Federal Budget Quotes

Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive

The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

We spend an inordinate amount of money of the federal budget on the machinery of war, and neglect our kids in the process, and it's not OK

Food safety oversight is largely, but not exclusively, divided between two agencies, the FDA and the USDA. The USDA mostly oversees meat and poultry; the FDA mostly handles everything else, including pet food and animal feed. Although this division of responsibility means that the FDA is responsible for 80% of the food supply, it only gets 20% of the federal budget for this purpose. In contrast, the USDA gets 80% of the budget for 20% of the foods. This uneven distribution is the result of a little history and a lot of politics.

In some cases, they are already doing so. Influenced by a coalition of community groups, the New York City Council passed a historic budget in the summer of 2014 that created a $1.2 million fund for the growth of worker-owned cooperatives. Richmond, California has hired a cooperative developer and is launching a loan fund; Cleveland, Ohio has been actively involved in starting a network of cooperatives, as we’ll see in the next chapter; and Jackson, Mississippi elected a mayor (Chokwe Lumumba) in 2013 on a platform that included the use of public spending to promote co-ops. On the federal level, progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders are working to get the government more involved in supporting employee ownership.130

Guess what? None of these guys said anything when the Trump administration added $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit by the end of 2019—before a single dime was spent on COVID-19 relief. They were rubber stamps for it in Congress. Many of them who raised huge stinks about TARP were only too happy to let Trump bail out farmers hurt by his trade war with China. These are the same people who were willing to destroy our economy to make their point but went on to suddenly abandon this core principle.

We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. 57 Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. 58 Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total ) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. 59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.

Think of renovating a house like operating the federal government. You start with a budget and the revenue to finance it. Then the special interests keep adding items to the list; you have to end the war between the interior decorator and the electrician, so you pump in more money to buy peace; and by the time you’re done, you’re $16 trillion in debt and having to borrow money from the Chinese.

According to the magazine there are currently 1,810 billionaires. Their combined net worth is $6.5 trillion. The proposed 2017 U.S. federal budget is $4.2 trillion. All the billionaires on earth put together could—if Washington is careful not to have any budget overruns—keep America going for eighteen months.

Under Coolidge, the federal debt fell. Under Coolidge, the top income tax rate came down by half, to 25 percent. Under Coolidge, the federal budget was always in surplus. Under Coolidge, unemployment was 5 percent or even 3 percent. Under Coolidge, Americans wired their homes for electricity and bought their first cars or household appliances on credit. Under Coolidge, the economy grew strongly, even as the federal government shrank. Under Coolidge, the rates of patent applications and patents granted increased dramatically. Under Coolidge, there came no federal antilynching law, but lynchings themselves became less frequent and Ku Klux Klan membership dropped by millions. Under Coolidge, a man from a town without a railroad station, Americans moved from the road into the air. Under Coolidge, religious faith found its modern context: the first great White House Christmas tree was lit, an ingenious use for the new technology, electricity. Under Coolidge, the number of local telephone calls went up by a quarter. In Silent Cal’s time, Americans learned to chatter. Under Coolidge, wages rose and interest rates came down so that the poor might borrow more easily. Under Coolidge, the rich came to pay a greater share of the income tax.

In 2016, the $148 million allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts accounted for .004% of the federal budget expenditures ($3.9 trillion). Suppose we eliminated it in response to criticism? Trying to balance the budget by eliminating the NEA would be like editing a 90,000-word novel by eliminating 4 words.

The outlay for defense was 4.6 percent of the GDP in 1950; by 1953 it had risen to 13.8 percent. In 1940 the federal budget devoted 16 percent to defense; in 1959, more than 50 percent. By 1955, the American alliance system circled the globe, and we were pledged to the defense of practically everybody, including a host of despots and autocrats. The

Like my native Mississippi. For every dollar Mississippians pay in federal income tax, the state receives just over $3 back from the federal government. More than 40 percent of Mississippi’s entire budget comes from Washington. Who pays for that? Those evil states like California and New York, where the good citizens pay a dollar in taxes and get less back from the government.

Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75

Polls show that Americans significantly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. In November 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, on average, Americans believe that 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance, and more than 60 percent of people say that’s too much. But in reality we spend less than 1 percent of the budget on foreign aid.

Given such an array of challenges, one might expect people to welcome federal help. In truth, a very large proportion of the yearly budgets---in the case of Louisiana, 44 percent---do come from federal funds…

Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interest groups; hopes of balanced budgets and cheap, business-like administration always ran aground upon this fact. What was more, the United States was a democracy; whatever the doctrinaire objections to it, and however much rhetoric might be devoted to attacking it, a welfare state slowly advanced because voters wanted it that way. These facts gradually made the old ideal of totally free enterprise, unchecked and uninvaded by the influence of government, unreal.

I see the impossible work being done by of my friends at the federal agencies, the Pentagon, NATO, Five Eyes and the intelligence community. They are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful and with a fraction of the budgets required to render a viable defense.

It is a refinement of Jeremy Bentham’s formulation of utilitarianism, the idea that all humans tend to gravitate toward what make them happy, and to stay away from what hurts them. On that account, trekonomics could be seen as the highest form of utilitarianism. The Federation is organized in such a way that every one of its citizens gets a chance to maximize his or her own utility. Since almost nothing is scarce, the necessity to make choices on budgeting and spending is removed from everyday life. The only thing that one really needs to decide upon is how to balance the goal of bettering oneself vis-à-vis the injunction to better humanity. In other words, the biggest challenge for every Federation citizen resides in how to allocate his or her talents, time, and capacity for empathy, and how to best contribute to the common wealth.

Of the $16.5 billion the federal government transfers to states for TANF, more than $11 billion is siphoned off for other uses, sometimes to fund a state’s child welfare system. Strained state budgets are thus eased. TANF has become welfare for the states rather than aid for families

And every year the Pentagon bite of the federal dollar got bigger and bigger. In Reagan’s eight years in office, military expenditure doubled from around $150 billion to $300 billion a year, until it represented nearly 30 percent of our overall annual budget and more than 6 percent of GDP.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, “Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and avoidance of large federal deficits on the other; it is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, as long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget—just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, the paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now.

