The Senate has passed its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 reconciliation bill – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the deficit impact , with interest, over the next 10 years will be $4.1 trillion. It would add $5.5 trillion to the nation’s debt if made permanent.
The Committee says the bill is littered with special interest giveaways and new tax and spending entitlements, relies on numerous budget gimmicks, makes the tax code more complicated and less fair and explodes interest costs to nearly $2 trillion per year – including by adding to the debt and pushing up interest rates throughout the economy.
“The Senate took a bill that already borrowed way too much, and took it from bad to worse,” the Committee said. “The Senate expanded the House’s tax breaks, watered down its offsets, introduced new special interest giveaways, and added another trillion dollars onto the price tag.”
DonaldTrump and the Republican Party say the Committee and the Democrats who agree with it are wrong. The White House says the measure will actually cut the deficit by $1.4 trillion.
According to Factcheck.org, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, extending lower rates passed in 2017 and adding new tax cuts. But Senate Republicans have taken steps to remove consideration of the 2017 tax cuts in determining the bill’s impact on the deficit. Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was presiding over the Senate in April, ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chair, had the sole authority to decide whether extending the 2017 tax cuts officially adds to the deficit.
Graham and like-minded Senate Republicans have said that because the tax cuts have been in effect and are “current policy,” they are not new and do not add to future deficits.
The U.S. government announces its annual deficit and national debt each year, and often more frequently, such as monthly. The U.S. Treasury Department provides detailed information on the figures.
The national debt is the total amount of money the U.S. government owes from past and present borrowing, while the deficit is the difference between the government’s spending and revenue in a single year.
The TreasuryDirect website publishes data on the national debt, and the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data website provides information on both the deficit and the debt. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases monthly budget reviews that include the deficit or surplus for that month.
My question – If the Republicans are right, how are they going to explain the increase in the deficit and national debt that likely will be announced down the road if The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eventually gets Trump’s signature? Hmmm. Tis a conundrum.
Maybe they will just mimic Gilda Radner’s character, Emily Litella, on Saturday Night Live. When her misguided rants were challenged she just said, “Never mind”?
In another example of Donald Trump’s pay-to-play presidency, the Trump administration plans to accept a luxurious $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane as a donation from the Qatari royal family that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One. Hopefully it won’t be loaded with ultra-sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. The plane will ultimately go to the Trump presidential library, ensuring Trump could continue to use it.. “This isn’t a good idea even if the plane was being donated to the US govt.”, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). “But Trump GETS TO KEEP THE PLANE???”
“…the issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms,” David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, said on CNN. “The issue with Donald Trump is he does not believe in rules and laws and norms. He thinks they’re for suckers. And he thinks if you can get a free plane, as he said today, why wouldn’t you do it? You wouldn’t do it because it’s a bribe.” The Free Press observed, “Just consider the plain matter of our national security. A plane handed to the president by a foreign government? Let alone a government that hosts the leaders of Hamas; cooperates with Iran; fuels popular antisemitism throughout the Arab world through its government mouthpiece, Al Jazeera; and has poured nearly more than $2 billion into American universities since 2021, as these campuses express solidarity with Palestinian terrorism?”
The opulent gold interior of the Qatari plane echoes the aesthetic of Trump Tower and Trump’s gold-centered redecoration of the Oval Office.
President Trump was asked on “Meet the Press” whether every person on U.S. soil was entitled to due process. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not a lawyer.”
On May 27, 2025, Trump pardoned Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins had been found guilty of 1 count of conspiracy, 4 counts of honest services fraud and 7 counts of bribery concerning programs receiving fed funds. Prosecutors said he accepted bribes from 8 people, including 2 undercover FBI agents. The men who bribed Jenkins paid for auxiliary deputy sheriff positions so they could avoid traffic tickets and carry concealed firearms without a permit. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, appointed by Trump, posted the comment “No MAGA left behind” about his decision to recommend a pardon for Jenkins.
