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Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail

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Photo Credit: ABC OTUS NewsThe financially struggling U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week, an apparent end-run around an unaccommodating Congress.
The service expects the Saturday mail cutback to begin the week of Aug. 5 and to save about $2 billion annually, said Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe.

“Our financial condition is urgent,” Donahoe told a press conference.

The move accentuates one of the agency’s strong points — package delivery has increased by 14 percent since 2010, officials say, while the delivery of letters and other mail has declined with the increasing use of email and other Internet services.

Under the new plan, mail would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday, but would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays. Post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open on Saturdays.

Over the past several years, the Postal Service has advocated shifting to a five-day delivery schedule for mail and packages — and it repeatedly but unsuccessfully appealed to Congress to approve the move. Though an independent agency, the service gets no tax dollars for its day-to-day operations but is subject to congressional control.

Read more from this story HERE.

CBO: Interest On Debt Snowballing

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Photo Credit: PoliticoBehind the fine print of new budget estimates released Tuesday is a growing — some say brutal — competition between discretionary spending by Congress and fixed interest payments owed on the growing government debt.

Indeed, the steady increase in annual interest costs is a surprisingly big reason why the Congressional Budget Office sees deficits rising in the second half of the coming decade.

Accumulated interest payments from 2014 through 2018 are $1.76 trillion under CBO’s new baseline. Interest payments for the second five years are more than double that or about $3.64 trillion.

The growth takes place in a period when CBO is forecasting a steady ratcheting down on annual appropriations in hopes of reducing future deficits. On top of cuts enacted in 2011, the new baseline assumes that a new round of across-the-board cuts scheduled for March 1 will go into effect.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. For Sale: Obama Lets China Gobble Up U.S. Energy

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Photo Credit: abangbay @ MalaysiaOil And Politics: Beijing plays the debt card as the Obama administration quietly lets China acquire major ownership interests in oil and natural gas resources across the U.S. at the same time it blocks the Keystone pipeline.

Normally, foreign investment in the U.S. is to be welcomed. It creates jobs, boosts economic growth and promotes trade and exports.

But when that investor is an ambitious and increasingly belligerent China to whom we owe over a trillion dollars, eyebrows and concerns need to be raised.

Reversing a Bush administration policy, the Obama administration is encouraging Beijing to acquire equity interests in U.S. energy. In 2005, the Bush administration blocked China on grounds of national security from buying California-based Unocal Corp. for $18.4 billion.

That was then, and this is now.

Read more on this story HERE.

CBO: ‘Fiscal cliff’ Deal Carries $4 Trillion Price Tag Over Next Decade

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The Senate deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” will add roughly $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to current law, according to new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO determined Tuesday that the package, hammered out late Monday evening by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would — over the next decade — come with a $3.9 trillion price tag.

The agreement, which is pending before the House after passing in a 89-8 Senate vote early Tuesday, would extend lower tax rates on annual household income under $450,000 and postpone automatic spending cuts for two months.

The extension of lower tax rates for a bulk of the nation’s taxpayers and the addition of a permanent patch to the alternative minimum tax would add roughly $3.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, the CBO said. Other individual, business, and energy tax extenders would add another $76 billion. The extension of unemployment benefits would cost roughly $30 billion, and the so-called “doc fix” would tally another $25 billion through fiscal 2022.

The CBO says the budget agreement will lead to an overall increase in spending of about $330 billion over 10 years.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Ruling Class on Track to Destroy Middle America in 2013

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It’s time for us in the middle class to get smart – the debt is going to destroy us. And both parties are making sure of this.

I met with Senator Tom Coburn two weeks ago. He suggests that the American experiment could collapse within the next two years. Why? Because the debt bomb is going to explode and destroy every dollar you and I own.

Who suffers? The middle class. We will be destroyed and along with us, the Republic.

Will our millionaire federal masters get real in 2013? Probably not.

The Coming Age of Austerity

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photo credit: KTL Shutterbug“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament. Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives.Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future. The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

Consider. Between 1946 and 1964, 79 million babies were born — the largest, best-educated and most successful generation in our history. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both born in 1946, were in that first class of baby boomers.

The problem. Assume that 75 million of these 79 million boomers survive to age 66. This means that from this year through 2030, an average of nearly 4 million boomers will be retiring every year. This translates into some 11,000 boomers becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security every single day for the next 18 years.

Add in immigrants in that same age category and the fact that baby boomers live longer than the Greatest Generation or Silent Generation seniors, and you have an immense and unavoidable increase coming in expenditures for our largest entitlement programs.

Benefits will have to be curbed or cut and payroll taxes will have to rise, especially for Medicare, to make good on our promises to seniors.

Read more from this piece HERE.

Video: Obama, In His Own Words: “I’ll Be a One-Term President” & “$4 Trillion in Debt is Unpatriotic”

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After suffering through three years of economic malaise and the most debt accumulated by any president in history, no one should vote for Obama. In fact, Obama himself said in 2008 that you should never vote for such a failure.

Here’s Obama in 2008 stating that, if he doesn’t turn things around, he’ll be a “one term president”:

And here’s another video where Obama says that $4 trillion of debt is “unpatriotic”:

I suppose Americans have grown numb to DC politicians and their hypocrisy. Nevertheless, Romney should be hammering Obama on this, nonstop.

Why I Opposed the Debt Limit Increase

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This act increases the debt limit by between $2.1 and $2.4 trillion, the biggest explosion of debt in American history. It allows the government to avoid spending reductions for the next two years while squandering our last best hope of averting a sovereign debt crisis.

I am opposed to this measure for the following reasons:

The purported cuts, even if realized, are far below the $4 trillion deficit reduction that credit rating agencies have warned is necessary to preserve the Triple-A credit rating of the United States government.

It blows the lid off the House budget passed in April by more than a half-trillion dollars over ten years.

It makes no significant spending reductions for at least the next two years, essentially freezing spending at an unsustainable level. While the debt increase occurs this year, deficit reductions are to be spread over many years and could be reversed by future acts of Congress.

The spending caps are easily circumvented by declaring appropriations to be an emergency, a response to a “major disaster,” or necessary for the “Global War on Terror.”

 Read More at Floyd Reports By Rep. Tom McClintock, Floyd Reports

Moody’s: Neither debt plan protects the nation’s AAA rating

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The “limited magnitude” of both debt plans put forward by congressional leaders would not put the nation’s AAA credit rating back on solid footing, Moody’s Investors Service announced Friday.

“Reductions of the magnitude now being proposed, if adopted, would likely lead Moody’s to adopt a negative outlook on the AAA rating,” the credit rating agency said in a new report. “The chances of a significant improvement in the long-term credit profile of the government coming from deficit reductions of the magnitude proposed in either plan are not high.”

It added that “prolonged debt ceiling deliberations” have increased the odds of a downgrade, but that the firm is still confident policymakers will avoid a default.

“It remains our expectation that the government will continue with timely debt service,” the firm said.

It also clarified that as far as it is concerned, the nation will only default if it misses an interest or principal payment on U.S. debt, not if it misses payments on other obligations like federal employee salaries or Social Security benefits.

 Read  More at The Hill  By Peter Schroeder, The Hill