But the real reasons why scientists promote accommodationism are more self-serving. To a large extent, American scientists depend for their support on the American public, which is largely religious, and on the U.S. Congress, which is equally religious. (It’s a given that it’s nearly impossible for an open atheist to be elected to Congress, and at election time candidates vie with one another to parade their religious belief.) Most researchers are supported by federal grants from agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, whose budgets are set annually by Congress. To a working scientist, such grants are a lifeline, for research is expensive, and if you don’t do it you could lose tenure, promotions, or raises. Any claim that science is somehow in conflict with religion might lead to cuts in the science budget, or so scientists believe, thus endangering their professional welfare.

We who are Americans witness in this hour the exhaustion of the American revolutionary ethic. Wherever we turn, that is what is to be seen: in the ironic public policy of internal colonialism symbolized by the victimization of the welfare population, in the usurpation of the federal budget—and thus, the sacrifice of the nation’s material and moral necessities—by an autonomous military-scientific-intelligence principality, by the police aggressions against black citizens, by political prosecutions of dissenters, by official schemes to intimidate the media and vitiate the First Amendment, by cynical designs to demean and neutralize the courts.

A 2014 article published in Politico found that the U.S. government spends more money each year on border and immigration enforcement than the combined budgets of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, and the U.S. Marshals.

In those early years, the federal government viewed AIDS as a budget problem, local public health officials saw it as a political problem, gay leaders considered AIDS a public relations problem, and the news media regarded it as a homosexual problem that wouldn’t interest anybody else. Consequently, few confronted AIDS for what it was, a profoundly threatening medical crisis.

In October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his administration’s War on Drugs. At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation.72 This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined “others”—the undeserving. Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75

Noting these developments, George Marshall, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now secretary of state, had undertaken a fact-finding tour of Europe—and he didn’t like the facts he’d found. He told President Truman that if something wasn’t done to put the prostrated nations of Europe back on their feet, international trade would be crippled and some, if not most, of these countries would fall to Communist proselytizing and intrigue. What became known as the Marshall Plan was a multibillion-dollar American self-help handout in which war-torn nations could apply for direct aid from the United States after submitting a recovery plan. (The package was worth more than a trillion in today’s dollars and up to 15 percent of the U.S. federal budget.) Stalin stupidly forbade the Soviet Union or any of the countries it occupied in central and eastern Europe

Thiel’s loathing for government spending did not apply when the government spent money on him. His next big startup, Palantir—a name borrowed from Tolkien—depended for survival upon the least transparent, least accountable, and most profligate extension of the federal government, the CIA. The agency invested in Thiel through its Silicon Valley VC front, In-Q-Tel. With Palantir, this self-described “civil libertarian” became an important player in the growth of a secretive, invasive, and patently unconstitutional global surveillance apparatus. Asked in a 2014 online chat if Palantir was “a front for the CIA,” Thiel replied, “No, the CIA is a front for Palantir.” With 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget going to the private sector, this dismissive wisecrack was not so much an outright denial as it was a sly wink at the extent of corporate dominance over even the most powerful federal agencies.

I’d like to learn more about this area—how the UN and the different international governance institutions came into existence, what power and levers do they have to get things done, what are their limitations and whether these are intentional or these organizations are being marginalized, why they’re set up as a federation of nations as opposed to a democratically elected international body, etc? One specific topic I’m interested in is why no one is arguing for a significantly stronger international government or system. That is, today’s system seems relatively weak—it has a small budget, it is beholden to nations as opposed to being elected or controlled directly by people globally, etc. Today it seems there are two primary proposals for how large countries want to interact with the international system: continue as is, or increasing isolationism. I’m curious why there isn’t a serious third option of strengthening this system further, and what would be potentially required to make that happen. I’m looking for any recommendations on how to learn about this: book recommendations, people to talk to or invite over for dinner, or other resources to check out.

The nuclear thing is harder to figure. The United States, according to a 1998 study by the Brookings Institution, spent nearly eight trillion in today’s dollars on nukes in the last half of the twentieth century, which represents something like a third of our total military spending in the Cold War. Just the nuke budget was more than that half-century’s federal spending on Medicare, education, social services, disaster relief, scientific research (of the non-nuclear stripe), environmental protection, food safety inspectors, highway maintenance, cops, prosecutors, judges, and prisons … combined.

The latest Congressional Budget Office figures show that the top 1 percent of income earners in the United States paid 39 percent of federal income taxes while earning 18 percent of pretax income and the top 5 percent of income earners paid 61 percent of federal income taxes while earning 31 percent of pretax income. Indeed, the top 40 percent of income earners paid 99.4 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 40 percent of income earners paid no federal income tax and received 3.8 percent from the tax system. And the middle 20 percent of income earners pay only 4.4 percent of federal income taxes.3

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it. Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they’re about money. The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates’ charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching bands, those people have concrete needs. They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, antitrust waivers and dozens of other things. They mostly don’t care about abortion or gay marriage or school vouchers or any of the social issues the rest of us spend our time arguing about. It’s about money for them, and as far as that goes, the CEO class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation. They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population. The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything. They get everything from the Republicans because you don’t have to make a single concession to a Republican voter. All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants pulled down or Mexican babies at an emergency room. Then you push forward some dingbat like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin to reassure everyone that the Republican Party knows who the real Americans are. Call it the “Rove 1-2.” That’s literally all it’s taken to secure decades of Republican votes, a few patriotic words and a little over-the-pants rubbing. Policywise, a typical Republican voter never even asks a politician to go to second base. While we always got free trade agreements and wars and bailouts and mass deregulation of industry and lots of other stuff the donors definitely wanted, we didn’t get Roe v. Wade overturned or prayer in schools or balanced budgets or censorship of movies and video games or any of a dozen other things Republican voters said they wanted.

There is inherent drama to a major Supreme Court case in which the powerful institutional actors include the Court itself. Some will emerge as winners and some as losers. But it is important to recognize that outside the courtroom, in less dramatic ways, the Court continually interacts with the other branches. The Court submits its annual budget request to Congress, and the justices take turns going before the relevant congressional subcommittees to testify about the Court’s fiscal needs. Congress determines the salaries of the justices and all federal judges. When John Roberts became chief justice, he made it a priority to persuade the president and Congress of the need for a long-deferred pay raise for federal judges, a plea that fell on deaf ears.

Trump wanted to know what the new individual income tax rates would be. “I like these big round numbers,” he said. “Ten percent, 20 percent, 25 percent.” Good, solid numbers that would be easy to sell. Mnuchin, Cohn and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said there needed to be analysis, study and discussion on the impact on revenue, the deficit and the relation to expected federal spending. “I want to know what the numbers are going to be,” Trump said, throwing out numbers again. “I think they ought to be 10, 20 and 25.” He dismissed any effort to crunch the numbers. A small change in rates could have a surprising impact on taxes collected by the U.S. Treasury. “I don’t care about any of that,” Trump said. Solid, round numbers were key. “That’s what people can understand,” he said. “That’s how I’m going to sell it.