Sheriff Scott Jenkins
Trump also announced on May 27 that he would be pardoning TV celebrities, Todd and Julie Chrisley, famous for the reality show, “Chrisley Knows Best”. The Chrisleys were convicted in 2022 of tax evasion and conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million in loans by submitting false documents. Prosecutors said the couple walked away from their responsibility for repayment when Todd Chrisley declared bankruptcy and left $20-plus million in unpaid loans. Julie Chrisley was sentenced to seven years in federal prison, and Todd Chrisley got 12 years behind bars. The couple was also ordered to pay $17.8 million in restitution, which will now be forgiven.
Todd and Julie Chrisley
The United States used to be a reliable trade partner with established policies, procedures and tariff rates so businesses could plan ahead. The Washington Post reported on May 15 that since Trump took office, he changed his tariff policies at least 50 times. Some didn’t last a day. “It’s been completely insane,” economist Michael Strain, with the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank, told the Post.
In with the gold, out with the old. President Trump has loaded down the historic Oval Office with gaudy gold decorations everywhere. “Gold has always been the color of absolute power and those who aspire to it,” says Kimberly Chrisman -Campbell. “But in more recent history, its meaning has become more complex: Its association with dictators, celebrities, and artists has also transformed it into a sign of excess, corruption, and cultural domination.”
Trump’s Oval Office/Biden’s Oval Office
On January 10, 2025, Trump released an “ethics agreement” that prohibited the Trump Organization from making deals with foreign governments. The Trump Organization subsequently cut a deal with Qatari Diar, a company established by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2005 to “coordinate the country’s real estate development priorities.” Together with Saudi Arabian company Dar Global, which has close ties to the Saudi government, the Qatari company plans to build a $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club in Qatar.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student on a valid F-1 student visa ,was arrested on March 25, 2025, by six masked plainclothes agents from the US Department of Homeland Security and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana.
The arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk
The only evidence cited against her was an op-ed she co-authored in the university newspaper a year earlier critical of Tufts response to the war in Gaza. She spent six weeks in detention before being freed after US District Judge William K. Sessions III ordered her immediate release.
On April 8, 2026, Trump said countries were “kissing my ass” to secure trade deals before increased tariffs were levied.
While ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghans who came to the United States after our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, exposing them to possible deportation, the Trump administration is using taxpayer dollars to fly white Afrikaner South Africans to the U.S. on chanter flights. Earlier this month, Trump said on Truth Social that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Christopher Landau, Deputy Secretary of State, and Troy Edgar, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary, greeted dozens of Afrikaners at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday, May 12.
The first group of Afrikaner refugees from South Africa arrived on May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
On May 4, 2025, Trump said he decided to announce he was reopening the Alcatraz prison. His reasoning? “It represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order,“ he said. “Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is uh, I would say the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies…. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something, uh, strong having to do with law and order… but it sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak.
Alcatraz Island today.
Trump launched a $TRUMP meme coin on January 17, 2025, just before he took office. In promoting the meme coin, there coin’s website says “Celebrate Our Win & Have Fun!” The website selling the tokens says the coins “are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type”. By late April 2025, it had fallen 88% from its high. Just 58 wallets cashed in over $10 million each on the coin, while a staggering 764,000 wallets were sitting on losses as of May 7, 2025, according to a report from Chainalysis. Trump offered an “intimate private dinner” with him for the 220 top holders of the meme coin, along with a private reception and White House tour for the top 25 investors. The promotion bumped up sales and generated an estimated $900,000 in trading fees. “With this meme coin dinner, Trump is giving the highest bidders access to the president while lining his own pockets,” MSNBC reported. Buying the meme coin allows investors to make an end-run around U.S. ethics laws: While noncitizens can’t donate to political campaigns, they can invest in those assets. “It looks very corrupt,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told the New York Times.
Where’s the public outrage? As Kyle Chayka wrote in The New Yorker, “The American public has been inundated with news of the Trump family’s self-enrichment for so long that many of their dealings now barely create a stir.”
