In an election-year stunner, the Congressional Budget Office is warning the Biden-Harris administration’s new Medicare prescription drug plan could cost taxpayers more than $20 billion over three years.
The budget analysis arm of Congress said the increased costs are due to the government subsidizing many seniors’ premiums by sending money to insurance firms, and it would cost at least $5 billion extra in 2025 alone and add to the deficit.
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If current trends persist, the Biden-Harris administration will have made over $1 trillion in improper payments by the time President Joe Biden leaves office, according to a report released by the watchdog organization Open The Books on Thursday.
An improper payment is a disbursement “made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reason,” per federal guidelines. The Biden-Harris administration, between 2021 and 2023, oversaw $801.4 billion in such payments after adjusting for inflation, according to the report.
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So far in the fiscal year 2024, the federal government has had to borrow about $5 billion every day.
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday the federal budget deficit was $1.5 trillion for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2024, which covers October through July.
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America’s debt is growing faster than previously expected, largely due to actions taken by the Biden administration and recent legislation, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The United States’ projected deficit is $1.9 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year, $400 billion higher than it was projected to be in February, the CBO announced Tuesday. CBO analysts increased their estimate due in large part to the foreign aid package signed by President Joe Biden in April and his administration’s efforts to reduce student loan balances.
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The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this week revealed the magnitude of the federal deficit, growing to $1.7 trillion in one year, as the national public debt reached $34.7 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.
On Monday alone, the national public debt grew by $37 billion. By Tuesday, it surpassed $34.7 trillion overall.
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The federal debt continues to climb to unprecedented levels, but the “actual, true” debt is higher if the Treasury weren’t being drained, a national economist says.
Citing Bureau of the Fiscal Service data, E. J. Antoni, Ph.D., an economist at the Heritage Foundation, argues that as the federal debt increases, the “true daily deficit” is being masked by the amount of cash being drained from the U.S. Treasury by Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen.
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Congress has spent more money on interest so far this year than it has spent on both national defense and Medicare.
Spending on net interest hit $514 billion in the first seven months of fiscal year 2024. That’s more than spending on both national defense ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). Medicare is the federal health insurance program for those 65 and older and younger people with disabilities. During the same time period, the U.S. spent $873 billion on Social Security, the federal program that provides retirement, disability, survivor, and family benefits to more than 67 million Americans.
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If you believe, correctly, that the entirety of Joe Biden’s presidency has been one unmitigated disaster after another — not only for the American citizenry, but for the United States’ standing on the world stage and for our allies around the globe who have embraced the cause of freedom and religious liberty — fasten your seatbelts, because you haven’t seen anything yet.
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The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released a bleak outlook for the federal government with new projections that show debt levels will reach their highest levels ever in five years.
“Debt held by the public, boosted by the large deficits, reaches its highest level ever in 2029 (measured as a percentage of GDP) and then continues to grow, reaching 166 percent of GDP in 2054 and remaining on track to increase thereafter,” according to the CBO report. “That mounting debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.”
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the ongoing surge in immigration, both legal and illegal, will put “downward pressure” on inflation-adjusted wages through 2034, according to a recently released report.
The downward effect on real wages will continue until 2027, at which point it will “partially reverse,” with immigration still expected to cause average real wages to be lower in 2034 than they otherwise would be, according to CBO. CBO did predict some positive impacts of immigration, as well, such as increased GDP growth and an expanded labor force.
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There were 3.3 million people who came to the U.S. illegally, were released into the country via parole or overstayed their permission to remain in the country in fiscal year 2023, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The number includes 1.1 million who were released by federal authorities after entering illegally, 900,000 who were released at ports of entry, 860,000 who are known to have evaded arrest and 430,000 who overstayed their temporary residency in the country, according to the report. Federal authorities at the southern border recorded more than 2.4 million encounters in fiscal year 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) reintroduced a bill this week that would require the House Clerk to read the estimated cost of a bill after reading its title.
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Recognizing the precarious plight of the nation’s fiscal situation, newly installed House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for a bi-partisan commission to study the nation’s debt. Everyone involved in federal fiscal policy for a length of time surely responded with some variation on, “Good grief, Charlie Brown.” Congress has formed and ignored innumerable such groups over many decades.
