Politics and government links

Investor Slams Washington Over Debt Ceiling Stalemate: "It's like Watching A Caveman Trying To Disarm A Nuclear Bomb With A Club"

S&P Will Slash America From AAA To D If The Treasury Misses A Payment

DEBT CEILING: There's One Thing In The Market That's Making Lawmakers Nervous

The Deficit Is Worse Than We Think: Normal interest rates would raise debt-service costs by $4.9 trillion over 10 years, dwarfing the savings from any currently contemplated budget deal.

The Actual Cost Of America's Wars Is $2.7 Trillion Higher Than Congress Will Admit

Higher Taxes Lift State Collections

U.S. Launches Drone Strikes In Sixth Muslim Country

Bad Mortgages Weigh on Banks

U.S. banks hold a much higher rate of defaulted mortgages on their books than do mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks.
The report said 19.7% of mortgages in banks' portfolios were delinquent at the end of March. By contrast, nearly 6.8% of mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie were nonperforming, as were 11.4% of all mortgages.

Christie Loses 2nd Term Support as Residents Oppose Cuts

Managing Director of Sovereign Ratings at S&P on Possible US Debt Downgrade to "D" Default if Debt Ceiling Not Raised

Air Conditioning Afghanistan Troops Costs $20 Billion Per Year; Cost of One Soldier is $1 Million a Year; Hotel California

10 Years Later, How Bush-Era Tax Cuts Changed America 

Pensionscare

N Korean children begging, army starving

America’s Dumbest Budget Cut. Why Republicans are wrong to put fiscal arithmetic ahead of global influence.

It Has to Start With Them

Huntsman Steps Into the Republican Vacuum

Say what you will, it's a war in Libya. The Obama administration, in trying to get around the War Powers Act, has assaulted the very meaning of the word 'war.'

Shadow Congress: Nearly 200 Ex-Lawmakers Work For Lobbying Shops

Falling tax revenue is hurting U.S. shipping and prosperity. How to fix crumbling U.S. roads, rails and airways.

Pentagon costs rising fast, CBO warns

The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday projected that higher costs for weapons systems and health care will increase the Pentagon budget by $40 billion over the next five years at a time when President Obama and many lawmakers are looking to cut military spending.
The new projection, of $594 billion in spending for 2016, is $25 billion higher than the Pentagon’s estimates.
The report notes that health-care costs for the Defense Department have outpaced those elsewhere. It also says that “the costs of developing and buying weapons have historically been, on average, 20 percent to 30 percent higher” than Pentagon estimates.
Defense officials already were concerned about the rapid growth of the Military Health Care System. Next year’s request for $51 billion represents about 9 percent of the overall Defense Department base budget.
If no steps are taken to halt the growth of the health-care program, the nonpartisan CBO projects that costs would grow to $92 billion by 2030, nearly double the amount requested for fiscal 2012. The CBO report notes that spending on drugs in the defense health program grew by an average of 2.2 percent a year from 2006 to 2010, while the national average growth was only 1.2 percent.
The CBO cautioned that its estimates are based on historical trends and reflect how rapidly defense budgets “would have to grow” to execute the Pentagon’s plans. The report points out that Congress or the White House could change those plans, noting Obama’s intention to seek $400 billion in reductions from spending on national security in the next 12 years.
The report projects that military personnel costs over the five-year period will grow by $5 billion and that procurement costs will grow by $36 billion. Operation and maintenance, which includes a majority of the Defense Department health-care program, would increase by $26 billion.
The CBO projections assume that civilian employee pay in the Defense Department, which has been frozen for two years, will increase in 2014 at a pace similar to raises for military personnel.

CBO: We’ll only have giant deficits if Congress wants giant deficits

The Congressional Budget Office just released the latest edition of itslong-term budget outlook (pdf), and it shows the same thing as always: If Congress lets the Bush tax cuts expire or offsets their extension, implements the Affordable Care Act as scheduled and makes or offset the Medicare cuts prescribed by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act — which CBO calls the “extended baseline scenario” — the national debt will be totally manageable. If Congress passes laws extending the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the cost, repealing the Affordable Care Act and its cost controls and protecting doctors from Medicare cuts without making up the savings elsewhere — the “alternative fiscal scenario” — the national debt will be totally out of control:








This is a good time to remind everyone that when you hear politicians telling you that their plan cuts taxes or balances the budget, you always need to ask what baseline they’re using. Almost all the plans on the table, for instance, do less to balance the budget than simply doing nothing. But since they use a version of the “alternative fiscal scenario” as their baseline, they don’t have to admit that before they make the deficit somewhat better, they’re first planning to make it much, much worse.