The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, the Wall Street Journal reported on May 6, 2025. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information, said Director of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. “They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”
“As the stock markets crashed on Friday April 4, Donald Trump left Washington,” Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic. “He did not go to New York to consult with Wall Street. He did not go to Dover, Delaware, to receive the bodies of four American servicemen, killed in an accident while serving in Lithuania. Instead, he went to Florida, where he visited his Doral golf resort, which was hosting the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, and stayed at his Mar-a-Lago club, where many tournament fans and sponsors were staying, too. His private businesses took precedence over the business of the nation.”
On May 8, 2025, the Trump administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first Black woman and the first woman to hold the job, with a blunt two- sentence email, “”Carla, On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, her 10-year term was set to expire next year. On May 12, Trump named Todd Blanche, the lead defense lawyer in hTrump’s criminal trial in Manhattan last year, to replace Hayden, but encountered resistance when staff members at the Library refused to give two Justice Department officials access to the Library’s headquarters on Capitol Hill, insisting that Congress must have input on Hayden’s replacement.
Carla Hayden
On May 6, 2025, Kari Lake, asenior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government body that oversees Voice of America, said the far-right news coverage of the One America News (OAN) Network will fuel the Voice of America. Since World War II, the Voice of America has provided news coverage and cultural programming to people around the world who don’t have access to a free press. Its weekly audience is about 360 million. OAN is “a conspiracy-boosting outlet with a far fringier voice than right-leaning outlets like Newsmax and Fox News.,” reported CNN.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said on May 9, 2025, the White House was considering suspending habeas corpus for illegal immigrants in the United States. “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.” he said. “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”
Stephen Miller
President Trump has nominated Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, who has a reputation as a strong Trump defender on “The Five” talk show, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, DC. Pirro is the 23rd Fox employee Trump has appointed so far to his administration this term. Pirro was named in a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for questioning the validity of ballot tabulations on Fox’s broadcasts. Fox settled the case and was forced to acknowledge that statements by Ms. Pirro and others were false. In 2021, Trump pardoned Ms. Pirro’s former husband, Albert J. Pirro Jr., who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000.
Jeanine Pirro
House and Senate Republicans under Trump have come up with plans to pass tax cuts and defense and border security spending increases without requiring equal amounts of offsets. They would allow $3 to $7 trillion in new debt—making it one of the largest deficit increases in history. “At this moment—when the national debt is skyrocketing, we spend more on interest than national defense, and trust funds are on the brink of insolvency—if there is one thing that should be clear from a fiscal perspective, it is that we should not be passing new policies that add more to the national debt.,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. By 2027, under a reconciliation bill, debt would exceed the previous record of 106 percent of GDP set just after World War II.
Unfortunately, there is a risk that the bill could get even worse, according to the Committee.. Already, some members are trying to add to the bill’s costs – and the Senate reconciliation instructions allow for twice as much borrowing as the House’s.
In his second term, Donald Trump has been generous in issuing pardons. Early in his term, he issued about 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 criminals, including people convicted of violently assaulting police, then pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists and former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich. In late March, he pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. CNBC reported that after his criminal sentencing, Milton had “made significant political donations to Trump and his allies” including $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee in October of 2024. The Trump administration also terminated the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, after she opposed restoring actor Mel Gibson’s rights to carry a gun, her spokesperson and two Justice Department officials familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Shortly after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
By Peter L. Steiner, “Hopeless but not Serious”, Jan. 25, 2025
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” His reply: “I don’t know.”
“Nuttiness may be subjective, but truthfulness is not”
Bill Scher, Politics Editor, Washington Monthly
On Dec. 16, Donald J. Trump held his first press conference since his Nov. 5, 2024 election. Wishing to be of service to those of you who were too busy or not inclined to tune in, I reviewed the entire deluge of Trump’s rambling thoughts:
“We had no wars when I left office and now the whole world is blowing up.“
Truth: When Trump left office in early 2021, US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 200,000 US troops were deployed overseas, including 6,000 – 7,000 American troops spread across Africa, with the largest numbers concentrated in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, about 50,000 troops at roughly two dozen bases across Japan and about 2,000 Marines in northern Australia
“Lot of people don’t realize, but we did 571 miles of wall (on the Mexican border). I built much more than I said I was going to build.”