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U.S. Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Tim Scott is unveiling his “Build, Don’t Borrow” economic plan as he prepares for another campaign trip to Iowa.
Scott says his proposal targets runaway government spending, while cutting taxes, expanding jobs and “unleashing American manufacturing and energy production” with his Made in America agenda.
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A bipartisan bill to get rid of outdated or duplicative government reports is duplicative, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., introduced the Eliminate Useless Reports Act of 2023. It would require federal agencies to list any recurring reports they identify as outdated or duplicative.
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The gross national debt reached $32 trillion for first time in U.S. history on Friday.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the nation’s deficit for fiscal year 2023 will be $1.4 trillion, driving the national debt even higher.
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The U.S. government faces a significant risk of not being able to pay its bills in the coming weeks without an increase to the debt limit, the Congressional Budget Office said Friday.
The warning comes as Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on negotiations over the debit limit. The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of debt the U.S. Department of the Treasury can issue.
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Ohio Republican U.S. House Representatives are calling on President Joe Biden to negotiate with Republicans on common sense reforms that address the nation’s growing debt problem.
This follows House Republicans passing the Limit, Save, Grow Act last week, which aims to address the debt ceiling and implement commonsense spending reforms to limit wasteful spending, save taxpayer dollars, and grow the economy.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the House Republican majority have unveiled their spending plan for the next decade, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, that will be tied to a $1.5 trillion increase in the $31.4 trillion national debt ceiling, the centerpiece of which imposes discretionary budget caps beginning in 2024, but which will be set at 2022 levels, which could save more than $3.2 trillion over the next decade, according to an estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
While an official score still has not come in from the Congressional Budget Office, the proposal stands out as a promise kept on McCarthy’s part to use the must-pass debt ceiling to restore some semblance of fiscal sanity to the out-of-control federal budget and national debt, the latter of which the White House Office of Management and Budget projects will rise to a gargantuan $50.7 trillion by 2033.
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The U.S. is likely to add $19 trillion more to the national debt in the next 10 years, which is $3 trillion higher than previously expected, new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predictions show.
By the end of 2023, the CBO projects the deficit to be $1.4 trillion, and it will continue to average about $2 trillion annually, raising the debt to about $52 trillion. The CBO report indicates that the rise in the deficit is a result of bipartisan legislation coupled with the Federal Reserve’s hike in interest rates.
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Federal debt soared by $1.4 trillion in 2022 as President Joe Biden and Congress approved multiple new spending packages.
The Congressional Budget Office released the final details of federal spending in 2022 showing the federal government had a $1.4 trillion deficit last year, borrowing roughly $82 billion in December alone.
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August 7 was a big day for the Spendthrift Seven. In just 12 hours, these Senate Democrats — all facing re-election Tuesday — gave the middle finger to middle-class taxpayers, hugged illegal aliens, and high-fived the IRS.
Arizona’s Mark Kelly, Colorado’s Michael Bennet, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and Washington’s Patty Murray did these things while the Senate considered President Joe Biden’s deceptively titled, 273-page Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their votes should appall every American.
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Gas prices have continued a steady decline in recent weeks, coming down from record-high gas prices this summer, but the Congressional Budget Office says natural gas prices may see an increase from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.
According to AAA, the current national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.78, down from $4.08 a month ago and down significantly from earlier this summer when prices surpassed $5 per gallon. Prices have dropped about a nickel in the past week.
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Connecticut GOP U.S. Senate candidate Leora Levy observed Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) mockery of Americans expressing concern over Joe Biden’s creation of 87,000 new IRS Agents in his legislation that will increase taxes on middle-income Americans and will do nothing to reduce inflation.
“I think the IRS is going to target the highest income Americans,” Blumenthal minimized concern over the Inflation Reduction Act on CNN’s State of the Union recently. “As the saying goes, that’s where the money is. That’s where they’re going to look to collect. The idea that there’s going to be this army of IRS agents defending descending on the average American is just preposterous.”
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The Democrat-led House passed a climate and healthcare spending bill on Friday without a full Congressional Budget Office score of the legislation’s cost.
