Tag Archives: Topic: Economy

Washington Times: “President Obama projects that the gross federal debt will top $15 trillion this year, officially equalling the size of the entire U.S. economy, and will jump to nearly $21 trillion in five years’ time.”

AP: “Thursday’s announcement by Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers comes just a day after he failed to sell a smaller package of cuts in a closed-door GOP meeting.”

The Hill: “Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) had intended to release on Thursday a bill cutting $32 billion from current spending levels and $74 billion from Obama’s 2011 budget request. He outlined some of the major cuts in the CR on Wednesday. ”

Victor David Hanson writes at Townhall: “Somehow, Jerry Brown must not only change the way Californians act, but also the strange way they now seem to think — convincing the present generation to produce far more private wealth while consuming far fewer public funds. Otherwise, the revenue-strapped and reform-minded governor is little more than a modern Sisyphus — endlessly pushing his enormous rock uphill, never quite reaching the top.”

Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: To remove any possible doubt regarding “the full faith and credit of the United States,” Senator Pat Toomey (R–PA) and Representative Tom McClintock (R–CA) have introduced the Full Faith and Credit Act, which would make the payment of interest on the debt the top priority. The Obama Administration quickly identified this legislation as a threat to their scare tactics and thus their big government spending plans, so Deputy Treasury Secretary Neil Wolan wrote a letter to Toomey claiming that any form of non-payment, be it to a retiree holding a U.S. savings bond or to the state of California to build its train to nowhere, “would merely be default by another name” and “would therefore bring about the same catastrophic economic consequences Secretary Geithner has warned against.”

AP: A leading House Republican says that even as struggling state and local governments seek federal help to make it through widespread budget problems, “the era of the bailout is over.”

The Hill: “One of the Senate’s most influential fiscal hawks says he is open to a proposal from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to cut federal spending by $500 billion.’

Rasmussen: “The view that government and big business work together against the interests of others is shared across partisan, demographic and ideological lines. Seventy percent (70%) of liberals hold that view, along with 69% of conservatives. Seventy-one percent (71%) Republicans think it’s true, and so do 64% of Democrats.”

The Hill: “Rand Paul has broken with tradition by eschewing the unwritten rules for freshman senators: Keep a low profile, learn the chamber’s arcane procedures and cozy up to senior colleagues.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address and Congressman Paul Ryan’s response were strangely missing a focus on the key to restoring America’s future: an agenda for economic growth, says Forbes Magazine. The basis for a bipartisan growth strategy can be brought into focus by combining five proposals made by either President Obama or Congressman Ryan.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “The statutory debt limit, or debt ceiling, was designed to control congressional spending by limiting the amount of debt the federal government could accumulate. Clearly, it has not fulfilled its legislative purpose. In fact, the government has lost its ability to monitor its own spending, says Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.”

AP: A month before Obama reached out to businesses, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent 171 letters to various businesses and their trade associations. He asked for help in “identifying existing and proposed regulations that have negatively impacted job growth.”

ABA: “Lawyers facing increasing pressure to “value engineer” their services have adopted a “better-faster-cheaper ethic,” leading to burnout and increased economic burdens for law firms.  That’s one of the conclusions of a report (PDF) on the future of the legal profession prepared by a special committee of the New York State Bar Association, the New York Law Journal reports.”

NCPA Policy Digest: As state legislatures around the country start cutting budgets, they face a puzzler — what is the proper subsidy (if any) for higher education? The answer to this question may hinge on another: whether higher education can be considered a “public good.”

AP: “Republicans controlling the House promised Thursday to slash domestic agencies’ spending by almost 20 percent in their drive to bring it back to levels in place before President Barack Obama took office.”

“The Senate on Wednesday voted down a repeal of President Obama’s healthcare law in a 47-51 party-line vote.”

Wall Street Journal (full access via Google): “One of the under-appreciated fault lines in the U.S. economy is between the 22 “right-to-work” states and the rest of the country. The former have tended to do much better economically. Now some non-right-to-work states such as Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan are thinking about joining this club that allows workers to opt-out of union membership.”

AP: “Yet America remains by far the No. 1 manufacturing country. It out-produces No. 2 China by more than 40 percent . . . American factories have seized upon complex and expensive goods requiring specialized labor: industrial lathes, computer chips, fighter jets, health care products.”

The Hill: “Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) anticipated addition to the panel is another indicator that the GOP will look to make significant reforms to entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid all fall within the jurisdiction of the Finance panel. ”

The Hill: “The bill is the latest indication that some Republicans are digging in their heels on the debt vote despite stern warnings from the Obama administration that failing to raise the ceiling would be disastrous for the country. It also signals a widening rift with GOP leaders who have suggested Republicans will ultimately have no choice but to approve the debt increase.”