Truth: Early in his 2016 election campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall along the entire 2000-mile length of the border with Mexico. He later clarified he’d build a wall covering half of that distance. In his State of the Union address in February 2020, he pledged to build “substantially more than 500 miles” by January 2021.
Various types of fencing totaling 654 miles, running through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, were already in place before Trump became president in 2017. At the end of Trump’s first term, the Trump administration said it completed more than 400 miles of border wall, but only 80 miles of new wall barriers were actually built where there were none before. The vast majority of the construction replaced existing structures at the border that had been built by previous US administrations.
“We’re also going to create clean coal. Clean coal is something that has really taken over. …we’re going to be doing a lot of clean coal for the people of West Virginia and others, Wyoming.”
Truth: The idea of “clean coal” is generally considered not viable, as current technology cannot fully mitigate the environmental impacts of burning coal, making it essentially a marketing term with little practical application; while some technologies can reduce emissions, the process remains too expensive and energy-intensive to be considered truly “clean” on a large scale, with many experts stating that “clean coal” is a myth
“So we’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion and it’ll have no impact. Actually. It’ll make life better, but it’ll have no impact on people. We will never cut social security or things like that. It’s just waste, fraud and abuse.”
Fact: This would certainly run counter to Trump’s actions in his first term, during which he added $8 trillion to the national debt, despite having promised to run budget surpluses. The federal government is now burning through $6.8 trillion annually and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Trump’s proposed policies would add an estimated $7.7 trillion to debt over the next decade. Cutting $2 trillion in one year would be impossible, as well, given that Trump has already said he’s not going to touch Social Security or Medicare., the two largest government programs, and interest payments, which account for 13% of federal spending, can’t be cut either (Unless the government plans to default on the national debt). Discretionary spending accounts for only about 25% of total expenditures, but that includes defense, which Congress has no inclination to cut.
“We’ll immediately restore the sovereign borders of the United States and stop illegal immigration.”
Truth: Over the past 30 years, the Border Patrol’s budget has grown more than sevenfold, the number of agents stationed along the southwest border has quadrupled, the border wall has been strengthened and lengthened, and increasing amounts of technology have been used to deter illegal migrants, but they have kept coming, more and more of them from countries other than Mexico. Also complicating the situation, a substantial number of the illegal immigrant population in the United States came legally on work visas and stayed after they expired. The government has been terrible at finding and deporting these people.
“We had no problems, we had no inflation. We had no inflation. We had at less than 1%. A perfect number.”
Truth: The Consumer Price Index rose 7.8% during Trump’s first term. The CPI rose an average of 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was about the same as the average under Obama (1.8%) and below the average of 2.4% during George W. Bush’s years.
Trump responding to a question, “Do you believe there’s a connection between vaccines and autism? Do you believe there’s a link?” Trump: We’re looking to find out. …There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.”
Truth: Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD.), but to date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD, according to the federal Centers for Disease control and Prevention.
Two studies, referred to as the Wakefield Studies, have frequently been cited by those claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Both studies are considered critically flawed. In the first study, published in 1998, Wakefield’s hypothesis was that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused a series of events that include the development of autism. The study was subsequently retracted; in scientific terms, this means that the paper is not part of the scientific record because it was found to be based on scientific misconduct. In this case, the studies were deemed fraudulent and data misrepresented. The second study, published in 2002, which examined the relationship between measles virus and autism, was also critically flawed. Meanwhile, several studies have been performed that disprove the notion that MMR causes autism.
Trump responding to a question – “Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?” Trump – “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person.”
