Fox Mulder: Bloomberg Reports that Washington DC Metro Area is a Boomtown.
Between the tax dollars, exempting themselves from Obamacare, paychecks from JPMorgan and an unlimited bond buying program courtesy of the federal reserve, it’s not hard to see why DC could be considered a booming city.
In the city of politicians and central bankers, it’s not hard to see that the unemployment rate is only 5.5%, with an annual GDP growth rate of 1.5%.
From the 2014 budget from Mayor Gray:
- Creating a structurally balanced budget;
- Avoiding new taxes;
- Continuing to invest in education, public safety and workforce preparedness; and
- Maintaining the District’s social safety net for our most vulnerable residents.
So if Washington is booming, my question would be this:
How long before Washington busts?
Poor Richard's News: Unsustainable: Government spending per household exceeds median household income
President Obama has spent more money than any world leader in history, and according to 2010 census data, the Federal Government is actually spending per household more than the median per-household income.
from Terence Jeffrey:
As reported in my new book, “Completely Predictable,” the combined spending of federal, state and local governments per American household actually exceeded the median household income for 2010, which is the latest year for which all relevant government data are available.
In fiscal 2010, according to numbers published by the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), net spending by all levels of government in the United States was $5,942,988,401,000. That equaled $50,074 for each one of the 118,682,000 households in the country.
In that same year, according to the Census Bureau, the median household income was $49,445.
That means total net government spending per household ($50,074) exceeded median household income (49,445) by $629.
Government in the United States, of course, has not always spent more per year than the median household earns. As recently as 2000, the relationship between government spending and household income was dramatically different.
I don’t want to offend any drunken sailors here, so I’ll just say that President Obama’s spending is completely out of control. With every dollar this government spends, we hurl closer and closer to a financial crisis like the ones in Cyprus, Greece, and all across the EU.
Poor Richard's News: Surprise! Cost of Obamacare exchanges doubles initial projections
Lies and broken promises: that is the legacy of Obama’s “signature achievement” as President. Healthcare costs are skyrocketing, premiums are going up, and the American people are being taxed into oblivion.
Now, it seems that the “cost-saving” healthcare exchanges aren’t really going to do all that much saving. Obama’s budget proposal indicates that the exchanges will cost double what was initially estimated.
from Bloomberg:
The $1.3 trillion U.S. health-care system overhaul is getting more expensive and will initially accomplish less than intended.
Costs for a network of health-insurance exchanges, a core part of the Affordable Care Act, have swelled to $4.4 billion for fiscal 2012 and 2013 combined, and will reach $5.7 billion in 2014, according to the budget President Barack Obama yesterday sent to Congress. That spending would be more than double initial projections, even though less than half the 50 U.S. states are participating.
The unanticipated spending is a consequence of an ambitious timetable dictated by Congress and a complex new way of offering people medical coverage, say analysts, lobbyists and administration officials. Combine that with a majority of Republican governors declining to cooperate with a Democratic president and U.S. regulators are left grasping to get the 2010 health law up and running by a Jan. 1, 2014, deadline.
Let me take a moment to remind everyone that when this article says “an ambitious timetable dictated by Congress,” it’s not talking about the current Republican-led House. It’s referring to 2009’s Democrat controlled House that passed the bill in the first place.
Clearly, Obama and his Democrat allies have bitten off more than they can chew, and depending on how you view things, it could mean a significant defeat for Obama’s signature law. On the other hand, if you’re in the Cloward and Piven crowd (of which Obama is), the inevitable collapse of the massive welfare state might be exactly what you have in mind.
Poor Richard's News: What Sequester? Feds spend $1.5 million to study why lesbians are fat
Here at PRN, we’ve tried to curb all the sequestration drama by reporting the truth about it. For instance, we reported that sequestration was indeed Obama’s idea to begin with, that no actual cuts would occur because of it and all the grandstanding being done by the those on the left, including the president, simply weren’t true. But another way in which we’ve tried to keep it all in perspective is to report on the hundreds of billions of dollars our government wastes every year. And of all the things we’ve found, this one might just be the most amazing.
From CNS News:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of “high public-health significance.”
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity.
“Obesity is one of the most critical public health issues affecting the U.S. today,” the description of the grant reads. “Racial and socioeconomic disparities in the determinants, distribution, and consequences of obesity are receiving increasing attention.”
“[H]owever, one area that is only beginning to be recognized is the striking interplay of gender and sexual orientation in obesity disparities,” it states. “It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with it continues.
“In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males.”
My thoughts after reading this: What. Did. I. Just. Read.
The phrase “minority sexual orientation” sounds like it needs to be in a joke about politically correctness run amok. But unfortunately it’s not a joke. It’s real life. This is what we’re up against folks. No, not fat lesbians, rather, a government who thinks it’s acceptable to take your money to study them.
