The Federal Emergency Management Agency is facing scrutiny for its spending on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Lawmakers at a House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday pressed FEMA head Deanne Criswell on FEMA’s DEI spending.
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With the election behind us, a huge win for President Donald Trump, it is time to get serious about policy. One of Trump’s best campaign lines was: “Kamala broke it. Trump will fix it.” To be sure, the federal budget was out of whack already, but the Biden-Harris administration really broke it through massive increases in federal spending.
Time to fix it, but if Republicans go about this as they have in the past, they will surely fumble and fail.
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After taxpayers spent more than $200 million on highway landscaping in the previous fiscal year, a report says Florida lawmakers might need to consider a cap on that spending.
Florida Taxwatch analyzed the Florida Department of Transportation’s spending on highway landscaping, which can provide benefits such as erosion reduction, safety enhancements and support of local ecosystems.
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Congressman Warren Davidson, R-Ohio., says the House GOP needs to unite behind a plan if they keep a majority in the House after the election.
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The Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives is now planning to vote on a stopgap spending bill that will not include a critical election integrity measure that conservatives have been desperately trying to pass.
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President Joe Biden’s White House staff has grown to historic highs, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, according to a new report.
An analysis from OpenTheBooks of the recently released White House payroll found the Biden White House staff spending has hit new highs.
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Connecticut will end the fiscal year with a record surplus, according to a new report, which is fueling calls by progressive Democrats to roll back the state’s spending controls.
The consensus revenue forecast, released by the Office of Policy and Management and Office of Fiscal Analysis on Monday, shows the state is likely to close out the fiscal year more than $645 million above initial budget projections. That’s a roughly $1 billion surplus through 2026, according to the report.
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Georgia lawmakers signed off on the fiscal year 2025 budget in the final hours of this year’s legislative session but did not pass a bill to allow sports betting.
Lawmakers gave the nod to a more than $66.8 billion state budget for fiscal 2025, which starts July 1. The spending plan, which anticipates $36.1 billion in state money and $19 billion in federal taxpayer funds, includes pay raises for public school teachers and state law enforcement officers.
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Don’t look now, but U.S. labor markets appear to be churning in the wrong direction, as the unemployment rate jumped to 3.9 percent in February, and the unemployment level hit a new high for this cycle at almost 6.5 million, up 760,000 from its low this cycle of 5.7 million in Dec. 2022, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Tennessee schools saw an 18.4% increase in inflation-adjusted per student funding between 2002 and 2020, according to a new report.
Spending on employee benefits increased by 56.5% over the same period, according to Reason Foundation’s Education Spending Across 50 States report.
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After several years of rapidly increasing spending and tax collections, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has proposed a budget that would spend nearly $10 billion less next year.
That includes $52.6 billion in spending with $25.4 billion from the state and $19.8 billion from federal funds.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Monday that he is calling for constitutional reforms to hold leadership in Washington D.C. accountable for the crisis Americans face due to weak border policies and unchecked spending.
The second-term GOP governor and former presidential candidate is calling for a balanced federal budget, congressional term limits, laws being made equally applicable for citizens and members of Congress and line-item veto authority for the president.
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Tennessee has now collected $279.9 million less than budgeted through the first five months of the fiscal year.
December’s $1.9 billion in collections were $82.5 million less than budgeted In numbers released Friday afternoon.
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The U.S. government and those of other countries could be using higher inflation to lessen the value of growing public debt resulting from increased spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis by a Harvard economist working with The Heritage Foundation.
The study covers government spending from 2020 through 2022, the high point of the pandemic, and looked at the U.S. and 20 other economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.
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The federal debt increased by $6,238,231,285,652.06 between Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated, and Jan. 2, 2023, the last day for which the debt has been reported.
That equals $47,462.84 for each of the 131,434,000 households that the Census Bureau estimates were in the United States in 2023.
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The conservative House Freedom Caucus slammed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed top-line spending deal with Senate Democrats as a “total failure,” arguing the potential agreement costs about $68 billion more than the Louisiana Republican said it would.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday said Congressional leaders reached a topline spending deal to avert a federal government shutdown by providing funding through the rest of the fiscal year.