Truth: Mandating vaccinations of schoolchildren saves lives. Schools and broader communities rely on high immunization rates to keep vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading. When more children are immunized, the risk for everybody declines, particularly for people with weakened immune systems and chronic medical conditions like lung, heart, liver, kidney disease or diabetes. The more parents who decline to vaccinate their children, the greater the risk that infection will spread in the community.
“Europe doesn’t use pesticides, and yet they have a better mortality rate than we do.”
Truth: Pesticides are still widely used in Europe, with the agricultural sector relying on significant volumes of chemical pesticides to maintain crop yields, although the EU has regulations in place to limit their use and is actively working to reduce pesticide reliance because widespread pesticide use is major source of pollution, according to the European Environment Agency.
” They’re still counting the vote in California.“
Truth: California did take longer to count votes in the recent federal elections than other states, but the California Secretary of State had certified the 2024 election results prior to Trump’s news conference.
“We got the biggest tax cuts in history.”
Truth: Trump’s tax cut s in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars. When the Congressional Budget Office reviewed tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023, it found that two other tax cut bills were bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut was the largest in U.S. history, reducing revenues by $19 trillion over a decade.
The US took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs “from China” during Trump’s first term and “no other president took in 10 cents, not 10 cents.” before he was president.
Truth: First, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics the revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports come from the importers, not China. Importing businesses pay the tariffs and then have to decide whether to bear some of the costs or pass any portion of the cost on to consumers through higher prices.
Second, according to the Institute, Americans have been paying tariffs on imports from China for decades., going as far back as the late 19th and early 20th centuries and more recently during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.
Talk about depressing news. The following came out just today:
The Republicans’ House tax bill includes a provision lifting a 1954 ban on political activism by churches.
According to the New York Times, one complaint to NBC about “Today” host Matt Lauer came from a former employee who said Lauer , who is married, had summoned her to his office in 2001, locked the door and sexually assaulted her, instigating intercourse. She told The Times that she passed out and had to be taken to a nurse.
North Korea showed on Wednesday that missiles it has developed could reach all of the United States.
The House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 38) on Wednesday that would allow concealed-carry permit holders from one state to legally carry their guns in any other state, regardless of any other state’s concealed-carry laws. Additionally, the bill specifies that a qualified individual who lawfully carries or possesses a concealed handgun in another state: (1) is not subject to the federal prohibition on possessing a firearm in a school zone, and (2) may carry or possess the concealed handgun in federally owned lands that are open to the public.
Garrison Keillor, the down-home host of A Prairie Home Companion until last year, has been fired by Minnesota Public Radio over allegations of misconduct.
With the U.S. Department of State in turmoil, there are reports that President Trump will replace Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who has held his job for only 10 months, with Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA. Politico reported today that Pompeo has no formal diplomatic experience and is widely considered a hawk skeptical of the kind of international deal-making, even with America’s enemies, that many diplomats consider a necessary part of U.S. foreign policy.
Yesterday, President Trump shared videos on Twitter that supposedly portray Muslim turmoil, committing acts of violence, images that are likely to fuel anti-Islam sentiments. UK Prime Minister Theresa May admonished Trump, declaring that he was “wrong” to share anti-Muslim videos posted online by a “hateful” British far-right group. Some MPs in Parliament called Trump “racist,” “fascist” and “evil.”
While Trump and Republican members of Congress are pushing to lessen regulation of for-profit schools, California is suing for-profit online-only Ashford University and its parent company, Bridgepoint Education, for misleading students about its tuition costs, burying them in student loan debt and offering little of value in return.
Steven T. McLaughlin, a member of the New York Assembly, was only moderately disciplined for sexual harassment after an investigation by the Assembly’s ethics committee found that he had asked a female Assembly staff member for naked pictures. The sanctions include forbidding him to employ interns, and an official statement of admonition from the Assembly speaker. The ethics committee also determined that he leaked the name of his accuser, in violation of instructions he had received that the victim’s name and incident remain confidential.