2011 Index of Economic Freedom / Ranking the Countries

Associated Press: “The government said Thursday it will alter its borrowing strategy to buy some time before hitting the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.”

Fox 41: “His proposal would eliminate numerous other programs, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.”

Wall Street Journal (full text via Google News): “The U.S. Treasury could sell its remaining stake in General Motors Co. within the next year, an Obama administration official said Wednesday, signaling a much shorter time frame than the auto maker initially expected.”

Pat Buchanan writing at Townhall: “With his approval rating moving up to 50 percent and higher in some polls, the pundits are all agreed . . . He is now the winter-book favorite in 2012. There is a feeling that at last we are coming out of the Great Recession. But has the debt bomb really been defused? . . . Now, facing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, House Republicans are balking at agreeing to raise the debit limit of $14.3 trillion, though the national debt just crossed the $14 trillion mark. Are the happy days really here again?”

Associated Press: “A new estimate predicts the federal budget deficit will hit almost $1.5 trillion this year, a stunning new record.”

Walter E. Williams writing at Townhall: “Everyone who receives government largesse and special favors deems his needs as vital, deserving, proper and in the national interest. It is entirely unreasonable to expect a politician to honor and obey our Constitution and in the process commit political suicide. What’s even worse for our nation is that voters ousting a politician who’d refuse to bring, say, aid to higher education back to his constituents is perfectly rational.”

Fred Siegel writing in the Wall Street Journal: “The first to seize on the political potential of government workers was New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner. The mayor’s father, a prominent New Deal senator, had authored the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, which imposed on private employers the legal duty to bargain collectively with the properly elected union representatives of their employees. Mayor Wagner, prodded by Jerry Wurf of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme), gave city workers the right to bargain collectively in 1958.”

Samual Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute, writing at Public Discourse: “The Economics journalist Robert Samuelson recently observed that signs of undue risk adverseness are creeping into the American economy . . . Given the severity of the 2008 financial crisis and the associated recession, such trends are understandable. But another element in play is the degree of uncertainty now characterizing the American investment climate . . . the degree of uncertainty may well be heightened by the gradual impact upon the economy of another factor: a notable weakening of several conditions that make up vital elements of the rule of law.”

The Hill: “A group of Republican senators plan to debut on Wednesday their proposed amendment to the Constitution requiring Congress to approve a balanced budget each year.”

The Hill: “Hours before President Obama was to make his own deficit reduction proposals in the State of the Union address, the House on Tuesday voted 256-165 to slash spending this year to 2008 levels ‘or less.’”

The Hill: “The president’s promise to eliminate pork-barrel spending, long seen as a symbol of Washington’s waste, was a rhetorical exclamation point in a speech clearly designed to prevent Republicans from owning the mantle of fiscal responsibility.”

Video of the President’s State of the Union Address is available at the White House website here. The full text of the speech is here. The Full Text of the Republican Response is here.

Orit Sklar writing at The Daily Caller: “Michelle Obama and nutrition czar Sam Kass have taken the Food Police nationwide. Last week Wal-Mart announced that it is joining the first lady’s anti-obesity campaign by reducing the salt and sugar content of the food it sells . . . Now, one of the largest companies in the world is the vehicle through which all American food and health policy will flow . . . Skip over that pesky Congress and the FDA and go for a new model: coerced corporate control.”

Associated Press: “House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told reporters Monday that he believes states already have the tools they need to ease crushing budget deficits since they can cut spending, raise taxes and pressure public employee unions to renegotiate pension benefits. As a result, he said, he opposes letting states declare bankruptcy because he said they don’t need that power.”

Yahoo: “General Motors Co. sold more cars and trucks in China last year than it did in the U.S., for the first time in the company’s 102-year history.”

The Hill: “A key House Republican is quickly pressing forward with her goals to scale back U.S. funding for the United Nations.”

The Hill: “Republican leaders signaled Sunday that they won’t go for President Obama’s expected call for more federal spending in infrastructure, education and innovation initiatives in his State of the Union address.”

Wall Street Journal: “China’s biggest bank signed an agreement that would make it the first Beijing-controlled financial institution to acquire retail bank branches in the U.S., though regulators could still block the deal.”

LifeSiteNews: “A GOP plan to drastically reduce spending and place the United States on a path to fiscal responsibility would eliminate money for both Title X ‘family planning’ and the administration costs of implementing the pro-abortion national health care reform law.”