The gross domestic product of the United States in 2001 was about $10.6 trillion. The budget of the federal government was about $1.8 trillion. In fiscal 2001, the government enjoyed a $128 billion operating surplus. Yet counterterrorism teams at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. working on Al Qaeda and allied groups received an infinitesimal fraction of the country’s defense and intelligence budget of roughly $300 billion, the great majority of which went to the Pentagon, to support conventional and missile forces. Bush’s national security deputies did not hold a meeting dedicated to plans to thwart Al Qaeda until September 4, 2001, almost nine months after President Bush took the oath of office. The September 11 conspiracy succeeded in part because the democratically elected government of the United States, including the Congress, did not regard Al Qaeda as a priority.

In her book The Government-Citizen Disconnect, the political scientist Suzanne Mettler reports that 96 percent of American adults have relied on a major government program at some point in their lives. Rich, middle-class, and poor families depend on different kinds of programs, but the average rich and middle-class family draws on the same number of government benefits as the average poor family. Student loans look like they were issued from a bank, but the only reason banks hand out money to eighteen-year-olds with no jobs, no credit, and no collateral is because the federal government guarantees the loans and pays half their interest. Financial advisers at Edward Jones or Prudential can help you sign up for 529 college savings plans, but those plans' generous tax benefits will cost the federal government an estimated $28.5 billion between 2017 and 2026. For most Americans under the age of sixty-five, health insurance appears to come from their jobs, but supporting this arrangement is one of the single largest tax breaks issued by the federal government, one that exempts the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance from taxable incomes. In 2022, this benefit is estimated to have cost the government $316 billion for those under sixty-five. By 2032, its price tag is projected to exceed $6oo billion. Almost half of all Americans receive government-subsidized health benefits through their employers, and over a third are enrolled in government-subsidized retirement benefits. These participation rates, driven primarily by rich and middle-class Americans, far exceed those of even the largest programs directed at low income families, such as food stamps (14 percent of Americans) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (19 percent). Altogether, the United States spent $1.8 trillion on tax breaks in 2021. That amount exceeded total spending on law enforcement, education, housing, healthcare, diplomacy, and everything else that makes up our discretionary budget. Roughly half the benefits of the thirteen largest individual tax breaks accrue to the richest families, those with incomes that put them in the top 20 percent. The top I percent of income earners take home more than all middle-class families and double that of families in the bottom 20 percent. I can't tell you how many times someone has informed me that we should reduce military spending and redirect the savings to the poor. When this suggestion is made in a public venue, it always garners applause. I've met far fewer people who have suggested we boost aid to the poor by reducing tax breaks that mostly benefit the upper class, even though we spend over twice as much on them as on the military and national defense.

This makes the country’s stalled progress on poverty even more baffling. Decade after decade, the poverty rate has remained flat even as federal relief has surged. How could this be? — Part of the answer, I learned, lies in the fact that a fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. To understand why, consider welfare. When welfare was administered through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance.[12] But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creative ways to spend TANF dollars. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.

1935 tax bill, then popularly called the “Soak the Rich Tax,” the top marginal income tax rate for individuals rose to 75 percent (versus as low as 25 percent in 1930). By 1941, the top personal tax rate was 81 percent, and the top corporate tax rate was 31 percent, having started at 12 percent in 1930. Roosevelt also imposed a number of other taxes. Despite all of these taxes and the pickup in the economy that helped raise tax revenue, budget deficits increased from around 1 percent of GDP to about 4 percent of GDP because the spending increases were so large.5 From 1933 until the end of 1936 the stock market returned over 200 percent, and the economy grew at a blistering average real rate of about 9 percent. In 1936, the Federal Reserve tightened money and credit to fight inflation and slow an overheating economy, which caused the fragile US economy to fall back into recession and the other major economies to weaken with it, further raising tensions within and between countries.

He didn’t speak exclusively on the stimulus bill at all these engagements, but the topic of that bill, and of government spending generally, was never far away at any of them. Why was he so deeply opposed to it? The idea behind the stimulus was to pump large amounts of cash into the economy in order to ignite consumer spending and, in turn, growth. The governor thought that idea was foolish for many reasons, but the two that led him to oppose the policy with all his energy were these: the cash was borrowed, and most of it would pass from the federal government to state governments. He understood the culture and habits of government well enough to know that that federal money wouldn’t be used to spur economic growth but to balance state budgets. Maybe it was a good idea to help states shore up their budgets and maybe it wasn’t, but that wasn’t the justification given for the stimulus, and in any case it would have no effect on economic growth. And he understood that, when the stimulus failed to achieve its purpose, people would remember that it was he who had inveighed against it with greater fervor than anybody else.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why if all politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excused the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered by private central bank. I exclude all of the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislators’ responsibility to determine how he votes. Don’t you see the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes. Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses — provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

The chorus of criticism culminated in a May 27 White House press conference that had me fielding tough questions on the oil spill for about an hour. I methodically listed everything we'd done since the Deepwater had exploded, and I described the technical intricacies of the various strategies being employed to cap the well. I acknowledged problems with MMS, as well as my own excessive confidence in the ability of companies like BP to safeguard against risk. I announced the formation of a national commission to review the disaster and figure out how such accidents could be prevented in the future, and I reemphasized the need for a long-term response that would make America less reliant on dirty fossil fuels. Reading the transcript now, a decade later, I'm struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I'm surprised because the transcript doesn't register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps: That MMS wasn't fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do. That the government didn't have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn't like paying higher taxes - especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn't happened yet. That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who'd done Big Oil's bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they'd be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures. And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn't have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn't going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster, the media rarely covered efforts to shift America off fossil fuels or pass climate legislation, since actually educating the public on long-term energy policy would be boring and bad for ratings; and the one thing I could be certain of was that for all the outrage being expressed at the moment about wetlands and sea turtles and pelicans, what the majority of us were really interested in was having the problem go away, for me to clean up yet one more mess decades in the making with some quick and easy fix, so that we could all go back to our carbon-spewing, energy-wasting ways without having to feel guilty about it. I didn't say any of that. Instead I somberly took responsibility and said it was my job to "get this fixed." Afterward, I scolded my press team, suggesting that if they'd done better work telling the story of everything we were doing to clean up the spill, I wouldn't have had to tap-dance for an hour while getting the crap kicked out of me. My press folks looked wounded. Sitting alone in the Treaty Room later that night, I felt bad about what I had said, knowing I'd misdirected my anger and frustration. It was those damned plumes of oil that I really wanted to curse out.