Despite warnings from investment professionals Jamie Dimon, Jack Bogle, Warren Buffett , Joseph Stiglitz and Ben Bernanke that Bitcoin is a fraud, people are still buying it. Bitcoin advanced yesterday to a high of $11,434 before the reversal took it as low as $9,009,” though “as of 3:36 p.m. in New York, it traded at $9,911.10. “If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day,” Dimon said.
Media disclosed that the Republicans’ House tax bill includes a provision conferring a new legal right for fetuses. The provision would allow families to open 529 educational savings accounts for “unborn children” – essentially college plans for fetuses. Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, argues, “Affirming this language through the tax code would lay the foundation for “personhood,” the idea that life begins at conception thus granting a fetus in utero legal rights. It’s long been the holy grail of the anti-choice movement, since it would be the basis on which they would argue to outlaw abortion entirely.”
Media reported that playwright-screenwriter Israel Horovitz has been accused by nine women of sexual harassment. One accuser said she was 19 when she began a summer fellowship with Horovitz at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts. On her first night, she said, Horovitz drove her to the family home. locked the door, kissed and fondled her, then led her to his bedroom, where she said he raped her.
A Nov. 26-28 poll by pro-Trump group, America First Policies, found Republican Roy Moore ahead of Democrat Doug Jones 46 percent to 45 percent.
And finally…
After spending eight years bitching about the unconscionable $9 trillion increase in the national debt under Obama, Republicans are pushing a tax bill that could add $1.5 trillion or more to the deficit over the next 10 years and maybe a lot more if Congress renews expiring tax provisions.
Tweedledee. Tweedledum. This is what we get when the two parties work together, a massive spending spree.
A $1.1 trillion federal spending bill and a $650 billion tax package unveiled today show that neither party gives a damn about holding down spending. It’s not that all the items to be funded are wasteful or unneeded, but the package will push spending above previously agreed limits by $66 billion in 2016 and permanently extend a vast array of tax benefits that will add at least a half-trillion dollars to the federal deficit, once a matter of great concern.
Bowing to pressure on Republicans and Democrats from medical device manufacturers across the county, including in Oregon, anti-Obamacare zealots, and ticked-off unions with expensive healthcare plans, the legislation will postpone for two years (which probably means forever) a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices manufacturers, that was expected to raise $29 billion of net revenues over 10 years and a so-called “Cadillac Tax” tax on expensive employer-sponsored healthcare plans, that was projected to raise about $30 billion over 10 years to cover new spending under Obamacare. Then, to add insult to injury, the legislation makes the Cadillac tax refundable when it restarts. The lost taxes will blow a hole in planned funding to cover the cost of Obamacare.
The Defense Department will get $1111 billion for new military equipment, including F-35 Joint-Strike Fighters, Black Hawk helicopters, attack submarines and guided missile destroyers.
A 40-year-old oil export ban will be rescinded and, in trade, Democrats will get expensive extensions of wind and solar power tax incentives.
A research and development tax credit will be expanded and extended permanently.
The $1,000 Child Tax Credit will be extended permanently.
The Earned Income Tax Credit will be permanently extended.
A federal health program for first responders and construction workers who worked at the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and a separate victims compensation fund will be extended at a cost of $8 billion.
A National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund will be created to “support work that helps Americans understand and adapt to forces like sea level rise, severe storms, and ocean acidification” associated with climate change.
The American Opportunity Tax Credit, an annual credit for tuition and other qualified expenses, will be permanently extended.
A $250 annual deduction on qualified expenses of teachers will be indexed for inflation and permanently extended.
Five tax credits tied to charitable donations by individuals and businesses will be permanently extended.
Funding for the IRS will be frozen, punishing the IRS for targeting conservative groups, but also further limiting its ability to go after tax scofflaws and, this, reducing tax receipts.
A $255 per month pre-tax benefit for parking and public transportation expenses will be permanently extended.
But aside from all the spending, Congress did accomplish a few good things.
There will be a pay freeze for Vice President Biden, for example.