Poor Richard's News: White House admits: Obama not interested in a balanced budget
Here’s a piece of news in which the White House states the obvious: President Obama is not seeking to balance the Federal budget. If you read this blog regularly (or just have a fingernail’s grasp on reality), you already knew this to be true.
It’s just kind of nice to have Press Secretary Jay Carney actually admit it.
from Politico:
White House press secretary Jay Carney on Monday signaled that President Obama is not looking to balance the federal budget but rather to decrease the amount the country borrows each year while fostering economic growth.
“The broader effort underway here is to try to through the budget process achieve a compromise that allows for both entitlement reform and tax reform that produce the savings necessary to achieve that $4 trillion-plus targeted for 10 years of deficit reduction, to put our economy on a fiscally sustainable path, and that is the president’s goal – deficit reduction large enough to put our economy on a fiscally sustainable path so that the ratio of debt to GDP is below 3 percent in a period of time that would allow, concurrently through investments and other policy decisions, allow the economy to grow,” Carney said at a press briefing Monday.
Pressed on whether the president would present a balanced budget this year or if balancing it was a goal, Carney said he would not detail what will be in the budget proposal and pointed to previous budgets as an example of what to expect.
“The president’s budget will achieve what it has in the past, which is through sensible, balanced deficit reduction, to bring our deficit and debt into a place where we are on a fiscally sustainable path,” he said.
Oh, don’t be confused. Obama will still use phrases like “balanced approach” and “restoring balance” or in this case “balanced deficit reduction.” He likes the word “balance” because it polls well. But an actual balanced budget (e.i. one in which we don’t spend more than we take in)? Obama is clearly not interested.
In fact, anytime you hear this administration use the words “balanced” or “deficit reduction,” or even “spending cuts” you can safely assume that they mean “raise taxes.”
Poor Richard's News: 40 things that have changed since the last Federal budget was passed.
The last time a budget was passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate was April 9, 2009. That’s exactly 1400 days ago today.
To mark such a momentous occasion, I thought I’d take a look back at how the world was before April 9, 2009. A lot has changed since then…
- Manti Te’o hadn’t yet played his first game as a freshman at Notre Dame
- Michael Jackson was still alive.
- The iPhone didn’t support 3G data networks.
- Susan Boyle hadn’t yet been discovered on Britain’s Got Talent
- Conan O’Brien was the host of the Tonight Show on NBC
- Nobody had ever heard of Ke$ha
- Obamacare hadn’t yet passed.
- Hannah Montana The Movie was #1 at the box office
- The first episode of Jersey Shore hadn’t yet aired
- George Steinbrenner was still alive and the owner of the Yankees
- A gallon of gasoline cost only $2.06
- Obama had not yet won a Nobel Peace Prize
- Gold cost $958 per ounce
- Everybody still thought Tiger Woods was a classy guy
- Anthony Weiner was still in Congress
- Neither the Vancouver nor the London Olympics had happened
- Justin Bieber had never released an album
- The United States had a AAA credit rating with every agency
- You could still buy a 100 watt incandescent light bulb
- Charlie Sheen still starred on Two and Half Men
- The Saints had never won the Super Bowl
- Amy Winehouse was still making music
- Brett Farve played quarterback for the New York Jets
- Bernie Maddoff was still operating his ponzi scheme
- Lance Armstrong was still riding in the Tour De France
- David Hasselhof was judge on America’s Got Talent
- Seve Jobs was still the CEO of Apple
- Oprah Winfrey still had a daytime TV show
- Chrysler and GM had not yet filed for bankruptcy
- The H1N1 Swine Flue scare hadn’t happened
- Hosni Mubarak was the President of Egypt
- Ted Kennedy was still a Senator
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince hadn’t yet released to theaters
- Myspace was more popular than Twitter
- BP had not yet spilled 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico
- Skinny jeans were not yet a fashion trend
- Osama Bin Laden was still hiding out in Pakistan
- Prince William hadn’t yet proposed to Kate Middleton
- The National Debt was less than $11 Trillion
- Tim Tebow was still playing for the Florida Gators
This is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of stuff has happened in the past 1400 days, but a budget passing the US Senate is not one of them.
Poor Richard's News: Obama: People will DIE if Congress doesn't agree to avoid the sequestration cuts that I proposed
Obama’s fear-mongering is in full swing over the sequestration budget cuts that were his White House’s idea in the first place. In one of the biggest flip flops you’ll ever see, the President is now claiming that people will actually die if Congress doesn’t agree to get rid of the thing that he came up with as an “enforcement mechanism.”
from Washington Times:
The White House on Sunday stepped up pressure on Republicans to adopt a short-term budget patch that would cancel the $85 billion in spending “sequesters” due on March 1, saying that government spending is still needed to prop up a stubbornly sluggish economy.
