Why it’s hard for the US to cut or even control Medicare spending

  President Joe Biden’s 2024 proposed budget includes plans to shore up the finances of Medicare, the federal health insurance program that covers Americans who are 65 and up and some younger people with disabilities.

  His administration aims to increase from 3.8% to 5% an existing Medicare tax that’s collected on the labor and investment earnings of Americans who make more than US$400,000 annually. It also aims to reap some savings from having the government negotiate prices on more prescription drugs.

Congress passes $1T infrastructure bill – but how does the government go about spending that much money?

  The U.S. Congress passed an infrastructure bill that funds more than a trillion dollars in nationwide federal spending on Nov. 5.

  The bill puts about US$240 billion toward building or rebuilding roads, bridges, public transit, airports, and railways. More than $150 billion is slated for projects that address climate change, like building electric vehicle charging stations, upgrading energy grids, and production to work better with renewables, and making public transit more environmentally sustainable.

  There’s funding for cybersecurity, clean water, and waste treatment systems, broadband internet connections, and more.

The war in Iraq has cost the US nearly $2 trillion

  Editor’s note: The Costs of Wars project was started in 2011 to assess the long-term consequences of the post-9/11 wars. Project co-director Neta C. Crawford, professor and chair of political science at Boston University, explains the major implications of the Iraq War for the federal budget.

  Even if the U.S. administration decided to leave — or was evicted from — Iraq immediately, the bill of war to the U.S. to date would be an estimated US$1,922 billion in current dollars.

Donald Trump, big spender

  As much as conservatives would like to believe that the Trump administration has been different from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, the fact is that all three administrations have been one long disastrous continuum. Not only has Trump continued the forever wars that Bush and Obama waged, he has also continued every single socialist, interventionist, and imperialist program maintained by his predecessors, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, the regulated economy, the war on immigrants, the war on drugs, the war on Muslims, the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, the NSA, and all the hundreds of federal welfare-warfare-state bureaucracies, departments, and agencies.

Hurtling toward bankruptcy

  The federal government owes people almost $22 trillion. That means that American taxpayers owe people almost $22 trillion. That’s because the federal government has no money of its own. The money it gets comes entirely from American taxpayers. That’s what the IRS is for — to make certain that everyone sends his or her required amount of taxes to the federal government to enable it to cover its expenditures.

  According to usdebtclock.org (which is an Internet spectacle worth looking at), federal tax revenue amounts to around $3.3 trillion. The amount of federal expenditures is over $4.1 trillion. That means that almost another trillion dollars will be added to the government’s debt load, making it $23 trillion.

MAGA or MAFA?

  The driving mantra for the Trump administration, the one that energizes every Trumpster and Trumpista, is MAGA — Make America Great Again.

  The problem arises in how Trump defines national greatness. For him, it means a gigantic military-intelligence establishment — i.e., the national-security state, consisting of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. The more powerful this branch of the federal government, the greater the nation in the eyes of President Trump.

Lawrence J. Korb: Trump’s defense budget

  Since coming into office a little more than a year ago, the Trump administration—with help from the Republican-controlled Congress—has added more than $200 billion to the projected levels of defense spending for fiscal years 2017 through 2019. Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump added $15 billion to former President Barack Obama’s FY 2017 budget, and he proposed an FY 2018 budget of $639 billion. This represented an increase of $56 billion, or 10 percent, over the proposed FY 2017 budget.

  As part of the recent deal to keep the government open, Congress agreed to increase the FY 2018 defense budget to $700 billion—an increase of $108 billion, or 18 percent, above the proposed 2017 budget—and the FY 2019 budget to $716 billion. This means that since Trump took office, the defense budget will have grown by $133 billion, or 23 percent.

Richard M. Ebeling: Debt ceiling hysteria and profligate government

  Once again, the financial fears have been ratcheted up due to recent announcements by the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that by the middle of March 2018 the federal government will have run out of room to continue borrowing due to the official debt ceiling. Some are now calling for scrapping a legal debt ceiling altogether, and to allow Uncle Sam to have an unlimited line of credit. This is a bad idea.

  Back in September 2017, Congress and the President agreed to temporarily suspend the Federal debt ceiling until December 8, 2017. Whatever might be the cumulative outstanding debt at that time would become the new legal ceiling, unless Congress voted to raise it, which did not happen. So when December 8 rolled around, the total federal debt, due to continuing government borrowing in the last months of 2017, came to around $20.5 trillion.

Leigh Hixon: Saving our sovereignty

  While it is difficult to persuade a state that relies on the federal government for 42% of its budget that it should begin to unwind some of those funds, there is arguably more for a state to gain than lose by shedding some of its dependence on the federal trough. But even if voluntarily forgoing such assistance is a bridge too far, it is becoming more and more essential for the state to assume greater financial responsibility.

  Alabama voters are looking at legislators to do just that.

The Ryan budget in sheep’s clothing?

  House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) recently put forward a plan to overhaul our nation’s safety net. Among other things, Rep. Ryan proposes consolidating multiple safety net programs into a single grant in a select number of states in the name of granting localities and community institutions greater flexibility. But while Rep. Ryan paints his plan as embracing bold, new reforms, his proposals are either another version of his radical budget—a wolf dressed up in sheep’s clothing—or a complete about-face on his commitment to balance the budget. Ryan can’t have it both ways.