Reading the transcript now, a decade later, I’m struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I’m surprised because the transcript doesn’t register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps: That MMS wasn’t fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do. That the government didn’t have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn’t like paying higher taxes—especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn’t happened yet. That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who’d done Big Oil’s bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they’d be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures. And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn’t have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn’t going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster,

Anna Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, in Volgograd, formally Stalingrad, Russia, an important Russian industrial city. During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, the city became famous for its resistance against the German Army. As a matter of personal history, I had an uncle, by marriage that was killed in this battle. Many historians consider the battle of Stalingrad the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Anna earned her master's degree in economics in Moscow. Her father at the time was employed by the Soviet embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he allegedly was a senior KGB agent. After her marriage to Alex Chapman, Anna became a British subject and held a British passport. For a time Alex and Anna lived in London where among other places, she worked for Barclays Bank. In 2009 Anna Chapman left her husband and London, and moved to New York City, living at 20 Exchange Place, in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. In 2009, after a slow start, she enlarged her real-estate business, having as many as 50 employees. Chapman, using her real name worked in the Russian “Illegals Program,” a group of sleeper agents, when an undercover FBI agent, in a New York coffee shop, offered to get her a fake passport, which she accepted. On her father’s advice she handed the passport over to the NYPD, however it still led to her arrest. Ten Russian agents including Anna Chapman were arrested, after having been observed for years, on charges which included money laundering and suspicion of spying for Russia. This led to the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since 1986. On July 8, 2010 the swap was completed at the Vienna International Airport. Five days later the British Home Office revoked Anna’s citizenship preventing her return to England. In December of 2010 Anna Chapman reappeared when she was appointed to the public council of the Young Guard of United Russia, where she was involved in the education of young people. The following month Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World and in June of 2011 she was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine. In 2012, the FBI released information that Anna Chapman attempted to snare a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, in what was termed a “Honey Trap.” After the 2008 financial meltdown, sources suggest that Anna may have targeted the dapper Peter Orzag, who was divorced in 2006 and served as Special Assistant to the President, for Economic Policy. Between 2007 and 2010 he was involved in the drafting of the federal budget for the Obama Administration and may have been an appealing target to the FSB, the Russian Intelligence Agency. During Orzag’s time as a federal employee, he frequently came to New York City, where associating with Anna could have been a natural fit, considering her financial and economics background. Coincidently, Orzag resigned from his federal position the same month that Chapman was arrested. Following this, Orzag took a job at Citigroup as Vice President of Global Banking. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, the daughter of Greek shipping executive, Spiros Milonas, chairman and President of Ionian Management Inc. In September of 2010, Orzag married Bianna Golodryga, the popular news and finance anchor at Yahoo and a contributor to MSNBC's Morning Joe. She also had co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's Good Morning America. Not surprisingly Bianna was born in in Moldova, Soviet Union, and in 1980, her family moved to Houston, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a degree in Russian/East European & Eurasian studies and has a minor in economics. They have two children. Yes, she is fluent in Russian! Presently Orszag is a banker and economist, and a Vice Chairman of investment banking and Managing Director at Lazard.

Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines minister to accept the offer on the table. Two days later, Chrétien rose in the House of Commons to announce that the federal government would be taking a 15 percent equity stake in the Syn-crude project, with Alberta owning 10 percent and Ontario the remaining 5 percent. In the coming years, it would be Lougheed, with his steadfast support and multimillion-dollar investments in SAGD, who would be seen as the Patch’s great public sector champion. But it was Chrétien, “the little guy from Shawinigan,” whose backroom deal-making skills had saved Syncrude

These senators and representatives call themselves “leaders.” One of the primary principles of leadership is that a leader never asks or orders any follower to do what he or she would not do themselves. Such action requires the demonstration of the acknowledged traits of a leader among which are integrity, honesty, and courage, both physical and moral courage. They don’t have those traits nor are they willing to do what they ask and order. Just this proves we elect people who shouldn’t be leading the nation. When the great calamity and pain comes, it will have been earned and deserved. The piper always has to be paid at the end of the party. The party is about over. The bill is not far from coming due. Everybody always wants the guilty identified. The culprits are we the people, primarily the baby boom generation, which allowed their vote to be bought with entitlements at the expense of their children, who are now stuck with the national debt bill that grows by the second and cannot be paid off. These follow-on citizens—I call them the screwed generation—are doomed to lifelong grief and crushing debt unless they take the only other course available to them, which is to repudiate that debt by simply printing up $20 trillion, calling in all federal bills, bonds, and notes for payoff, and then changing from the green dollar to say a red dollar, making the exchange rate 100 or 1000 green dollars for 1 red dollar or even more to get to zero debt. Certainly this will create a great international crisis. But that crisis is coming anyhow. In fact it is here already. The U.S. has no choice but to eventually default on that debt. This at least will be a controlled default rather than an uncontrolled collapse. At present it is out of control. Congress hasn’t come up with a budget in 3 years. That’s because there is no way at this point to create a viable budget that will balance and not just be a written document verifying that we cannot legitimately pay our bills and that we are on an ever-descending course into greater and greater debt. A true, honest budget would but verify that we are a bankrupt nation. We are repeating history, the history we failed to learn from. The history of Rome. Our TV and video games are the equivalent distractions of the Coliseums and circus of Rome. Our printing and borrowing of money to cover our deficit spending is the same as the mixing and devaluation of the gold Roman sisteri with copper. Our dysfunctional and ineffectual Congress is as was the Roman Senate. Our Presidential executive orders the same as the dictatorial edicts of Caesar. Our open borders and multi-millions of illegal alien non-citizens the same as the influx of the Germanic and Gallic tribes. It is as if we were intentionally following the course written in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The military actions, now 11 years in length, of Iraq and Afghanistan are repeats of the Vietnam fiasco and the RussianAfghan incursion. Our creep toward socialism is no different and will bring the same implosion as socialism did in the U.S.S.R. One should recognize that the repeated application of failed solutions to the same problem is one of the clinical definitions of insanity. * * * I am old, ill, physically used up now. I can’t have much time left in this life. I accept that. All born eventually die and with the life I’ve lived, I probably should have been dead decades ago. Fate has allowed me to screw the world out of a lot of years. I do have one regret: the future holds great challenge. I would like to see that challenge met and overcome and this nation restored to what our founding fathers envisioned. I’d like to be a part of that. Yeah. “I’d like to do it again.” THE END PHOTOS Daniel Hill 1954 – 15

