Tag: national debt

‘NO MORE!’: Rand Paul Unveils Plan to Slash Government Spending and Balance National Budget

by Breck Worsham, posted in economy, news, politics

WASHINGTON (Fox Business) — Sen. Rand Paul on Monday unveiled a new bill that includes trillions in budget cuts over the next five years in order to bring about a balanced budget.  

The Kentucky Republican’s proposal, a copy of which was first obtained by FOX Business, would yield a $65.8 billion surplus by fiscal year 2027. Collectively, the plan spends about $4.2 trillion less than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated during that time period, a person familiar with the matter said. 

“Five years ago, we could balance our budget with a freeze in spending. Not cut anything. Since then, our debt has skyrocketed to $30 trillion with $2 trillion just from this past year,” Paul said in a statement. “We cannot keep ignoring this problem at the expense of taxpayers, and my budget will put our nation on track to solve this crisis that Congress created.”

The plan calls for cuts across the budget, excluding Social Security, which is racing toward insolvency. What is cut will be determined at a later time through the normal spending process. The goal is to set a parameter that Congress must fit its spending agenda within, rather than identifying specific cuts now. 

Under the legislation, federal spending would freeze in fiscal year 2023 at the CBO’s projected baseline level of $5.874 trillion. From there, it would steadily decline each year; in fiscal year 2024, Paul proposed slashing federal spending by $298.3 billion.

Still, the success odds for the bill – dubbed the Six Penny Plan – are slim. Paul has introduced near-identical versions of the bill in the past, all of which have died in the Senate as the result of bipartisan opposition. Democrats previously opposed cuts to many domestic programs, while Republicans resisted any efforts to slash military spending. 

The gap between what the nation collects and what it spends has started to substantially decline following last year’s $2.8 trillion deficit, with the government expected to post a deficit of $1 trillion in fiscal 2022. 

But the CBO, in its latest budget and economic outlook released at the end of May, projected the shortfall will begin climbing again in 2024, eventually hitting more than 6% of GDP a decade from now. The U.S. has only recorded greater deficits than that six times since 1946.

“This is no time to break out the champagne glasses – deficits will remain extremely high and debt is on course to reach a new record as a share of the economy by 2031,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement after the report was released. 

The nation’s debt level is currently at a historic high of $30 trillion following unprecedented levels of spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Advertisement

CONSERVATIVES WARN: Feds Close to Spending More Than on Revolutionary, Civil War, WWI, II Combined

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON (CNSNews.com) — A coalition of conservative leaders sent a letter to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warning that the congressional spending in the coronavirus must stop because it’s getting very close to $10 trillion, which is more than the government spent fighting the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War I and II combined.

The Save Our Country coalition, which is made up of conservative leaders, called on Trump and Republican congressional leaders to “Stop the Spending.”

The coalition consists of: Stephen Moore, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity; Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks; Jim DeMint, chairman of Conservative Partnership Institute; Lisa Nelson, CEO of American Legislative Exchange Council; Arthur Laffer, Laffer Associates; Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago; Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots; Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform; William Bennett, former Reagan cabinet member; Brent Bozell, founder and president of Media Research Center; Scott Garrett, former member of Congress; Bob McEwan, Center for National Policy; Ed Meese, former Attorney General of the United States; Jim Miller, former Office of Management and Budget; and William Walton, Center for National Policy.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, they released new budget projections showing government spending is headed to 51 percent of GDP for the first time ever. The federal government has already spent trillions in stimulus funds, and the White House and Congress are considering plans to spend at least $1 to 3 trillion more.

“Congress has already spent more than $2 trillion on CoronaVirus relief packages. The irresponsible Pelosi bill that passed the House a week ago would raise that spending total to $5 trillion, which is on top of the $4.71 trillion that Congress already authorized,” the coalition wrote in the letter.

“We are getting very close to an unthinkable $10,000,000,0000,000 (ten trillion) federal budget, which is more money in one single year than the United States government spent, adjusted for inflation … to fight the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and World War II – combined,” they wrote.

The coalition noted that for the first time in history, “more than half of all national income would flow through the government,” when you take into account state and local expenditures.

“The inside-the-beltway crowd falsely calls these trillions of dollars a ‘stimulus’ to the economy. But government can only give money to some people, as Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman taught all of us many years ago, by taking money from others,” the coalition wrote.

“Government spending – and policies such as paying millions of workers more money to stay unemployed than to go back to work, and paying states more money to enable them to stay shut down – is inhibiting the fast recovery we want in jobs and incomes, not stimulating it,” they wrote.

The coalition said that “runaway government spending is the new virus” afflicting the U.S. economy. They say that “the best way to supercharge a jobs recovery would be to repeal the payroll tax so that every working American would receive a 7.5% raise in the paycheck immediately, and every small business would see a reduction in their payroll costs of 7.5%”

“This incentivizes hiring and work. The economy desperately needs more of both of these and less debt spending,” they wrote.