CNS: “The federal government’s reliance on borrowed money to carry out its functions more than doubled between fiscal year 2008 and 2009, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Also, between fiscal year 2007 and 2009, borrowing as a percentage of federal income increased by 566 percent.”

CNS: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is teaching farmers how to participate in ‘carbon markets’ despite the fact that such markets do not exist and Congress – in rejecting cap and trade legislation last year – has refused to create them.”

Insider Online: “Democrats, Independents, and Republicans have all demonstrated that they can create deficits and debt and reduce them, and they have done so with unified and divided government. We are all part of the problem and we must all be part of the solution, which will require that we commit ourselves to engaging in reasoned problem solving based on hard facts rather than scoring points in an increasingly self-destructive game of fiscal fantasy.”

Associated Press: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that unions lost 612,000 members in 2010, dropping the unionized share of the work force to 11.9 percent from 12.3 percent in 2009. That follows a loss of 771,000 workers in 2008, continuing a steady decline from the 1950s when more than a third of workers belonged to unions.”

Christian Concern: “The current compensation limit for undergoing the complex process of donating human eggs is £250. However, five years after its last review of the rules on the practice, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is testing public attitudes on whether payments should be sharply increased. HFEA has launched a three-month public consultation on the issue calling for the widest possible participation from the British public.”

Peter Orszag, Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup and formerly Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, writing at Financial Times: “If policymakers will not act before we have a fiscal crisis at the federal level, a fiscal crisis we will ultimately have. Until then we will see a microcosm of this broader problem arise dur­ing debate about increasing the federal debt limit, later this spring. This will be contentious. We may have to experience some temporary market turbulence before it is resolved.”

NCPA: “Beginning in 2014, most U.S. residents will be required to have health insurance coverage. However, provisions of the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) will limit the choice of health plans offered. Health insurance that does not cover preventive care, plans with deductibles above the statutory limit and plans that cap benefits at predetermined levels will ultimately disappear.”

New York Times: “Beyond their short-term budget gaps, some states have deep structural problems, like insolvent pension funds, that are diverting money from essential public services like education and health care. Some members of Congress fear that it is just a matter of time before a state seeks a bailout, say bankruptcy lawyers who have been consulted by Congressional aides.”

moneycontrol.com: “Instead of drawing primarily from its traditional pool of aircraft engineers, mechanics and laborers that runs generations deep in the Puget Sound region around Seattle, Boeing leads an international team of suppliers and engineers from the United States, Japan, Italy, Australia, France and elsewhere, who make components that Boeing workers in the United States put together.”

Associated Press: “Washington’s Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed the state’s authority to collect business-and-occupation taxes from out-of-state companies that do business here, even if they have no local sales force, offices or stores.” Opinion is here. Dissent is here.

The Daily Caller: “A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending.”

Wall Street Journal editorial: “In an op-ed last week in these pages, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center noted that a plurality of Americans, 47%, are under the erroneous impression that China is the world’s leading economy . . . The rise of China combines economic opportunities for the U.S. with competitive and strategic challenges. At a minimum, it’s an occasion to pull up our collective socks and rethink some welfare-state attitudes about work, investment, entitlements and spending.”

Douglas E. Schoen writes at the Wall Street Journal: Unless the party confronts its allies in the public-employee unions, it will continue to lose credibility with voters around the country

Omar Salah and Reinout M. Wibier, The Credit Crunch and Islamic Finance: Shari’Ah-Compliant Finance Against the Backdrop of the Credit Crisis (January 18, 2011). Tilburg Law School Research Paper No. 01/2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1742781

“This article deals with the question whether principles used in Islamic finance could have mitigated the effects of the crisis of credit. The authors discuss the main causes of the credit crunch, followed by a description of the main principles of Islamic finance. Through an analysis of financial instruments that are regarded as the main causes of the crisis of credit, the authors make a comparison between the conventional financial system and the Islamic financial system. Are there lessons to be learned from Islamic Finance in this respect?”

Associated Press: “AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said the rush to trim federal and state budgets was shortsighted, would hurt middle-class workers and do little to spur economic growth.”

Thomas More Law Center: “Last week, Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff, a federal district court judge in Michigan, dismissed a constitutional challenge to the U.S. Government’s bailout of AIG, which used over a hundred million dollars in federal tax money to support Islamic religious indoctrination through the funding and promotion of Sharia-compliant financing (SCF). SCF is financing that follows the dictates of Islamic law.”

Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “[T]he Obama Administration is desperate to convince the public that their war on business is over. Hence President Barack Obama’s Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday announcing ‘a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive.’ This is a nice sentiment. But even a cursory examination of the President’s actual order shows he is all talk and no action.”

