank Tax

There will be future bailouts, so make banks pay their share

(Newser) - The recent financial crisis wasn't the first time banks needed a taxpayer bailout, and it won't be the last. That's why a bank tax is the best way to protect taxpayers from the cost of future crises, David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times —better than the current...

Ticket-Crazed Virginia Hands Out 6,996 in One Weekend
Ticket-Crazed Virginia Hands Out 6,996 in One Weekend
cha-ching dept

Ticket-Crazed Virginia Hands Out 6,996 in One Weekend

States across the nation look to motorists as a way to fix budget gaps

(Newser) - In the olden days, cops handed out traffic tickets to keep us safe; in our brave, new, cash-strapped world, states and municipalities are pushing police to hand out as many as possible—for the money they bring in. Just look at Virginia, where last weekend police wrote 6,996 tickets...

Obama Says He's 'Agnostic' on Middle-Class Tax Hike

Wants all options on the table to cut deficit

(Newser) - President Obama said Tuesday that he is "agnostic" about tax hikes for households making less than $250,000 a year, because he needs to consider all possible options for reducing the deficit. “What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of...

Dems Should Be Scared of This Man—and His Budget

Rep. Paul Ryan is offering a way to avoid deficit disaster

(Newser) - President Obama's outreach to the GOP is looking pretty hollow these days: Soon after Obama told Rep. Paul Ryan that there were some aspects of his budget blueprint he agreed with, Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups slammed the radical plan as a vicious, privatizing assault on Social Security and Medicare,...

Beware of Deficit Hysteria
 Beware of Deficit Hysteria 
PAUL KRUGMAN

Beware of Deficit Hysteria

GOP's fiscal fear-mongering hurts jobless

(Newser) - The "deficit hysteria" spreading throughout Washington and the media reminds Paul Krugman of the fear-mongering about weapons of mass destruction ahead of the Iraq war. Assertions that the deficit will doom the economic recovery and undermine America's place in the world are being tossed about as if they're facts,...

Obama Unveils $3.8T Budget Proposal

Plan includes record deficit, money for job program

(Newser) - Barack Obama sent Congress a budget proposal today that would push the deficit to $1.56 trillion—its highest level in history. The budget would raise taxes on the wealthy and freeze spending on a host of government programs, but calls for spending $100 billion on job creation, including tax...

Obama Lives in 'Fiscal Fantasy World'
 Obama Lives in 
 'Fiscal Fantasy World' 
KARL ROVE

Obama Lives in 'Fiscal Fantasy World'

Voters are waking up to president's free-spending ways

(Newser) - President Obama is trying to sound like he's turning tough on the deficit and federal spending in his State of the Union address, but Karl Rove isn't impressed and Americans shouldn't be, either. Obama has "rigged the game" by boosting discretionary domestic spending by more than $100 billion from...

Rick Warren Asks Followers for $900K, Pronto

Unexpected deficit sparks 'urgent' call for donations by tomorrow

(Newser) - Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church has hit a major fundraising speedbump and has asked members to help out with almost $1 million by tomorrow. Warren described the situation yesterday in an “urgent letter unlike any I've written in 30 years.” Last weekend, “our total offerings were less...

Obama to Tackle Jobs, Deficit

 Obama to Tackle 
 Jobs, Deficit 
speech preview

Obama to Tackle Jobs, Deficit

Pols split on how to use bailout bucks for recovery

(Newser) - President Obama will today outline a new push to tackle the country's surging unemployment and mounting deficit. The speech, at the Brookings Institution, comes as legislators are locked in a debate over how, exactly, to use surplus TARP funds to boost a tepid recovery. Republicans oppose dipping into the surplus,...

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