Katherine Green Robertson: The debt bomb and other election year problems

  "If you want to tackle a tough issue, wait until after the election."

  This is one of the most understood ‘rules’ in politics. Unfortunately, elections never stop and oftentimes, the "tough issues" just get set aside in hopes that the problem will go away—at least until after the next election.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Why federal spending continues to soar

  The Washington establishment, not surprisingly, is celebrating the budget deal that Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democrat Sen. Patty Murray reached. They’re calling it a great example of "bipartisanship."

  And why not? The deal calls for increases in federal spending, doesn’t it? What’s not to like about that, from the standpoint of the Washington establishment?

Robert Wilkerson: "Entitlement" is not a dirty word

  The word "entitlement" is not a dirty word. Although certain individuals and political parties have tried to convince us that it is. The word simply means "a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract."

  Programs designed to aid and assist needy Americans began with President Theodore Roosevelt, and they were added, or expanded, by several presidents following him as need dictated. They were created to help alleviate the suffering and distress among needy people who, due to no fault of their own (old age, disability, etc.), could not work. They were never for those who could work, but would not!

Scott Lilly: The choice Congress won’t face up to

  Back in college, I had a textbook entitled Decision by Debate. The underlying premise of the book was that if you had a good debate, you were likely to end up with a good decision. It strikes me that the inverse of this lesson – that if you have a bad debate, you’ll end up with a bad decision – may explain much of the problem this country is having with budget policy.

  Much of what is commonly being said about the federal budget – including the causes of the mismatch of  revenues and expenditures and the options we have for resolving that imbalance – is either mischaracterization or flatly wrong. When you slice through all the heated rhetoric, the budgetary choices we face may be painful, but they are actually much simpler to make than the debate would suggest.

Daren Bakst: The Costly and outdated farm bill

  Congress is once again taking up the farm bill - and continuing to treat agriculture like it was 1933, not 2013. The result: billions of taxpayer dollars going to waste.

  This is unacceptable. It's time for lawmakers to make reforms that reflect the reality of modern-day agriculture.

Sally Steenland: Sequestration hurts all of us, not just our most vulnerable

  It’s Day 90 of sequestration—the across-the-board spending cuts that went into effect March 1, which the Obama administration predicted would be devastating and conservatives insisted wouldn’t be so bad. Three months in, it’s worth asking how harmful the phased-in cuts have been—although that depends on whom you ask.

  When sequestration cuts furloughed air-traffic controllers in April, airline travelers rose up in fury. Congress responded with a quick legislative fix that “unfurloughed” the controllers and returned flight delays to annoying, rather than infuriating, levels.

Edwin J. Feulner: The Recurring debt-limit drama

  Get ready for a little deja vu from Washington. The federal government is about to hit the debt ceiling, now set at a whopping $16.8 trillion. Yes, again. It’s like the Bill Murray movie “Groundhog Day” — only this time, unfortunately, no one is laughing.

  Time and again, Congress bumps up against the debt ceiling amid talk of finally getting spending under control. Time and again, they raise the ceiling, but only after a sufficient dose of political theater. How’s this for a punch line: The gross debt breaks down to more than $140,000 per American household. Still not laughing?

Michael Linden: The President’s budget is another attempt to reach a fiscal deal

  President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget is unlike any previous presidential budget request in recent history. It is not a statement of the president’s vision for the federal budget. It does not represent what he thinks is the best course of action for spending, taxation, and broader federal fiscal policy. It is not, in short, his preferred budget plan. Rather, for the first time ever, it is a preemptive compromise budget.

  It includes more than $1 trillion in additional spending cuts, on top of the $1.9 trillion that the president has already accepted and signed into law. It includes significant changes to entitlement programs, as well as further cuts to a portion of the budget that was already cut down to historic lows. And it includes far less new revenue than the president has called for in the past. All told, President Obama’s compromise budget would raise less revenue and set government spending at approximately the same levels as the much-ballyhooed bipartisan plan proposed by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles in 2010. By that standard, the president’s compromise budget is to the right of Simpson-Bowles.

Sheldon Richman: Cutting government would boost economy

  Budget sequestration is as modest a step toward cutting Leviathan as one can imagine. Further progress will be difficult as long as people believe that slashing the size of government conflicts with reviving the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  In his recent debate on Charlie Rose, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said that even wasteful government spending should not be cut, because it would undermine job creation and economic recovery. This view isn’t quite as popular as it once was, but it is still influential.

Larry M. Elkin: Republicans, lacking direction, cannot steer the country

  President Obama has finally come of age politically, and he knows where he wants to go. His political adversaries do not.

  The president served notice in his second inaugural address, and again in his State of the Union speech, that he intends to follow the path blazed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, two fellow Democrats who insisted that expanded government could improve most American lives. They pushed the costs of their programs onto future generations, but most citizens nevertheless came to cherish government-subsidized pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, and medical care for the elderly and poor.