David Harsanyi writing at Townhall: “When Obama was in a place of political comfort, the free market was a place of unhinged self-interest, unfairness and misery. Nearly all of our troubles were portrayed as a case of regulatory neglect — and nearly every dilemma was met accordingly. Nothing’s changed but the political conditions.”

SCOTUSblog: “The Supreme Court, in the early stages of setting up the cases it will decide during its next Term, agreed on Tuesday to decide whether patients receiving Medicaid benefits, and the providers who serve their health care needs, have a right under the Constitution to challenge a state’s reduction of benefit payments. The Court granted three separate petitions by California officials, but consolidated them for argument and decision together. This was the only newly granted case.”

Pat Toomey writing in the Wall Street Journal: “As members of Congress debate whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling—the limit on our government’s debt—we should all agree on at least one thing: Under no circumstances is it acceptable for the U.S. to default on its debt. Not only are we morally obligated to honor our debts, but we benefit greatly from the nearly universal conviction that those who lend to us will always be repaid, on time and in full. We should never undermine that conviction.”

Breitbart: “China’s economy grew 10.3 percent last year but inflation exceeded the government’s full-year target, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television said on its website Wednesday.”

ABC: “The Ohio Supreme Court on January 11 said Griffin lacked a ‘feasible plan to satisfy his financial obligations.’ Griffin’s debts include $150,000 from law school, $20,000 from his undergraduate studies and $16,500 in credit card debt.”

Cal Thomas writing at Townhall: “In Illinois, Democratic legislators and a Democratic governor pushed through a massive 67 percent personal income tax hike . . . In his State of the State address last week, Indiana Republican Mitch Daniels, properly took credit for policies that have placed his state among the financially strongest in the nation: lowest property taxes in the country and matching spending to income by eliminating ‘nice to do’ programs, focusing instead on ‘must do’ ones.”

John C. Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, writing at USA Today: “Most people intuitively know that the worst thing government can do in the middle of the deepest recession in 70 years is enact policies that increase the expected cost of labor. Yet that is exactly what happened last spring, with the passage of the health care reform bill.”

Ilya Somin writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “Although federal spending was a major political issue in the 2010 campaign and for many months before it, this recently released CBS poll [HT: Dan Mitchell] reveals widespread public ignorance about the distribution of spending between various programs.”

President Barack Obama has this article at the Wall Street Journal.

The Hill: “House Republican freshmen lawmakers, elected on platforms to reduce spending and the deficit, are saying they’re prepared to play hardball and vote against raising the debt ceiling in order to extract an agreement on possible budget cuts.”

Wall Street Journal: “Chinese President Hu Jintao emphasized the need for cooperation with the U.S. in areas from new energy to space ahead of his visit to Washington this week, but he called the present U.S. dollar-dominated currency system a ‘product of the past’ and highlighted moves to turn the yuan into a global currency.”

Law Enforcement Examiner: “President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law does not specify which companies or labor unions should receive waivers for its requirements and under what circumstances. Critics of how Heath and Human Services Department has chosen to handle these waiver requests highlight the haphazard nature of the approval process and the fact that companies able to secure these coveted Obamacare exemptions are given an unfair competitive advantage over their rivals.”

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann writing at Townhall: “When the states come calling, the House must say, ‘No.’ What’s more, it’s time to amend the federal bankruptcy laws to create a procedure for state bankruptcies — allowing states to abrogate their municipal-union contracts from the school-board level on up.”

Associated Press: “Congress may be less likely to pass legislation on the issue than it had been last year, when both chambers were under Democratic control. A bill to give U.S. companies a means of challenging what they view as an unfair export subsidy sailed through the House, but died in the Senate.”

Eugene Volokh writing at The Volokh Conspiracy: “The opinion is Murray v. Geithner (E.D. Mich.), decided today). I think the result is quite right, for reasons I mentioned when the lawsuit was first filed, and when the court rejected the government’s motion to dismiss.”

Mercatus Center: “In the last decade, Congress raised the debt limit ten times. This data provides evidence that the debt limit, far from providing its intended fiscal discipline, has recently served as a symbolic cap which Congress will push higher and higher as spending increases dictate.”

Reuters: “Rising gasoline prices beat down U.S. consumer sentiment in early January, overshadowing an improved job outlook and passage of temporary federal tax breaks, a survey released on Friday showed.”

Associated Press: “Union leaders plan to launch a multimillion dollar campaign to boost the image of government workers and fend off pay cuts and benefit rollbacks in states under fiscal siege.”