Also, earlier this year the dour, stick-in-the-mud Capitol Police said sledding by gleeful children and adults on the snow of Capitol Hill would no longer be allowed. The package asks that the Capitol Police rescind that prohibition so the jollity can resume.
The left’s collective veneration of the state and readiness to surrender self- reliance to its generosity are becoming ever more evident as the presidential race accelerates.
After exhaustive research, the New York Times has concluded that if the federal government raised taxes on the wealthy it could generate a lot of money. You don’t say.
The Times also figured out that the potential amount of revenue the government could raise from the wealthy would depend on how much the government raised their taxes. That’s groundbreaking.
Not only that, The Times said, but the government could raise one hell of a lot of revenue from high earners “…while still allowing them to take home a majority of their income,” How very thoughtful.
The Times effused over the things the government could do with a ton of additional tax revenue, like eliminating undergraduate tuition at all the country’s four-year public colleges and universities, as Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed. The potential next step — student loan forgiveness?
With the base of the Democratic Party moving swiftly to the left, you can expect more of these “we can do it because the wealthy will pay for it” proposals.
In the end, the Times took 2085 words to conclude that the more you tax rich people, the more taxes the government will collect (assuming the well-off don’t figure out how to avoid paying the taxes) and the more the government can spend on all sorts of stuff.
What the Times didn’t do is address the question of whether it would be a good thing for the government to reap enormous revenue increases and vastly expand its penetration into our daily lives.
Do we really want a massive expansion of government that would be a successor to the New Deal and the Great Society?
When you invite the government to pay for more things, the government becomes your partner, or, more likely, your boss. Is that what Americans want?
When government gives you things, they always come with new federal rules and regulations accompanied by known and unknown costs. Is that the American dream?
The Times also didn’t address the growing fiscal problems we are already facing:
Federal spending still exceeds revenue by over 400 billion dollars a year
deficits are expected to resume growing
even with declines in discretionary spending imposed by sequestration, entitlements are expected to grow in the future.
“You wouldn’t know that we have an unsustainable fiscal path from the debate we’re having right now,” Rudy Penner, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Wall Street Journal.
A message to the left and the NY Times. Be careful what you wish for.
(P.S. – Yes, I know, you also have conservatives proclaiming how they want to cut taxes when we can’t even pay our bills now, but that’s another story)
Remember how Jon Lovitz, as Tommy Flanagan, the pathological liar on Saturday Night Live, would build a narrative that was a series of lies and say, “Yeah! That’s the ticket!”?
The Democratic debate was like that.
Want something for nothing? When I’m president, you’ll get it: Tuition-free public colleges and universities; free mandatory parental leave, without burdening small businesses; $15 minimum wage with no increase in productivity; enhanced Social Security benefits; Tax cuts for middle-class families; Refinancing of federal college debt at a low interest rate; Government subsidies of Obamacare for people in the United States illegally; move America to 100% renewable energy with federal subsidies.
The Democrats offered up a grab bag of free stuff. How would they pay for it all? Hillary summed up the Democratic Party’s answer. “ I know we can afford it, because we’re going to make the wealthy pay for it,” she proclaimed.
Yeah! That’s the ticket!
Reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s observation, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
The national debt stands at $18.2 trillion, up from $10.6 trillion when President Obama took office, and it is continuing to increase an average of $1.88 billion a day.The debt goes up when the government doesn’t get enough revenue in a given fiscal year to pay its bills. Annual federal deficits have been shrinking lately, but that pattern isn’t expected to last as the budget takes hits in the coming years.
And then, of course, the country already faces problems with covering the huge costs of entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.
Unless we want to embrace ever-higher deficits, money would need to be found to pay for the cornucopia of benefits the Democrats promise.
Hillary Clinton said not to worry, we’ll get it from higher taxes on the wealthy. “Right now, the wealthy pay too little and the middle class pays too much,” she said in the debate.
Echoing Clinton, Lincoln Chafee chimed in that the rich are doing fine, “so there’s still a lot more money to be had from this top echelon.”