Unaware of New York City’s budget shenanigans, taxpayers expected city officials to keep the transit fare low and expand the city’s already generous municipal services. Making matters worse, the city had fewer middle-income taxpayers to pay for rising government expenses. New York City’s loss of manufacturing jobs meant fewer employment opportunities for the low-skilled, poorly educated workers who were attracted to the city. While middle-class taxpayers moved from the city out to the suburbs, the poor people who moved in required more expensive city services. In the early 1970s, the city had more than one million residents receiving welfare benefits, nearly a tenth of the nations’ recipients. More than three-quarters of the city’s welfare recipients had not even been born in New York City. Although the state and federal government paid for three-quarters of the welfare costs, the city’s share created a huge burden on its budget.82

for every year since 1983, total spending on scientific research has comprised a flat 3 percent of the total United States federal budget.

But it was not until 1984, when Congress amended the federal law to allow federal law enforcement agencies to retain and use any and all proceeds from asset forfeitures, and to allow state and local police agencies to retain up to 80 percent of the assets’ value, that a true revolution occurred. Suddenly, police departments were capable of increasing the size of their budgets, quite substantially, simply by taking the cash, cars, and homes of people suspected of drug use or sales.

spending in federal elections during the 2016 cycle was more than $16 billion, which is greater than the annual budgets of at least a dozen states.

whenever activists—especially black activists—challenged discriminatory or abusive policing or questioned state and federal budgets that shifted billions of dollars away from education, public housing, welfare, or drug treatment to brand-new, high-tech prisons, someone would inevitably interrupt the conversation to raise the subject of violent crime—especially “black-on-black crime.” This discursive maneuver was often performed casually in an offhand manner; yet it proved to be a stunningly effective way of refocusing attention on a relatively small number of individuals who cause harm, thus shielding from critique an entire system that inflicts incalculable harm on millions.

federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined.

That MMS wasn’t fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do. That the government didn’t have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn’t like paying higher taxes—especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn’t happened yet. That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who’d done Big Oil’s bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they’d be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 -- buried in an 11,000-page budget bill and never debated -- was passed the night before Congress recessed for Christmas in December 2000. It exempted credit-default swaps from federal oversight and from state gambling laws.

How many people would be shocked to discover that there were more federal government employees in 1967 (2.85 million, 6.3 million if we include the military) than there were in 2013 (2.77 million, approximately 4.3 million with the military)? How many would also be shocked to find that federal employees as a fraction of the civilian labor force has fallen by more than 50% since the 1960s? And how many know that Americans are one of the least-taxed people among the advanced countries in the world?

and it is argued that the special treatment of dividends and capital gains in the tax code is a far more lucrative entitlement program for the wealthy than any government program available to the poor.

Student Aid increased dramatically following World War II as a result of the GI Bill, reaching an astonishing 10.3% of the budget and 1.49% of GDP in 1947.

That means that 62% of all cash-assistance expenditures in 2013 were made through programs designed to encourage work and to assist the working poor

Each year, federal government agencies are budgeted a certain amount of money to spend. If within twelve months, any money is left over, the money allotted the following year is cut. To ensure their money is spent, departments have “meetings” in resorts such as Los Vegas, enjoying expensive hotels and meals to spend what remains, ensuring to not lose money for the following year. Investigations have shown this is one reason money spent on government contractors is often higher — the more spent — the more “needed” the following year. In the past, if a government agency saved any money, that amount is deducted from the next year’s budget. To prevent a Pentagon budget from being cut, it is always helpful to be in a war or have troops scattered throughout the world.

The government will also receive resources from mines and minerals, and other such revenue generating departments. During the current financial year, Balochistan received its complete share from the federal government as projected in the federal budget for 2020-21.

What the U.S. Soccer report showed—and what in turn the Philadelphia Inquirer explained—was that U.S. Soccer initially budgeted a $420,000 loss for 2016 but changed their numbers to expect a profit of almost $18 million, based largely on the gate receipts and merchandise sales of the women’s national team during the 2015 Women’s World Cup victory tour. That’s not all the report showed, though. The women’s team was projected in 2017 to earn more than $5 million in revenue for the federation. The men’s team, meanwhile, was projected to lose about $1 million. That was even as U.S. Soccer planned to spend about $1.5 million more on the men’s team.

Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.74 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.75 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.76

Pity that not one prediction ever made by Supply Siders ever came even remotely close to coming true. And that is ever. At any level, from the federal budget to states like Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma.

Even though welfare was a sliver of the federal budget and served at least as many white people as Black, the rhetorical weight of the welfare stereotype—the idea of a Black person getting for free what white people had to work for—helped sink white support for all government.

On August 12, 1987, in a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office, Reagan stated, among other things, that “[t]he Congressional budget process is neither reliable nor credible—in short, it needs to be fixed. We desperately need the power of a constitutional amendment to help us balance the budget. Over 70 percent of the American people want such an amendment. They want the federal government to have what 44 state governments already have—discipline. If the Congress continues to oppose the wishes of the people by avoiding a vote on our balanced-budget amendment, the call for a constitutional convention will grow louder. . . . ”6

In 1978, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare reported264 that it lost between $5.5 and $6.5 billion of its $150 billion annual budget to fraud, abuse, and waste. However, just 15 percent of that $5.5 to $6.5 billion—less than 1 percent of HEW’s yearly spending—got siphoned away due to “unlawful, willful misrepresentation (fraud) or excessive services and program violations (abuse).” Further, less than $500 million of the agency’s losses was attributable to the partially federally funded AFDC program. The vast majority of those debits, around $4 billion, came via Medicaid and other health care initiatives

