Tax package just passed will increase deficits by $68 billion annually

Reported here:

"The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that the tax bill will cost $622 billion over 10 years. Tax provisions in the omnibus will cost an additional $58 billion over 10 years, JCT said."

After all its crimes, the Republican Congress just gave the IRS an extra 3% in funding as a reward

Story here:

"The $1.1 trillion omnibus provides an additional $290 million for the IRS, an increase of 3 percent over the last fiscal year. ... The base funding level for the IRS was kept at about $10.9 billion."

National Review updates editorial about "disappointing spending bill" which bashed Trump who had not one thing to do with it

Here.

Girly men still.

Obama Friday signed stop-gap funding expiring December 16, but why hasn't this been an issue in the Republican debates?

The giant spending bill betrayal which gave us Paul Ryan as Speaker has been stoppable all during the presidential debating season, but we have heard narry a word about it.

If Republicans in the Congress wanted to, they could already have returned to "regular order" and debated every dollar of outlays, one by one, but NO. These cowards push on with one giant bill under Paul Ryan's "leadership", an omnibus spending package, which will take spending off the political calendar and put it into the nebulous never-never land of the indeterminate future, safely out of reach of "politics", fleecing the taxpayers as usual.

Meanwhile the candidates for president say nothing about spending in any way critical of the current Congress. They apply no pressure. They throw down no gauntlet to House and Senate leadership. But Donald Trump must endure a rare rebuke from a comedy lookalike.

A bunch of losers. Hollow men. And cowards.

And conservatism lies decomposing.

The New York Times criticizes Republican tax plans, pretending revenues are needed to cover spending

Here:

"All of these candidates deny fiscal reality. In the next 10 years, revenues will need to increase by 40 percent simply to keep federal spending even, per capita, with inflation and population growth. Additional revenues will be needed to pay for health care for the elderly, transportation systems and other obligations, as well as for newer challenges, including climate change. And interest on the national debt will surely rise because interest rates have nowhere to go but up."

Who is the Times trying to kid?

Revenues have never been needed to cover expenditures and they know it, and rarely have covered expenditures. Expenditures will continue to grow whether the Times or the Republicans like it or not. They are baked into the cake of the legislation that drives them. The only way to fix that is to rescind the legislation or modify it, with its built-in cost of living increases and added population coverage assumptions.

This country has run minor annual surpluses in just twelve years since 1939, doing nothing but slowing down our present arrival at $18.2 trillion in debt.

Spare us the histrionics.

The heavy hitters when it comes to spending are:

• HHS ($1 trillion, 91% of which is Medicare and Medicaid)
• Social Security ($.96 trillion)
• Defense ($.59 trillion, protecting the world without reimbursement)
• Treasury Dept. ($.57 trillion, $.4 trillion of which is interest on the debt overspending)
• Veterans ($.16 trillion, which does such a good job veterans die waiting for appointments)
• Agriculture ($.14 trillion, over half of which is the food stamp program).

Together those six account for 88% of federal spending, and the Times dares the Republicans even to think about reforming Social Security and Medicare, calling instead for higher taxes.

Meanwhile there's plenty else to cut just by axing all the other departments which account for the remaining $.48 trillion making up the 2015 fiscal outlay total of $3.9 trillion.

Let's start with the Education Dept., $76 billion, then International Assistance Programs, $22 billion.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching! You're 20% of the way there, just like that.

See how easy that was?

US Senate passes House sequester buster, budget and debt ceiling package this morning at 3:00 AM

They do nothing most "weeks", which run from Tuesday to Thursday, and then ram utter crap through in hours. Bunch of goose poopers.

From the story here:

"The bill cleared on a 64-35 vote, with just 18 Republicans joining all Democrats in backing the bill. ... The debt deal had already cleared the House on Wednesday, as part of a rush by Republican leaders to get it done as quickly as possible, leaving little time for scrutiny. The 144-page deal was written late Monday, and the final Senate vote came at 3 a.m. Friday, meaning it was sped through in less than 100 hours."

Just 79 Republicans voted for new budget, blowing sequestration caps, lifting the debt ceiling to March 2017, and attempting to decide all spending for two years, a complete rout of the conservatives

The Roll Call vote is here, taken at 5:21 PM yesterday, before today's activities electing Ryan.

Boehner voted for it after engineering it. So did Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, Steve Scalise, Peter King, and Kevin Brady among others.

I note Peter Roskam voted No.

The story is discussed here.

A complete travesty abdicating spending responsibility just like Cromnibus, but worse. 

Paul Ryan, who voted for CROMNIBUS, is just fine with the budget deal and the cowardly Freedom Caucus will still support him for Speaker

Paul Ryan, quoted in Politico, here:

"[U]nder new management we are not going to do the people's business this way. We are up against a deadline — that's unfortunate. But going forward we can't do the people's business (this way). As a conference we should've been meeting months ago to discuss these things to have a unified strategy going forward."

Sure, sure Paul. It'll be business as usual under you, too.

To Paul Ryan, conservatism means preserving Medicare for future generations, no going back on gays in the military, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Under Paul Ryan's "conservatism", if you lose, nothing will EVER be rolled back. And that includes the spending.

