"Unsustainable."

Dang. The Postal Service is currently operating with a broken business model. Since the economic recession of 2008, we have been experiencing a significant imbalance between revenues and costs. This imbalance will only get worse in the coming decade unless laws that govern the Postal Service are changed. In the past few years, the Postal [...]

Read this post »

Taking a little off the top.

Well, isn’t this just peachy. This is actually the first time I’ve heard anything about it, but apparently, the public servants of the United States Senate have been enjoying taxpayer-subsidized trims and shaves on Capitol Hill since before the Civil War — an oh-so-beloved tradition that, in merely the past fifteen years, has cost taxpayers [...]

Read this post »

Responsibility.

Via Byron York, skip to 2:33 for the key bit. And remember, not only did the GOP offer to give him extra flexibility on what to cut as part of the sequester — which he refused, naturally — but federal agencies already enjoy some inherent flexibility in moving money around and could ask Congress for [...]

Read this post »

Preach.

The House GOP is set to unveil their budget proposal this week, which, as Rep. Paul Ryan indicated on Fox News Sunday, plans to balance the budget in ten years. On CNN Monday morning, Rep. Jason Chaffetz was also looking to get out in front of some of the inevitable criticisms that will come from [...]

Read this post »

Crisis.

Actually, the GOP bill wasn’t designed to avert cuts, it was designed to avert these cuts by giving Obama the power to replace them with equivalent cuts of his choosing. He’s been screaming for weeks that the sequester will chop crucial services by hitting agencies indiscriminately across the board, right? Well, there’s the solution — [...]

Read this post »

Read this post »

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night...

Modernity has been tough for the U.S. Postal Service. The ‘self-supporting’ government enterprise, faced with technologies and market competition slowly but surely rendering their business model less and less viable, has tried to institute various coping mechanisms — cutting costs, reducing the size of their workforce, consolidating processing locations, etcetera — but to little practical [...]

Read this post »

Denial.

A fitting amuse bouche for tonight’s meal, which is officially so desperate for a sense of mystery and import, the president briefly appeared today to announce that there would be no announcements about the content thereof. You big tease. Expect to hear a lot more of this in this vein tonight. Denial: It ain’t just [...]

Read this post »

That literally makes no sense.

Classic.   Well, I think that sequestration is a bad idea all around. … The fact is, we’ve had plenty of spending cuts. … What we need is growth. We need growth with jobs. … So, again, we have to make a judgment about how do we get growth with jobs, that’s where the real [...]

Read this post »

Long time coming.

Republicans blame Barack Obama for the national-debt explosion, and for good reason; about a third of the existing national debt has accrued in his four years in office.  Democrats blame George W. Bush for it, as deficits returned during his eight years after a momentary respite under Bill Clinton and a (briefly) fiscal-conservative Republican Congress.  [...]

Read this post »

Disaster.

The United States could lose its top credit rating for the second time from a leading credit agency if there’s a delay in raising the country’s debt ceiling, Fitch Ratings warned Tuesday… “The pressure on the U.S. rating, if anything, is increasing,” David Riley, managing director of Fitch Ratings’ global sovereigns division said at a [...]

Read this post »

Despair.

Tuesday marks the 1,350th day since the Senate passed a budget. The law requires Congress to pass a budget every year, on the grounds that Americans deserve to know how the government plans to spend the trillions of taxpayer dollars it collects, along with dollars it borrows at the taxpayers’ expense. But Majority Leader Harry [...]

Read this post »

Brinksmanship.

A number of Republican senators say a partial government shutdown should be considered as an option if President Obama doesn’t concede on spending cuts to the GOP’s satisfaction… Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told the Dallas Morning News that he would be open to a partial government shutdown, pointing to the 1995 shutdown as “the greatest [...]

Read this post »

And counting.

The fiscal cliff deal didn’t actually change that, nor the direction or rate of increase, either … except possibly to make it worse, on paper at least.  Politico’s Glenn Thrush and Reid Epstein remind everyone that while Barack Obama and the Democrats celebrate a win over Republicans on raising taxes on high-end earners, the problem [...]

Read this post »

Collapse.

House Speaker John A. Boehner kicked off the 112th Congress by saying Americans are ready for an adult conversation on spending and deficits. Two years later, that broader conversation has yet to happen, either in the country or in the halls of Congress, where lawmakers were poised Monday to once again nibble at the deficit [...]

Read this post »

Obviously.

Of course she does, didn’t even have to think about it — because who even cares about a silly ol’ self-imposed restriction like a ‘debt ceiling,’ anyway? During a press conference today, House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi signaled that she supported “unilateral control” for the President over the country’s debt limit. “Do you support President [...]

Read this post »

Spoiler: Buffett wins.

Earlier this week, I featured a video of an inteview conducted by Matt Lauer of Warren Buffett, in which the multibillionaire recommended tax hikes on the wealthy as a morale-booster for the middle class.  “I think would have a great effect in terms of the morale of the middle class,” Buffett told Lauer, while scoffing [...]

Read this post »

Compromise?

Republican unity against raising tax rates for the wealthy began to show cracks on Wednesday after a conservative congressman said he would back an agreement with President Barack Obama to raise rates on the rich but extend tax cuts for income below $250,000. With Congress scrambling to avert a series of tax increases and spending [...]

Read this post »

Entitlements.

Congressional Democrats are starting to draw a much tougher line on entitlements in the increasingly messy fiscal cliff talks, warning Republicans to keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare benefits… For many Democrats, these entitlement programs are part of their core identity — aggressively protecting the social safety net programs created by the New [...]

Read this post »

Of limits and limitations.

Yes, by all means — let’s just blithely remove the mechanism forcing us to have a discussion about our whopping and ever-mounting $16 trillion in national debt, because we can’t get our fiscal act together. That pesky ol’ chestnut. From the WFB: And via HuffPo: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the U.S. “absolutely” should get [...]

Read this post »

Negotiations.

Depressing, not so much because of the raw numbers as because of the trend. Sixteen months ago, adults split 50/32 in favor of deficit reduction entirely or mostly via spending cuts versus the “balanced approach,” i.e. an equal mix of cuts and tax hikes. That was a hopeful early sign that voters had grasped the [...]

Read this post »

Excluding Social Security and Medicare.

How much spending does the US do on means-tested welfare programs?  According to Senator Jeff Sessions and the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, it’s more than one would imagine.  In FY2011 alone, federal and state spending on means-tested federal entitlement programs rose above $1 trillion — and that doesn’t include non-means-tested programs like Social Security and [...]

Read this post »

Let's get serious.

John Kerry, President Obama’s Romney-impersonating debate prep partner, had some tough words for Mitt Romney’s tax plan and the budgetary math that ostensibly doesn’t add up on MSNBC this morning. It’s time to get really serious about what’s on the table here with this choice. I’m perplexed. I look at — Mitt Romney, first of [...]

Read this post »

Plus, Ramirez on birds of a feather.

This campaign reset has been brought to you by the letters U-N-S-E-R-I-O-U-S and the number 46%: In 2008, singer will.i.am provided Barack Obama’s presidential campaign with music for its signature anthem, “Yes We Can.” On Tuesday, at a rally for Obama in Columbus, Ohio, the performer chose to play something new: the theme song for [...]

Read this post »

Gamechanger?

As prominent Democrat Dick Harpootlian put it, “Big Bird is iconic. He — or it — she — I don’t know what it is — is an icon with a whole generation or two of Americans.” Well said. If Mitt Romney won’t stand up for giant muppets, who will he stand up for? If we’re [...]

Read this post »