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The national debt continues to rise sharply to record levels during the ongoing debate in Congress over the next federal spending bill.
The federal government has already piled another $383 billion onto the debt so far into the 2024 fiscal year, which began on October 1.
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A new economic analysis of the U.S. economy projects a recession around the corner.
An international nonprofit, The Conference Board, has released its Leading Economic Indicators report, which projects into the next year for the U.S. economy. That analysis, among other things, projects high inflation, high interest rates and declining consumer spending.
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There is a new round of criticism for Gov. Tony Evers for his latest round of federal coronavirus spending.
On Thursday, the governor announced plans to spend $36 million on a list of projects.
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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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Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) blasted the passage of the 45 day Continuing Resolution that included no spending cuts and failed to properly increase funding for U.S. border security.
The bill passed the House on Saturday in a 335 to 91 vote, then passed the Senate in an 88 to 9 vote, and was signed into law by President Biden just hours before the midnight deadline on Saturday, when funding for the 2022-2023 federal fiscal year. The bill continues funding the government at 2022-2023 levels until November 15.
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Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz declared Sunday he will seek to oust Kevin McCarthy as House speaker after a drama-filled scramble to pass a federal budget forced a last-minute temporary spending bill that required Democrat votes to pass.
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Six of Tennessee’s nine member delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives voted “no” on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s last-minute 45 day Continuing Resolution Saturday afternoon. Late Saturday, the U.S. Senate passed the bill in an 88 to 9 vote, just a few hours before the midnight deadline when the current fiscal year ends.
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New research is challenging assumptions about the Republican Party’s core values, showing the GOP of the 2020s is an entirely different animal from the GOP of the 2010s. The research captures an increasing shift toward populism and America First priorities that has been growing since Former President Trump’s election in 2016.
The study by American Compass divides Republicans into two camps, the Old Right and the New Right, based on their economic priorities and approach to cultural issues.
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Declaring that it’s time for Washington to start working for Americans and not the other way around, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley laid out her economic “Freedom Plan in a speech Friday in New Hampshire.
The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador is proposing a litany of middle-class tax cuts, regulatory relief and “third rail” entitlement reforms in a proposal she asserts will check communist China aggression through American prosperity.
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Tourism in the Peach State broke records last year, according to new data by the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD).
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On Monday, the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) struck a blow in the fight for fiscal displume. In a 431-word statement, the conservative House Republicans put Official Washington on notice that when Congress returned in September and took up the seemingly annual short-term spending bill known as a “Continuing Resolution,” the HFC would not vote to fund business as usual. Instead, HFC members would only support a short-term spending bill to keep the government open if it also included several of their key policy priorities – policy priorities that would represent significant shifts in key areas of government policy.
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The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers in the House, outlined Monday what conditions would need to be met for them to vote for a new spending bill.
The group is calling for spending bills to include provisions on border security, the “unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI, and the Pentagon’s “cancerous woke polices.” The lawmakers also oppose “any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill.”
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The national unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 percent in July, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, once again hitting more than 50-year lows.
It’s still peak employment as far as the eye can see. Even with the past two years’ high inflation dropping dramatically and disinflation usually correlating with higher unemployment and a recession, that simply has not occurred yet, despite all the warning signs typically associated with an economic slowdown or downturn.
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Increased spending, common good bargaining, community schools and transitional kindergarten will not improve student learning.
A Gallup poll released earlier this month shows that just 28% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in K-12 public schools. The number for Republicans is particularly damning: Just 14% of GOPers view education in a positive light.
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Georgia reported decreased monthly tax collections for the fourth consecutive month.
Georgia’s net tax collections of more than $2.8 billion in June decreased 0.4 percent, or $10.9 million, compared to a year ago. The Peach State reported decreased tax collections in March, April and May.
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Michigan Democrats are celebrating a record $82 billion budget for 2024 that Republicans say is wasteful and unsustainable without future tax hikes.
It’s the first budget crafted by a Democrat political trifecta in 40 years, which includes rollbacks of the state’s retirement tax on seniors and quintupled the Working Families Tax Credit.
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The $4.4 billion tax cut plan approved by Republicans at the Wisconsin Capitol is the latest piece of the new state budget that Gov. Tony Evers is promising not to sign.