The problem is that the top-earning 1 percent of Americans (earning about $400,000 +), a pretty fluid club of individuals on a year-to-year basis, already pay almost 50 percent of federal income taxes and the top 25 percent pay about 87 percent, making the United States extraordinarily dependent on small slices of the population.
The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that high-income earners receive only pennies in federal benefits for every dollar they pay in federal taxes. In contrast, those in the middle 20 percent of earners received $2.23 in benefits for each dollar they paid and the lowest 20 percent receive close to $20 in federal benefits for every dollar they pay in federal taxes. In other words, the high-income earners are already subsidizing middle-income and low-income Americans.
“Despite the data, accusations that the rich are not paying their fair share continue,” The Manhattan Institute has reported. “This rhetoric is based more on perception than reality, or on a mistaken belief that the government needs more funds to become further entrenched in Americans’ lives. While this rhetoric may work as a populist rallying cry, the data show that a central tenet of the political left’s platform is simply incorrect.”
Democrats are again pulling out from their rhetorical basement accusations that Republicans are waging a “war on women”. Meanwhile, they’re ignoring another war that’s real, the “war on our children” that government spending addicts are prosecuting.
Our children are going to pay a heavy price for the fiscal insanity that has already led to national debt in excess of $17 billion.
The increase in our national debt over the past 25 years. years has been mind-boggling. In 1990, it was $3.2 billion, in 2000 $5.7 billion. By 2010 it was $13.6 billion. Now it has leaped to $17.5 billion.
But Democrats, in the spirit of “see no evil”, want to keep the issue under wraps and focus on other things. During a February 2014 House Financial Services Committee hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) even complained about two real-time running national debt clock displays in the hearing room. Ellison said it was just intended to send an ideological message.
Obama says his FY2015 budget proposal is an “opportunity agenda”. Yes, an opportunity for $564 billion more debt, an opportunity to increase total national debt to nearly $25 trillion over the next 10 years and an opportunity to pander to Americans who want it all without paying for it.
As Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said, Obama’s budget is a declaration that “deficits don’t matter, debt doesn’t matter, and that reality itself doesn’t matter.”
Some Democrats are arguing that annual deficits are dropping, so we can all back off worrying about the problem.
But the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget forecast projects that after a few years of lower deficits they’ll climb again for an indefinite period. In addition, the national debt will increase annually by much more than the amount of the deficit because a considerable amount of federal borrowing is not counted in the budget.
As a result, the CBO projects $7.9 trillion will be added to the nation’s cumulative public debt over the next decade.
That’s because revenue will keep up with economic growth, but spending will grow even more. “Spending is boosted by the aging of the population, the expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, rising health care costs per beneficiary, and mounting interest costs on federal debt,” the CBO said.
According to the CBO, interest payments will soon become the third largest item in the federal budget, after Social Security and Medicare. Right now, interest on the debt costs $233 billion. CBO projects that interest costs will reach $880 billion by 2024. As interest costs grow, they could crowd out investment in other priorities, including education, research and development, and other programs that could help our economy grow.
Large and growing federal debt that restrains economic growth will give policymakers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges, and eventually increase the risk of a fiscal crisis.
A Peter G. Peterson Foundation survey released on March 25, 2014 concluded that 67 percent of people say their concern about the national debt has increased over the past few years and 79 percent say that addressing the national debt should be among the President and Congress’ top 3 priorities.
And yet, Democrats continue to resist deficit-lowering efforts.
Deficit reduction surged as a policy priority during Obama’s first term: Between 2009 and 2013, the share citing the deficit as a top priority rose 19 points, according to a January 2014 report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In the most recent 2014 survey, majorities of Republicans (80%) and independents (66%) continued to say reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for the president and Congress, but just 49% of Democrats viewed it as a top priority, the lowest percentage since Obama took office. Going back 20 years, the gap between Republicans and Democrats on the issue has never been as large as it is today, Pew said.
Not exactly a hopeful sign for the emergence of bipartisan cooperation on the issue.
ThinkingOregon 