In exchange for a two-year hike in the federal borrowing limit, the
legislation roughly freezes next year's spending at fiscal 2023 levels,
followed by a 1% increase in 2025. The legislation also imposes some
changes to work requirements for food stamps and will speed the
development of energy projects with permitting reform.
Fiscal outlays for 2023 are projected to hit $5.792 trillion. Adjusted for inflation since 2019 that should be more like $5.385 trillion.
Meanwhile, deficit spending since 2019 through fiscal 2023 has added, will add, $8.5 trillion to the debt, which has been the solution to, and the cause of, all our problems.
And look what has happened to interest payments on the debt, which come out of current revenues. They have gone vertical. At $929 billion annualized, they represent 31.4% of current tax receipts annualized.
Everyone minimizing the gravity of this situation is whistling past the graveyard when government social benefits to persons already exceed the tax receipts.
This will continue until it can't, and great will be the fall of it.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) speaks at a U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., December 13, 2022.(Sarah Silbiger/Reuters)none
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Protesters booed and heckled RepresentativeAlexandria Ocasio-Cortezat a town hall she held in Queens, N.Y., on Friday night.
A man holding small American flags approached the progressive “Squad” member and shouted, “American citizens before migrants.”
“Where are you on the migrant issue? You’re a piece of s***,” he added.
Ocasio-Cortez said, “OK,” as the man was escorted off.
New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) declared a state of emergency in New York after the expiration of Title 42 earlier this month. The state has roughly 60,000 asylum seekers relying on social services. New York City has gotten so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants that the city has begun sending them to the suburbs. Hochul said she is “looking at all state assets to help ameliorate the problem that is at a crisis level here in the City of New York,” which could includes housing migrants at SUNY campuses, closed psychiatric centers, large parks and parking lots.
Protesters at the town hall held signs concerning a number of issues: “America First. Vetted legal migrants only,” “Stop funding Ukraine,” “AOC: An Obvious Criminal,” and “AOC: Stop pushing drag queen story hour,”
More protesters came forward throughout the evening, including a woman who was critical of Ocasio-Cortez’s support for U.S. funding in Ukraine. The New York Democrat voted to send $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine last year.
“Stop funding this war, there’s a lot of communities that need help and need that money,” another woman said as she was removed from the event.
Ocasio-Cortez was met with both boos and cheers from the crowd when she suggested the Biden administration should abolish the debt limit, as a June 5 debt default deadline looms.
“$100 billion for Ukraine that you voted for!” one man shouted in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments on the debt ceiling.
The progressive lawmaker said earlier this week that the “stakes of a default cannot be understated.”
“The chaos that would ensue and the impact on people’s everyday lives would likely be immediate and it is one of the reasons why we need to take default off the table,” she said.
New research published this month, involving millions of people worldwide over decades, is adding to worries that heavy use of high-potency cannabis and legalization of recreational weed in many U.S. statescould exacerbate the nation's mental health crisis in young adults. “There is a big sense of urgency not just because more people are smoking marijuana, but because more people are using it in ways that are harmful, with higher and higher concentration of THC,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), said in an interview. ... The magnitude of the connection between cannabis and schizophrenia for young men surprised study author Volkow, who was expecting the number to be closer to 10%. “This is worrisome,” she said.
Among 16–20-year-old males, no clear pattern over time is observed, with PARFs generally fluctuating between 10% and 20%. In older males, the PARFs show a clearly increasing pattern, ending up around 20–30% until the age of 31–40 when PARFs fluctuate between <1% and nearly 20%.
A majority in Rapanos
(2006) couldn’t agree on how to limit EPA’s authority over wetlands.
Four Justices said the Clean Water Act’s scope extended to “only those
relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water”
such as oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands that were directly
adjacent and “indistinguishable” from those waters.
However, the agencies and lower courts have adopted Justice Anthony Kennedy’s
lone opinion that federal jurisdiction extends to land that has a
“significant nexus” to a waterway. This test is as clear as a swamp.
While
all nine Justices ruled for the Sacketts, they disagreed on the scope of
federal power. The majority strips away the “significant nexus”
ambiguity from Justice Kennedy’s Rapanos
opinion, but reaffirms the conservative plurality’s view that a
“wetland” must “be indistinguishably part of a body of water that itself
constitutes ‘waters’ under the CWA.”
The
cases of the whistleblower Gary Shapley and journalist Matt Taibbi show
why the GOP should claw back that $80 billion infusion.
As House
Republicans and the White House wrangle over a debt-ceiling deal, one
GOP demand ought to be nonnegotiable. A politicized Internal Revenue
Service has no business keeping its untrustworthy fingers on last year’s
$80 billion cash infusion.
“On day one, I will have folks that will get together and look at all
these cases, who people are victims of weaponization or political
targeting and we will be aggressive at issuing pardons,” DeSantis said
in his response. ...
DeSantis replied, “I would say any example of disfavored treatment
based on politics or weaponization would be included in that review, no
matter how small or how big.”
The Justice Department said this month more than 1,033 defendants have been arrested as part of its probe of the Capitol riot. ...
DeSantis said he planned to use the pardon power “at the front end”
instead of waiting until the end of his term in the White House.
“We’re going to find examples where the government’s been weaponized
against disfavored groups, and we will apply relief as appropriate. But
it will be done on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
According to multiple sources within the group,
officially known as "The Eight-Year Alliance," DeSantis is "a proven
winner," a contender with a depth of policy proven by what he's
accomplished at the state level, and a leader who "does what he says."
The
primary motivation of the group, the sources said, is to promote a
candidate they feel would be a viable contender for two presidential
terms, something they see in DeSantis. They also want to prevent former President Donald Trump
"immediately becoming a lame-duck president" should he win back the
White House, considering the polarizing affect his persona has had on
American politics.
Key point: depth of proven policy in Florida sustainable nationally over two presidential terms is a better choice than another drama-plagued and by definition ineffectual presidency under the best of conditions.