Not long ago, I read that a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study had found a correlation between Germany’s deaths from the 1918 flu pandemic and support for the Nazis during the 1932 and 1933 elections. Controlling for other possible influences like unemployment and city budgets, the researchers found that high death rates boosted a locality’s support for Adolf Hitler’s party. Preliminary evidence suggests extremist

list of documents that may be required. It can look intimidating, especially if you’ve not been actively involved in your family finances, but don’t panic. If you can’t find all of them or don’t have access, there is a later step in the divorce process called “discovery,” when you can legally compel the other side to provide copies of anything else you need: •Individual income tax returns (federal, state, local) for past three years •Business income tax returns (federal, state, local) for past three years •Proof of your current income (paystubs, statements, or paid invoices) •Proof of spouse’s income (paystubs, statements, or paid invoices) •Checking, savings, and certificate statements (personal and business) for past three years •Credit card and loan statements (personal and business) for past three years •Investment, pension plan, and retirement account statements for past three years •Mortgage statement and loan documents for all properties you have an interest in •Real estate appraisals •Property tax documents •Employment contracts •Benefit statements •Social Security statements •Life, homeowner’s, and auto insurance policies •Wills and trust agreements •Health insurance cards •Vehicle titles and/or registration •Monthly budget worksheet •List of personal property (furnishings, jewelry, electronics, artwork) •List of property acquired by gift or inheritance or owned prior to marriage •Prenuptial agreements •Marriage license •Prior court orders directing payment of child support or spousal support Your attorney or financial advisor may ask for additional documents specific to your case. Some of these may not be applicable to you.

There was a reason, I told Valerie, why Republicans tended to do the opposite—why Ronald Reagan could preside over huge increases in the federal budget, federal deficit, and federal workforce and still be lionized by the GOP faithful as the guy who successfully shrank the federal government. They understood that in politics, the stories told were often as important as the substance achieved.

But she smiled and looked at Cody and Astor with maternal affection, and I could not have been more amazed if I had seen a balanced federal budget.

Each House of Congress makes its own rules, but Congress can legislate much of the scope, budget, and organization of the other branches. The familiar notion of “coequal” branches is largely an invention of modern presidents. In a number of Federalist essays, Hamilton and Madison used the term coequal to describe the relations of the states with one another, the taxing powers of the state and federal governments, and the relations of the two houses of Congress, but never the relations of the three branches of government.

Over the past 50 years, the main role of the federal government has evolved with the gradual expansion of mandatory entitlement spending and a commensurate reduction in the role of defense. In 1960, for example, 52 percent of the federal budget was spent on national defense, and 21 percent was spent on entitlement programs.Today, the roles have more than reversed with defense comprising just 18 percent of the federal budget and entitlement spending totaling 60 percent of the 2013 budget

the United States will need substantially more revenues to close the budget deficit, especially recognizing the need to increase federal spending in certain critical areas. I

During the twentieth century, however, the size, scope, and power of government exploded. Total government spending increased from 6.73 percent of GDP in 1906 to 37.79 percent of GDP in 2014.[2] The dollar has lost more than 95 percent of its value due to the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Top marginal income tax rates have been as high as 94 percent. Entitlement programs now constitute more than 60 percent of the federal budget. And businesses are hog-tied by more than 175,000 pages of red tape in the Code of Federal Regulations. What

Federal taxpayers should not have to pay for projects that should be undertaken by private investors or state and local groups. If these technologies are economically viable and consumer demand exists, these products will be developed without subsidies from the taxpayers.

As I looked over this curious document, I was particularly struck by a band of text across the bottom. It bore the title “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” and read: The time needed to complete and file this form will vary depending on individual circumstances. The estimated average time is: The text then cheerfully concluded with a note that if I had comments “concerning the accuracy of these time estimates or suggestions for making this form simpler” the IRS would be happy to hear from me. It provided an address in Washington, D.C., where I could send my comments. The Paperwork Reduction Act, passed in 1980 in the waning days of the Carter administration and amended in 1995, is a classic example of structural deepening gone awry. The law was supposed to improve the efficiency of the U.S. federal government and lighten the burden of paperwork on citizens. In Brian Arthur’s terms, the additional complexity introduced by the law was supposed to improve government performance. But it has not worked. Although the U.S. Office of Management and Budget hired a special staff to review and approve every form and information request of every agency of the federal government, the estimated total time that the U.S. public invested each year fulfilling federal paperwork requirements rose from 4.7 billion hours in 1980 to 6.7 billion hours in 1996.14 More perversely, Form 1001 showed how the law makes government more inefficient and confusing to the average person. My first reaction to the notice at the bottom was to add up the time allotments. Was I really supposed to spend over six and a half hours on this form? The suggested times seemed so precise, and the total amount so daunting, that Form 1001 practically leapt at me with self-importance. And what records, exactly, was I supposed to spend four hours and thirty-two minutes keeping? I hadn’t a clue. In its entirety, Form 1001 resembled the jumble of hoses and wiring under the hood of a modern car, and the “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” at the bottom was a particularly forbidding clump of complexity.

Joanne’s federal government employment history had been hidden very efficiently, of course. DuBois hadn’t found anything specific about what the woman or her coworkers did. But you could deduce their mission from what my protégée did uncover: the group’s funding (lavish and murkily channeled through nonexistent government agencies) and jurisdiction—in the U.S. only (office leasing and travel authorizations). Its history was enlightening too. The organization was created two weeks after the first Trade Towers bombing in New York in the 1990s, and their budget and personnel were doubled after the African embassy bombings and tripled after the attack on the Cole. After

The scale of U.S. military operations is remarkable. The U.S. Department of Defense has (as of a 2014 inventory) 4,855 military facilities, of which 4,154 are in the United States; 114 are in overseas U.S. territories; and 587 are in forty-two foreign countries and foreign territories in all regions of the world.2 Not counted in this list are the secret facilities of the U.S. intelligence agencies. The cost of running these military operations and the wars they support is extraordinary, around $900 billion per year, or 5 percent of U.S. national income, when one adds the budgets of the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, homeland security, nuclear weapons programs in the Department of Energy, and veterans’ benefits. The $900 billion in annual spending is roughly one-quarter of all federal government outlays.

We have the money. We've just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent - at least when it comes to housing - we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians' canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.

Two scholars who served on the staff of President Reagan’s 1982 National Commission on Social Security Reform explain that Social Security does more to reduce income inequality and prevent poverty among the old in the United States than any other program, public or private, while providing crucial protection for orphans and the disabled. And, contrary to widely circulated claims, they show it does not add one dollar to the federal government’s budget deficits and can remain financially sound as long as our government exists.