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As negotiations on their tax and spending bill continue, Senate Democrats are working on a legislative proposal to have the government fix the prices of Medicare prescription medications. Though the details of the 190-page amendment differ in certain respects from earlier versions, the indisputable result would be the same: Reduced patient access to prescription drugs.
Like most giant regulatory schemes, the draft proposal is characteristically complex with numerous provisions, including detailed data collection, new mandates, tax penalties on drug manufacturers, free vaccines, and a cap on out-of-pocket costs. But the heart of the bill is the creation of a Drug Price Negotiation Program administered by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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The Congressional Budget Office released its economic outlook for the next decade and projected record high debt levels compared to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.
The CBO projected a decrease in the deficit compared to the major COVID-era spending spree that helped fuel inflation to its current high levels.
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President Joe Biden has repeatedly touted that his “Build Back Better” spending bill would not add to the national debt, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis released Friday countered that claim.
Republicans requested the CBO examination before voting on the bill, asking what the cost would be if spending provisions in the bill are continued for 10 years, instead of expiring sooner.
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Congressional Democrats passed a $1.75 trillion social spending plan Friday, putting the bill’s fate in the hands of a deeply divided Senate.
The bill funds universal pre-kindergarten, climate change spending, Obamacare subsidies, an extension of the monthly child tax credit payment and more wide ranging spending items. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke more than eight hours on the House floor overnight to delay the vote until Friday morning, but afterward it passed 220-213 along party lines with one Democrat opposed.
“We are very excited for what it does for the children, for the families,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a press conference after the bill’s passage.
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Both Ohio U.S. senators praised the passage of President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that secured more than $100 billion for roads, bridges, airports and other projects around state.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed the U.S. House late Friday night, and one of the major projects on deck could be a new Brent Spence Bridge connecting Cincinnati to its northern Kentucky suburbs. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said the bill’s passage could allow for a new bridge to be built without the need for tolls.
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Florida State Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-FL-52) filed a ballot proposal to establish a “minimum working wage” for employees. The wage would be for new hires so that employers may ay their inexperienced workers at a lower rate before being legally required to pay the constitutionally mandated increased minimum wage.
The resolution, SJR 382, first has to pass through the Florida Legislature to be placed on the general election ballot in 2022. Then, Florida voters will have to approve the measure with at least 60 percent of the vote.
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PolitiFact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” came from former President Barack Obama selling ObamaCare, his massive government takeover of healthcare. “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it,” Obama said. That was a lie. Now President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) want to expand that lie through their $3.5 trillion federal spending blowout pending in Congress.
Obama also said we could keep our doctors under ObamaCare. Obama lied to me and millions of other people. When I left a full-time job in 2013 for contract work, I switched to an ObamaCare exchange plan. And no, I didn’t get to keep my doctor on that new plan. I also saw the cost of my ObamaCare plan increase by double digit rates for 2014.
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The Congressional Budget Office estimated Thursday that the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill will add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade, undercutting its backers’ claims the spending had been offset.
In FY2020, the deficit hit a record $3.1 trillion. So far in FY2021, the deficit is $2.2 trillion. The national debt is climbing to $29 trillion for the first time in U.S. history.
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The federal government is on track to reach the statutory debt limit in the fall, which would trigger a government shutdown, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate.
The U.S. is projected to reach the debt ceiling of $28.5 trillion by October or November, a CBO report released Wednesday stated. If Capitol Hill lawmakers don’t reach an agreement on raising the limit higher, the government could undergo its third shutdown in less than four years.
“If the debt limit remained unchanged, the ability to borrow using those measures would ultimately be exhausted, and the Treasury would probably run out of cash sometime in the first quarter of the next fiscal year (which begins on October 1, 2021), most likely in October or November,” the CBO report said.
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Federal deficits are projected to skyrocket over the next decade, resulting in a national debt that could be 107% of U.S. GDP, according to a recent Congressional Budget Office report.
The United States’ debt reached 100% of GDP during the past fiscal year largely due to the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic and the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March 2020. While the CBO’s February report projects unprecedented deficits, they are smaller than the office’s projections from last summer due to the country’s promising economic outlook.
