Nearly every budget in the last 10 years is guilty of the “budget creep” phenomenon.  The table below outlines both President Bush and President Obama’s future budget proposals: The problem: From President Bush’s FY2007 budget to President Obama’s FY 2011 budget, proposed spending for FY 2011 grew by $594 billion.  If we were actually going [...]

President Obama will meet with Greece’s prime minister George Papandreou today to discuss Greece’s economic problems.  Some experts worry that Greece’s debt crisis could have a domino effect on other nations – including the U.S. – similar to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Yet the domino effect of California defaulting on its debt would have [...]

Bankrupting America got a quick look at President Obama and his motorcade visiting OPOWER, a small business in Arlington, Virginia. Among the President’s appeals to employers is his pending “jobs bill” — and its temporary payroll tax credit. Unfortunately the tax credit is too temporary, too targeted and creates perverse hiring incentives for employers. Check [...]

Well probably not but Washington lawmakers face more bad news in the polls. 56 percent of respondents – including 63 percent of Independents and 37 percent of Democrats – believe the federal government is doing so much that they now consider it to be a threat to individual rights, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation [...]

Washington Post: Deal on consumer agency nears: Sens. Dodd and Corker are close to agreement on proposing regulator housed inside Federal Reserve. President sells stimulus package in Ga.: To hear President Obama tell it, his plans for reshaping the nation’s economy are aimed at helping people like Ray Gaster, whose small chain of lumberyards here [...]

Governors from across America are packing their bags and polishing their agendas to come to Washington, DC this weekend for the National Governors Association Conference.  Only 11 governors described their state’s 2009 economic conditions as “good” or “strong.”  41 governors face budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year.  Surprisingly this problem isn’t at the top [...]

President Obama recently signed legislation that would restore pay-as-you-go, or PAYGO, rules to the federal government’s budget process.  During his weekly address, he celebrated this move as a return to fiscal discipline, ignoring the fact that the legislation he signed also raised the debt limit by another $1.9 trillion.  Here’s how the President described PAYGO: [...]

UPDATE: We’ve had a great response to this blog. So we decided to take it a step farther. We hit the 8-28 rallies and quizzed attendees in their government spending IQ. Can they match the spending facts with the right President? (The answers might surprise you.) Watch here. At first glance former President Bush and [...]

On the first of the month President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011.  He calls for $3.8 trillion in spending, up $300 billion from fiscal year 2009 (the most recent year with complete data).  To put the FY2011 budget in perspective, let’s breakdown FY2009 spending numbers (which equaled about $11,000 per citizen): [...]

In his fiscal 2011 budget released last week, President Obama targeted 126 programs to be completely shut down or have their budgets cut. While this proposal will only save an estimated $23 billion next year, it’s a start, and we applaud the President for taking this first step.  (Actually it’s his second step: in last [...]