During the early 1980s, the overall black unemployment rate stood at 15.5 percent—“an all time high” since the Great Depression—while unemployment among African American youth was a staggering 45.7 percent. At this point Reagan chose to slash the training, employment, and labor services budget by 70 percent—a cut of $3.805 billion.90 The only “ ‘urban’ program that survived the cuts was federal aid for highways—which primarily benefited suburbs, not cities.” In keeping with Lee Atwater’s mantra that “blacks get hurt worse than whites,” Reagan gutted aid to cities so extensively that federal dollars were reduced from 22 percent of a city’s budget to 6 percent. Cities responded with sharp austerity measures that shut down libraries, closed municipal hospitals, and cut back on garbage pickup. Some cities even dismantled their police and fire departments.91

The Founding and the Constitution WHAT GOVERNMENT DOES AND WHY IT MATTERS The framers of the U.S. Constitution knew why government mattered. In the Constitution’s preamble, the framers tell us that the purposes of government are to promote justice, to maintain peace at home, to defend the nation from foreign foes, to provide for the welfare of the citizenry, and, above all, to secure the “blessings of liberty” for Americans. The remainder of the Constitution spells out a plan for achieving these objectives. This plan includes provisions for the exercise of legislative, executive, and judicial powers and a recipe for the division of powers among the federal government’s branches and between the national and state governments. The framers’ conception of why government matters and how it is to achieve its goals, while often a matter of interpretation and subject to revision, has been America’s political blueprint for more than two centuries. Often, Americans become impatient with aspects of the constitutional system such as the separation of powers, which often seems to be a recipe for inaction and “gridlock” when America’s major institutions of government are controlled by opposing political forces. This has led to bitter fights that sometimes prevent government from delivering important services. In 2011 and again in 2013, the House and Senate could not reach agreement on a budget for the federal government or a formula for funding the public debt. For 16 days in October 2013, the federal government partially shut down; permit offices across the country no longer took in fees, contractors stopped receiving checks, research projects stalled, and some 800,000 federal employees were sent home on unpaid leave—at a cost to the economy of $2–6 billion.1 39

If its children were not prepared to compete, how could Singapore hope to gain a foothold against the United States, Germany, or China? The country made sure to establish a first-class education system that was linked to the financial and commercial sectors. Seems obvious: invest in education and you ensure a strong workforce and vibrant economy. But in the United States we see education as a social issue, rather than an economic one. When budgets get cut at federal, state, and local levels, education often falls first under the ax. That, too, must change if we hope to compete.

Net wages: “It’s not what you make, but what you net” after paying the FIRE sector, basic utilities and taxes. The usual measure of disposable personal income (DPI) refers to how much employees take home after income-tax withholding (designed in part by Milton Friedman during World War II) and over 15% for FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) to produce a budget surplus for Social Security and health care (half of which are paid by the employer). This forced saving is lent to the U.S. Treasury, enabling it to cut taxes on the higher income brackets. Also deducted from paychecks may be employee withholding for private health insurance and pensions. What is left is by no means freely available for discretionary spending. Wage earners have to pay a monthly financial and real estate “nut” off the top, headed by mortgage debt or rent to the landlord, plus credit card debt, student loans and other bank loans. Electricity, gas and phone bills must be paid, often by automatic bank transfer – and usually cable TV and Internet service as well. If these utility bills are not paid, banks increase the interest rate owed on credit card debt (typically to 29%). Not much is left to spend on goods and services after paying the FIRE sector and basic monopolies, so it is no wonder that markets are shrinking. (See Hudson Bubble Model later in this book.) A similar set of subtrahends occurs with net corporate cash flow (see ebitda). After paying interest and dividends – and using about half their revenue for stock buybacks – not much is left for capital investment in new plant and equipment, research or development to expand production.

States were barred from financing their immigration systems with specific taxes on immigrants and transportation companies, leaving the continued existence of these state institutions to the general state fisc or the generosity of private charitable organizations interested in immigrant welfare and integration. The resource strain on states and charitable organizations placed enormous pressure on Congress to enact federal law.

What are the benefits of a Consolidation Loan? Direct Consolidation Loans allow borrowers to combine one or more of their Federal education loans into a new loan that offers several advantages. One Lender and One Monthly Payment With only one lender and one monthly bill, it is easier than ever for borrowers to manage their debt. Borrowers have only one lender, the U.S. Department of Education, for all loans included in a Direct Consolidation Loan. Flexible Repayment Options Borrowers can choose from multiple plans to repay their Direct Consolidation Loan, including an Income Contingent Repayment Plan. These plans are designed to be flexible to meet the different and changing needs of borrowers. With a Direct Consolidation Loan, borrowers can switch repayment plans at anytime. No Minimum or Maximum Loan Amounts There is no minimum amount required to qualify for a Direct Consolidation Loan! Varied Deferment Options Borrowers with Direct Consolidation Loans may qualify for renewed deferment benefits. If borrowers have exhausted the deferment options on their current Federal education loans, a Direct Consolidation Loan may renew many of those deferment options. In addition, borrowers may be eligible for additional deferment options if they have an outstanding balance on a FFEL Program loan made before July 1, 1993, when they obtain their first Direct Loan. Reduced Monthly Payments A Direct Consolidation Loan may ease the strain on a borrower’s budget by lowering the borrower’s overall monthly payment. The minimum monthly payment on a Direct Consolidation Loan may be lower than the combined payments charged on a borrower’s Federal education loans. Retention of Subsidy Benefits There are two (2) possible portions to a Direct Consolidation Loan: Subsidized and Unsubsidized. Borrowers retain their subsidy benefits on loans that are consolidated into the subsidized portion of a Direct Consolidation Loan. Temporary In-School Consolidation Authority During a one (1) year period, borrowers who meet certain requirements may consolidate loans that are in an in-school status into a Direct Consolidation Loan. Direct Consolidation Loans may be made under this temporary provision to borrowers whose consolidation applications are received on or after July 1, 2010 and before July 1, 2011. Borrowers will lose the grace period on a FFEL Subsidized/Unsubsidized Stafford Loan or Direct Subsidized/Unsubsidized Loan by consolidating the loan while it is in an in-school status. Similarly, PLUS borrowers who consolidate a Federal PLUS Loan or Direct PLUS Loan that was first disbursed on or after July 1, 2008 will lose the six (6) month post-enrollment deferment period. Parent PLUS borrowers who consolidate a Federal PLUS Loan or Direct PLUS Loan that was first disbursed on or after July 1, 2008 will lose eligibility to defer repayment while the student for whom the loan was obtained is in school. Click here for information on the eligibility requirements for this temporary provision. For more Questions you can contact The Student Loan Help Center.