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The U.S. budget deficit will be larger than expected because of the $900 billion stimulus bill passed in December, a whopping $448 billion larger than was projected in September, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.
According to Breitbart, the CBO forecasts that the federal government will borrow $2.26 trillion this year making it the second-largest deficit since World War II. Last year’s $3.1 trillion was the biggest in absolute numbers and also the largest as a share of gross domestic product.
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A $15 minimum wage would result in 1.4 million jobs lost and disproportionately hurt younger workers and those with less education, a new Congressional Budget Office report says.
President Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats have proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, more than double the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
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The federal budget deficit grew a whopping 400% in one year as the pandemic caused spending to skyrocket, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report Tuesday.
The estimated January federal budget deficit was $165 billion, $132 billion more than the deficit in January 2020, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released Tuesday. The federal budget in the first four months of fiscal year 2021, which started in October, was $738 billion, an 89% jump compared to the same period last year.
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by Jarrett Stepman Democrats defeated Republicans in the Obamacare repeal fight by warning that 22 million Americans would be thrown off their health insurance. They pointed to data leaked from the Congressional Budget Office. Well, it turns out that data was completely wrong. According to a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office wildly overestimated the number of people who would lose their health insurance with the repeal of the individual mandate penalty. Initial estimates from the Congressional Budget Office said 14 million would drop off their health insurance coverage due to the elimination of the individual mandate. Then, during the height of the 2017 debate over repeal, progressives touted a leaked number from the Congressional Budget Office claiming that 22 million people would “lose” their insurance if Congress repealed the law. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] However, as health care analyst Avik Roy pointed out, what made this number so high was the inflated number of people expected to lose their insurance due to repeal of the mandate – about 73 percent to…
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by Andrew Berryhill Government agencies and researchers produce endless reams of statistics. While statistics can be valuable, they can be easily misrepresented. A 2017 study on the use of statistics in news characterized the problem as such: “The constant supply of data produced by think tanks, government agencies, independent researchers, academics and others is a significant and a potentially healthy democratic resource. But the time constraints that characterize modern news production put considerable pressure on journalists, who have to interpret the sometimes highly complex methods and meanings behind statistics, reporting data even-handedly and with clarity.” Without critical and educated evaluation of statistics, the public could be misled by information that’s misused, incomplete, or manipulated. Unfortunately, it seems that manipulation of statistics to further an agenda is becoming more common throughout society. Bad information propagated by government agencies especially is affecting policy decisions and harming the public when news outlets report it with insufficient examination. Here are three common ways governments and modern society in general misuse statistics. 1. “Predicting” the Long-Term Effects of Complicated Legislation: Obamacare When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tried to predict the effects of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as “Obamacare”), it was utterly wrong on numerous points. The CBO released…
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Granting legal status to young illegal immigrants under the DREAM Act would add $25.9 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported on Friday. The extra burden on taxpayers mainly is due to increased health insurance costs and spending associated with programs that benefit the working poor.
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), supposedly a nonpartisan government agency that analyzes budget proposals and the economy, has been an aggressive critic of President Donald Trump’s agenda. On Thursday, the CBO released a report warning a move being weighed by the Trump administration would speed up the implosion of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, causing…
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Within an hour of the ‘non-partisan’ Congressional Budget Office’s report showing, among other things, that over 22 million Americans would lose their insurance coverage over the next decade, President Trump issued the following statement: The CBO has consistently proven it cannot accurately predict how healthcare legislation will impact insurance coverage. This history of inaccuracy, as demonstrated by its flawed report on coverage, premiums, and predicted deficit arising out of Obamacare, reminds us that its analysis must not be trusted blindly. In 2013, the CBO estimated that 24 million people would have coverage under Obamacare by 2016. It was off by an astounding 13 million people – more than half—as less than 11 million were actually covered. Then, CBO estimated that 30 million fewer people would be uninsured in 2016, but then it had to reduce its estimate to 22 million, further illustrating its inability to present reliable healthcare predictions. We know the facts. To date, we have seen average individual market premiums more than double and insurers across the country opting out of healthcare exchanges. As more and more people continue to lose coverage and face fewer healthcare choices, President Trump is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, which…
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