Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

It’s about the nation’s equity. We are better than this… by Professor Edward Kleinbard

Videos below the fold. I caught Edward Kleinbard the other morning on Cspan.  He is a professor of law and business at USC and a fellow at the Century Foundation.  His book: We are better than this: How Government Should Spend our Money.  If you google his name, articles will come up from October 2014.   […]

Another look at Spending and Revenues

This is more or less relevant to Beverly’s post from earlier today. How many times have you heard Boehner, McConnell, Ryan or one of the legion of right-wing talking heads say, “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem?”  I refuted that lie repeatedly in this AB post and at the included […]

A Quick Look at Federal Spending

Over at Plain Blog, an anonymous wing nut made this off-topic comment. Now, yes, Bill Clinton and his 2000 federal spending level of 18% of GDP doesn’t put him on the fringe, which makes it surprising that you lefties are celebrating him, even as you hysterically condemn anybody who resists the Left’s current massive spending […]

Welfare, I’m not hurting from it and neither are you.

A good friend and I got into an email debate. He sent me the latest message regarding how wonderful it is that Florida is going to be drug testing welfare recipients. I responded that I’ll consider the policy when we start testing all the CEO’s who get welfare for their sector of the economy, the […]

Federal emergency Aid and no borrowing of funds for relief efforts

If these words translate to actions in the Congress on emergency aid, I believe it is a significant departure from past policies. And Virginia, Cantor’s home state, is predicted to be impacted. We will know soon enough if political capital is spent on this idea. A spokesperson for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said […]

Oh Yeah: Crowding Out Has Been a Huge Problem

Guest post by Steve Roth Oh Yeah: Crowding Out Has Been a Huge Problem Cross-posted at Asymptosissize=”2″> Right-wing economists love to claim that government spending “crowds out” private spending, especially investment spending on fixed assets. It’s probably true at some level and in some situations. But if it was true for postwar America, you’d expect […]

Continuing Resolution reductions

Talking Points Memo points us to a nine page chart specifying which programs are sustaining funding cuts in the Continuing Resolution reductions as published by the Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee. (h/t rjs) (h/t MG) The original documents from the House Committee on Appropriations are located here. These include the legislation text, legislation summary, […]

Don’t savings lower the deficit?

AP’s Andrew Taylor describes a part of the federal budget debate that needs clarification for the average voter and others regarding this current round of ‘negotiations’: Some $18 billion of the spending cuts involve cuts to so-called mandatory programs whose budgets run largely on autopilot. To the dismay of budget purists, these cuts often involve […]

Spending transparency for the federal government

OMB Watch reports here and here on the Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives : Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives and testimony here. OMB Watch recommends six changes Congress and the Obama administration should make to USAspending.gov, the government’s spending website which is based off of one of their websites, FedSpending.org. Making […]