Fighting unemployment by methods far more costly than the opening of bread lines and soup kitchens would not have been given serious consideration, regardless of which party might have been in office. Since 1932 all that is reversed. The Democrats may or may not be less concerned with a balanced federal budget than the Republicans. However, from President Eisenhower on down, with the possible exception of former Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey, the responsible Republican leadership has said again and again that if business should really turn down they would not hesitate to lower taxes or make whatever other deficit-producing moves were necessary to restore prosperity and eliminate unemployment. This is a far cry from the doctrines that prevailed prior to the big depression.

By November 2016, the Obama administration had used up about 78 percent of the White House budget for its fiscal year, which begins and ends at the beginning of May. Meaning, the Trump transition didn’t have much to work with, and it left us only 22 percent of the budget, or about two and a half months of money, to pay federal salaries and upkeep costs from January 20 until the end of April. That meant, among other things, that we would have to go light on the lower-office appointments, at least for a little while.

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant.

I love the Constitution, but it placed ridiculously small limits on the power of the federal government. Taken literally, our total powers include coining money, raising money, budgeting for the various federal departments and agencies, declaring war, controlling federal elections, controlling and taxing imports and exports, and a few other minor things I can’t recall at the moment. We can also regulate commerce. But even that probably just meant making commerce regular between the states—prohibiting tariffs between states, which had been a problem before the Constitution, and establishing standards to be common for all states.” “That’s it?” Harlowe smiled, knowing how this would sound. “Taken literally, almost everything we do here is unconstitutional—education, healthcare, social security, housing, labor laws, minimum wages.

Because Alaska is such a conservative place, you’ve got this bizarre disconnect between tenaciously clinging to this self-identification as rugged individuals—people who say to themselves, ‘I came here to be free of government regulation’—and the current and historical reality, which is dependence on the federal budget. It’s like living in a floodplain. People are just in total denial about it.

back, change into something formal. I’m taking you out to the most famous restaurant in all of Paris,’ he said proudly. She giggled. Listening to him make every effort to be the romantic tickled her to bits. Though she was a seasoned and toughened law enforcement agent, she still wasn’t beyond feeling giddy when it came to Pope’s courting efforts. For their long overdue holiday, a honeymoon-before-the-wedding kind of thing, Pope splashed out. The sky was the limit. Five months ago, when he asked her where she wanted to go, she had said Paris. So, Paris it had to be. There were no ifs or buts. And they were going to do it in style. He booked them a room at the Banke Hôtel for the entire duration of their stay. Luckily, he got it at a special rate, otherwise a Federal employee like him wouldn’t have been able to stretch the budget that far. Housed in a former bank, the Baroque revival hotel had an ornate columned façade. The interior was grand in scale and lavishly decorated. The room didn’t disappoint. Charming period detailing had been retained; in their

State and federal budgets, to which Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans contribute, are uniformly controlled by whites who seem to uniformly believe that the only ancestor worship worth funding is theirs.

I asked the well-known conservative thinker and publisher Alfred S. Regnery, who had just given a book talk on the importance of limiting the size of government, what he made of the fact that three-quarters of employees doing the work of the federal government are now contractors and that the federal budget for services increases by the day. He was taken aback. It was immediately apparent that the subject was not on his radar.

The president’s subordinates at the White House Office of Management and Budget have announced that the government would subsidize companies sued by employees for failure to comply with the WARN Act—in effect, the president is using public funds to encourage and underwrite the violation of federal law.17

President Obama’s proposed 2010 federal budget included a provision that Americans who make a certain level of income will not be allowed to fully deduct contributions to churches and other charities, as in the past.

Getting U.S. public debt on a sustainable path will require more sacrifice from the American public. Just to slow debt growth to the rate of GDP growth (or a steady debt-to-GDP ratio) from today through 2040, changes to current policy would have to be dramatic: cut entitlements by 10 percent or cut discretionary spending by 24 percent or increase tax revenue by 6 percent, or some combination of the three.27 Adjustments to actually lower the debt-to-GDP ratio would be even more painful. Ideally, the debt-reduction burden would be shared by all Americans. But one thing is certain—less generous entitlement programs and tax increases will need to be part of any balanced solution. PUBLIC OPINION: FOR A BALANCED BUDGET, BUT AGAINST SACRIFICES TO BALANCE THE BUDGET Changes in entitlement programs and tax increases, however, collide with an American public that largely wants neither. Almost as a rule, Americans support a balanced federal budget. But public opinion moves decisively in the other direction when Americans are asked about the specific actions necessary to balance the budget.28 Entitlement programs are broadly popular. Although most Americans understand that entitlements have a financing problem, they oppose making them less generous. When given the choice between preserving entitlements and reducing the deficit, Americans prefer the status quo. A solid majority, or 69 percent, would rather keep entitlements as they are and incur the debt consequences, whereas only 23 percent say the country should take steps to reduce the budget deficit that would include entitlement cuts.29 It is understandable that older Americans are more inclined than their younger counterparts to want to preserve entitlements. But even so, most Americans age eighteen to twenty-nine, who will foot the future debt interest bill, still favor entitlement preservation over debt reduction. Perspectives differ depending on party affiliation: Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor making deficit reduction a priority. There may be a “tax more” option. Americans do appear to favor increasing taxes on the rich, though Democrats more so than Republicans.30 It is unclear, however, whether Americans would favor raising their own taxes to cover their entitlement expenses. This suggests a fundamental disconnect between the services Americans want and what they are willing to pay in taxes to fund them.

THE LARGEST SINGLE COMPONENT of the federal budget, and perhaps the greatest and most financially devastating burden imposed on younger people and future generations, is the Social Security program. This is not a recent development. Since 1993, it has outspent defense appropriations. As a percentage of federal spending, Social Security’s expenditures have ranged from 0.22 percent during World War II to 24 percent in 2013.1 And Social Security costs are actually skyrocketing.

Recently, another warning was issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in its 2014 annual budget outlook, in which it announced that Social Security (and other entitlement programs) is “unsustainable” and will drive federally held debt to historic levels, thereby threatening the overall economy.24

The two major political parties in Australia are engaged in a furious debate about the federal budget. Neither of them finds it convenient to point out the obvious. This is that to resolve the fiscal deficit and to support spending at roughly the same share of GDP it has been for the last forty years, Australians will certainly pay more tax.