Republicans on Thursday okayed a tax cut package that will lower income taxes for everyone, but will give top earners in the state a larger tax cut.
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The U.S. Senate on Thursday evening passed a compromise deal to suspend the debt ceiling until after the presidential election while capping the rate of spending growth in subsequent years.
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As congress weighs another “deal” to raise the national debt limit, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is blasting the two leading contestants for the GOP nomination for their support of a “reckless” debt ceiling agreement in 2018.
The former South Carolina governor points out that Governor Ron DeSantis was a member of congress who voted for a 2018 bill to increase the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion.
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The House of Representatives on Wednesday evening passed a bipartisan deal to suspend the debt ceiling and cut spending ahead of a June 5 deadline to avert a national default.
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by Harold Hutchison Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ripped House Speaker Kevin McCarthy early Monday over the debt ceiling deal, calling it “totally inadequate” when it came to addressing spending. “Prior to this deal, Kayleigh, our country was careening toward bankruptcy and after this deal, our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy,” DeSantis said to “Fox and Friends” guest host Kayleigh McEnany. “To say you can do $4 trillion of increases in the next year and a half, I mean, that is massive amount of spending,” DeSantis continued. “I think that we’ve gotten ourselves on a trajectory, really since March of 2020 with some of the COVID spending and totally reset the budget and they are sticking with that and I think that is totally inadequate to get us in a better spot.” McCarthy released the text of the Fiscal Responsibility Act on Sunday evening, which increases the debt ceiling through Jan. 1, 2025, taking it past the 2024 presidential election. The House is expected to vote on the legislation on Wednesday, following a 72-hour period for members to read the bill, a provision of the rules changes proposed by the Freedom Caucus and agreed to by McCarthy prior to his election as speaker.…
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The GOP-led House is expected to vote Wednesday on the legislation resulting from a compromise between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden on the debt limit.
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There’s enough revenue to pay interest on the debt even if the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling is reached.
Meaning, if the U.S. defaults on the debt on June 1, it will be because President Joe Biden chose not to make principal and interest payments on U.S. Treasuries out of existing revenue, for which there is more than ample revenues to service and refinance up to the current debt ceiling limit, $31.4 trillion.
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Wisconsin state tax collections over the next three years are projected to come in more than three-quarters of a billion dollars lower than expected, according to a new report from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Republican lawmakers say the revised projections further underscore their efforts to remake a more fiscally responsible biennial budget out of Democrat Governor Tony Evers’ big-spending proposal.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined federal, state, and local leaders to break ground on a 41,900 square-foot facility to transform two hangars into a new hangar equipped for fighter maintenance at Selfridge Air National Guard Base.
The new facility will house maintenance on the main level and leadership/staff offices and classrooms on the second floor.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 on Wednesday, which would increase the debt limit for one year by $1.5 trillion and reduce the growth of domestic spending. The vote was 217-215.
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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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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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There was one group at Wisconsin’s budget hearing pushing for less. Americans for Prosperity warned Wisconsin lawmakers about spending too much of the state’s record $7.1 billion surplus.
Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin this week waited through hours of requests for more money at the legislature’s public budget hearings to make the simple case to spend less.
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Gross interest owed on the $31.4 trillion national debt — that is, interest owed on both the $24.9 trillion publicly traded debt and the $6.7 trillion debt in the Social Security, Medicare and other trust funds — will reach a gargantuan $1 trillion in 2024 for the first time in American history, according to the latest data gathered by the White House Office of Management and budget.
To put that into perspective, that is more than is spent on national defense related spending, currently $814 billion.
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Gov. Josh Shapiro’s first state budget proposal perpetuates unsustainable spending and fails to address the most promising ideas he put forward during his campaign. For starters, his budget calls for $45.9 billion in ongoing General Fund spending – but the state has only $43 billion in net revenues, so the governor is positioning us for a nearly $3 billion annual deficit.
Spending that exceeds revenue is unsustainable and fiscally irresponsible for individuals, businesses, and certainly for government.
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Another candidate forum, another no-show for Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz.
The far left Milwaukee County Judge was apparently too busy to attend Tuesday’s Milwaukee Press Club Newsmaker Luncheon, as she was for last week’s American Constitution Society debate.
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