Tag: budget

Bernanke headlines a day of grim warnings about the nation’s fiscal standing

12:24 pm

Fed chairman Bernanke issued a grim warning yesterday about the federal government’s overwhelming debt. Key quote:

The national debt is currently about 60 percent of the economy, or Gross Domestic Product, [Bernanke] said, adding that it is projected to reach 90 percent of GDP by 2020 and 150 percent of GDP by 2030. But Bernanke’s citation of $9.5 trillion in national debt didn’t include the $4.6 trillion owed by the government to trust funds for things such as Social Security and Medicare, which have paid out cash to the Treasury in exchange for promisory notes. The full national debt – when both forms of debt are included – is already just under 100 percent of GDP, which is currently around $14.6 trillion.

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FEMA considers, than cancels spending a billion on MREs

7:29 pm

Government stupidity in action: FEMA considered then canceled (thank goodness) a proposal to spend more than a billion dollars on Meals-Ready-to-Eat on the very slim chance that the New Madrid fault in the midwest might produce a major earthquake sometime in the three years.

Unfortunately, they still haven’t canceled plans to buy 7 million emergency blankets and 550 million gallons of water in individual 1-liter plastic bottles.

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Congressional Budget office says Social Security Now Officially Broke

6:51 pm

And you still think NASA (or any other federal program) is going to get a lot of money? The Congressional Budget office (CBO) admitted today that Social Security is now officially broke. Key quote:

The CBO’s revenue/expenditure estimates now place the program in permanent deficit. There had been some hope that payroll taxes would recover sufficiently post-recession to put the program back into the black (the theoretical black) for at least a few more years, putting off the day of reckoning for an election cycle or more. No more: The new CBO estimates put Social Security in the red for as far as the eye can see. [emphasis mine]

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Ship of fools

3:52 pm

Iowahawk: Ship of Fools. Key quote:

As you may have read recently, a panel of 100 scientists is now warning that the state of California faces the risk of severe “superstorms” that could inflict more that $400 billion in economic damages to our state economy. According to these predictions, such storms could bring more than 120 inches of rain to the Central Valley, and last as long as 40 days. And, possibly, nights.

In anticipation of such a catastrophic event, I will soon begin seeking $75 billion in emergency supplementary appropriations from the California Assembly and federal sources for the construction of the California SuperArk, a state-of-the-art mass transportation vehicle which will help insure the sustainability of our state and its endangered species.

Read the whole thing.

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What Congress Should Cut

9:33 pm

What Congress should cut. And they find $3 trillion in only 14 paragraphs. Key quote:

None of this will be easy. Many will likely demagogue any reduction in the rate of growth of spending as a devastating “cut.” But the politics of spending has changed, and there is an expectation among fiscally conservative voters—Republicans, independents, tea partiers and even Democrats—that the government tighten its belt, just as American families have been forced to do. Some in the Republican establishment have already started complaining that this is too politically difficult. These naysayers misread today’s political climate. Should they succeed in blocking change, tea party voters will hold them just as accountable as big-spending Democrats.

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A look at the U.S. government’s planned budget for climate research

1:18 pm

The next time someone begins ranting about how the money from “big oil” is used to attack the science of global warming, tell them to take a look at this post, which outlines in detail the more than $2 billion that the U.S. government plans to spend on climate change research in 2011 alone (too much of which is unfortunately used by partisans like James Hansen to try to prove the Earth is warming).

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Hawaii’s earmark funding spigot appears to go dry

10:18 am

Oink! “Nonprofit groups, for-profit businesses, the University of Hawaii, and state and local governments” in Hawaii are faced with a loss of funding due to the end of earmarks in Congress.

What is most interesting about this article isn’t just that it gives a great deal of space to those who oppose earmarks and spending (something you don’t see that often in an AP article), but that the comments are almost universally in favor of eliminating earmarks as well as cutting the federal government. A truly hopeful sign.

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