His expressions of outrage are simply red meat thrown to his Neanderthals.

JUST WORDS!

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

Conservatives give thanks for the achievements of John Boehner, libertarians, the ignorant and the stupid just snarl

• Saved taxpayers $762 billion over ten years by making the Bush tax rates permanent for 98% of all filers beginning at the dawn of 2013
• Saved taxpayers $1.8 trillion over ten years by finally fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax for all victims of bracket-creep
• Saved taxpayers $339 billion over ten years by maintaining the 15% capital gains tax rate for incomes below $450,000
• Saved families $354 billion over ten years by maintaining the child tax credit
• Cut average annual federal deficits of $1.3 trillion 2009-2012 by 57%, to $556 billion on average 2013-2016 by ending the emergency Social Security Tax reductions and instituting the sequester spending cuts
• The S&P 500 immediately responded with total returns in 2013 of 32.39%, the fifth best year since 1970  
• The moribund US Dollar rose 19%, from below 80 to 95 today as overall fiscal rectitude improved
• Causing oil prices to plummet from an average of $95/barrel 2011-2014 to $52/barrel on average in 2015 
• Causing average US gasoline prices to fall from $3.34/gallon one year ago to $2.28/gallon today
• Helping to keep the all-items consumer price index year-over-year nearly flat, rising just 0.2%

Paying off the $18.1 trillion national debt in 30 years . . .

Financed at 3.5%, it would require annual payments of $977.4 billion to retire the $18.1 trillion national debt in 30 years.

This assumes deficit spending (projected to average $512 billion annually, already factoring in increasing revenues going forward to 2020) would cease in order to balance the books and cap the debt.

Together debt repayments and cessation of deficit spending imply cutting current allocations by a total of $1.5 trillion annually, leaving just $1.7 trillion to fund government outlays in fiscal 2015 projected to soar to $3.8 trillion.

Out of control and misplaced spending therefore amounts to 55% of projected outlays in fiscal 2015, or $2.1 trillion.

In the already low GDP environment, a 55% fiscal contraction is utterly unthinkable to anyone in either political party, the equivalent of an 8.5% hit to the current dollar GDP at $17.69 trillion.

The revenue projection for fiscal 2015 is just $3.2 trillion, but will be the highest ever.

Democrats broke nearly every promise about ObamaCare

Jack Kelly here:

Nearly every promise Democrats made has been broken. The average family pays more (some much more) for insurance, not $2,500 less. About 9 million Americans (so far) have learned they couldn’t keep the health plans they had if they wanted. Or some of their doctors.

Federal spending for health didn’t go down. It’s zoomed upward. So have emergency room visits. Overhead costs are exploding.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will lower full-time employment by 2.3 million in 2021, compared with what might have been without reform.

The ACA has hurt millions more than it’s helped. The worst is yet to come. President Barack Obama delayed or altered (mostly illegally) unpopular provisions at least 50 times. If they’re implemented fully, up to 100 million who get insurance from their employers could have their policies canceled, the American Enterprise Institute has estimated.

The dollar has surged 2.26% since Wednesday to trade at 95 this morning

The dollar hasn't traded at 95 since late 2003.

Much more of this dollar strength is due to the continued improving fiscal condition of the United States since 2012 than people realize. 

Tax revenues are way up under the made-permanent Bush tax cuts and the made-permanent Alternative Minimum Tax fix, both of which heralded in 2013. Federal receipts are up a whopping combined 36% in 2013 and 2014 over 2012.

And continued Republican control of the purse in Congress has meant almost zero expansion of federal spending. Federal outlays are up a paltry combined less than 1% in 2013 and 2014 over 2012.

The federal government is up a net $845.5 billion in the last two years. That's huge.

The dollar is not simply a fiction which competes with other fictions in the global marketplace, but a symbol of the determination of the American people to play by the rules and pay their bills. It is not a coincidence that this determination lately expressed politically paved the way for falling commodity prices generally, and oil in particular. It is uncertainty which breeds fear-trades.

Speaker John Boehner doesn't get the credit he deserves for achieving under the Democrat President Barack Obama what Republicans before him could only dream about.

And if you want to know what's wrong with Republicans, that's it.

Oh the horror: Did you know the personal saving rate INCLUDES IRA and 401(k) contributions?

The annual average of the rate is shown.

Then how come the personal saving rate has been in steady decline since 1974 when IRAs were first passed into law? And how come saving didn't improve after 1978 when 401(k) plans were first created? Or after 1997 when Roth IRAs were legislated? The current monthly reading of personal saving is a measly 4.4%.

A rich country saves, a poor one spends.

"Notice that NIPA’s [National Income and Product Accounts] treatment of IRAs and 401(k) plan contributions, for example, is perfectly consistent: Because these defined contributions are not part of personal outlays (and, therefore, must be included in the difference between personal income and personal outlays), they are correctly included in national saving computations."

-- Massimo Guidolin and Elizabeth A. La Jeunesse, "The Decline in the U.S. Personal Saving Rate: Is It Real and Is It a Puzzle?" in Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis REVIEW, November/December 2007, p. 499, footnote 13 (here)