Late last week, White House officials laid out a list of potential cuts they would have to make if the sequesters aren’t averted, saying they’d be forced to kick children out of the Head Start education program and cut federal loans to small businesses. The officials even warned that more American workers could die as a result of furloughs for occupational safety inspectors.
So, here’s an idea. Let’s just use this as an opportunity to get rid of all of Obama’s bad ideas. We’ll get rid of the sequestration if we can also get rid of Obamacare, the stimulus law, and pretty much every other bill Obama has signed.
Poor Richard's News: Paul Ryan: the sequester will take effect because Obama failed to act
One of the funnier moments of last night’s State of the Union address was when President Obama denounced the sequestration cuts as a “bad idea” without acknowledging that it was his own bad idea.
Today, Paul Ryan told CBS News that he believes the sequester will indeed happen because Obama missed his window to avoid the across the board cuts.
from the Hill:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday predicted the sequester would take effect, blaming President Obama and Senate Democrats for not offering an alternative or passing a budget.
“Because the Senate has not acted, because the president has not put a proposal yet on the table, that is why I think the sequester will probably occur,” Ryan told CBS’s “This Morning.” “We have acted in the House. The Senate has not, the president has not, and that is why I think it will happen.”
The $85 billion in automatic spending cuts is scheduled to kick in on March 1 despite opposition in both parties. Republicans have sought to pin the blame for the sequester on the president, saying it was Obama’s idea to include the measure in the 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling, and that he has failed to provide a plan to replace it.
“Don’t forget it’s the president who first proposed the sequester,” Ryan continued. “It’s the president who designed the sequester as it is now designed.”
Quite frankly, I wish Obama would go ahead and admit that all of his ideas are bad ideas. Then we could really get somewhere.
Poor Richard's News: Obama breaks the law by missing the deadline to submit a budget...for the third time in a row
There will be no consequences. There is no accountability. President Obama continues to violate the law, and no one will do anything about it.
from the AP:
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that he had no updates on when President Barack Obama will release his budget for the next fiscal year.
“I don’t have an update on the President’s budget,” Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One as the president travels to Minneapolis to discuss his gun control proposals when asked when Obama will submit his spending plan to Congress. The deadline for submitting his budget for fiscal year 2014 is Monday, February 4, 2013 under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921.
Republicans have blasted Obama for missing the deadline — his third consecutive miss and the most of any president since the act was passed, according to data from the House Budget Committee.
The Obama administration is lawless.
UPDATE: This is the fourth time in five years that Obama has missed the legal deadline.
The real fiscal cliff: health care
Is all this talk of the “fiscal cliff” making you sick? Actually, it’s the other way around: The biggest long-term driver of the federal budget and its eye-popping deficit is health care.
Chart of the day.
1,000 Days Without A Budget (by HeritageFoundation)
http://blog.heritage.org | Today marks the 1,000th day since the United States Senate has passed a budget. While the House has put forth (and passed) its own budget, the Senate has failed to do the same. To help illustrate how extraordinary this failure has been, our new video highlights a few of impressive feats in history that have been accomplished in less time.
Rand Paul returns $500K in office budget to Treasury
Rand Paul returns $500K in office budget to Treasury
Freshman Sen. Rand Paul is making good on his promise to cut federal spending. The Kentucky Republican and tea-party favorite said Thursday he’s returning $500,000 to the U.S. Treasury — money from his operating budget that his office never spent.
The half million dollars represents about 16 percent of Paul’s annual budget, and he contends no senator has returned as much to taxpayers.
“I ran to stop the reckless spending. And I ran to end the damaging process of elected officials acting as errand boys, competing to see who could bring back the biggest check and the most amount of pork,” Paul said at a news conference in Louisville, where he presented taxpayers with a massive mock check for $500,000.
“I hope this sets an example for the rest of government – at all levels,” he added. “We can carry out our duties in a fiscally responsible way. Government can be both smart and efficient. We are proving that – and trying to convince the rest of Washington.”
Paul is the son of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul and co-founded the Senate tea party caucus. As the younger Paul stumped for his father in Iowa and New Hampshire, there’s been plenty of speculation that Rand Paul could launch a presidential bid of his own in 2016.
I am betting most elected in Washington will never do this. Good for you Rand Paul.
Slight delay on the news here, but as many already know, the Senate failed to pass the stop gap measure required to keep the government from shutting down on Sept 30th. Why? Because the the House Bill followed the rules instated under Obama.
According to paygo rules, all new spending needs to be offset with cuts (of course we know how often Obama has kept to those rules) but I guess the GOP members finally got their heads out of their you know whats and are following the rules. This of course is causing gridlock once again in the budget process.
