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Barney Frank on Balancing the Budget: ‘I Don’t Think Balance is Logical’

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(CNSNews.com) — Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) does not think it is “logical” to achieve a balanced federal budget “from the standpoint of a whole economy” because the relationship between budget and government is different from that of budget and individual.

At the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Frank about the “fiscal cliff” talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio): “During these ongoing negotiations would you like to see an attempt to balance the federal budget? And if so,in what year?”

Frank said, “I don’t think balance is logical from the standpoint of a whole economy. One of the problems with balancing the budget, if you’re talking about a private individual you get credit for the things you report and that you own, your assets. The federal government has enormous assets. We have buildings and roads and ships.”

“So I think that you ought to be able to get to a point, 7 or 8 years from now, where in a good economic year you can hit a balance,” he said. “It’s important to reduce the deficit but the analogy between an individual entity and the federal government makes no sense.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Harry Reid: ‘We Are Not Going to Do Anything’ On Fiscal Cliff

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Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, made his “fiscal cliff” position clear in a press conference today. “We are not going to do anything,” said Reid.

Reid added, “We are not taking up anything they are working on over there.”

The top Democrat in the Senate was explaining his inaction on the House plan, the proposal put forward by Republican John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives. Boehner’s plan is being referred to as ‘Plan B.’

“Boehner described his Plan B as a fallback option to prevent a sweeping tax hike when tax cuts from the administration of President George W. Bush expire at the end of the year. Sources said the Boehner measure also would include extending the current estate tax and alternative minimum tax, two steps sought by Republicans,” reports CNN.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner Abruptly Scraps Fiscal Cliff ‘Plan B’ Vote After GOP Defections

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Facing a rank-and-file GOP revolt, House Speaker John Boehner abruptly canceled a vote Thursday night on a plan to raise taxes for the wealthy, bringing the country closer to a plunge down the “fiscal cliff.”

The House then recessed until after Christmas. The development raises questions about whether Boehner could muster support among Tea Partyers in the GOP-controlled House for a broader deal to avert the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts on Jan.1.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the sudden development showed that Boehner must now work with Democrats to try to avoid the cliff.

“Speaker Boehner’s partisan approach wasted an entire week and pushed middle-class families closer to the edge,” Reid said. “The only way to avoid the cliff altogether is for Speaker Boehner to return to negotiations, and work with President Obama and the Senate to forge a bipartisan deal.”

According to a GOP source familiar with the vote coun, “the veto threat and opposition from the White House and the Senate Majority Leader made some members feel like they were taking a risky vote for no reason, even though the bill did not actually include a tax hike. Now, the President and Senate Majority Leader must find a solution to this crisis.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservatives Denounce Voting for Boehner’s Plan B

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Prominent conservative leaders, including former attorney general Edwin Meese III, Ken Blackwell of the Conservative Action Project, Brent Bozell of ForAmerica, Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, David Bossie of Citizens United, Gary Bauer of American Values, Jim Backlin of the Christian Coalition of America, Richard Viguerie of ConservativeHQ.com, Al Regnery of the Paul Revere Project, and Andy Roth of the Club for Growth, among a myriad of others, scheduled a press conference this afternoon to denounce Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” tax increase for addressing the fiscal cliff. Some are accusing Grover Norquist of giving cover to the establishment to facilitate this cave-in and hand President Barack Obama a liberal victory.

The group released a statement this afternoon:
“As leaders of broad based American citizen groups we call upon Republican House Members to vote no on Speaker Boehner’s Tax Hike known as “Plan B.” This tax increase bill is just like the tax increase proposal Nancy Pelosi offered last year on May 23rd.

Speaker Boehner, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and too many Members of the Republican conference have forgotten that the problem in Washington is too much spending and not too little taxation.

When the American people voted to return the Republican majority in the House last month we sent you to cut spending. Instead, you are now voting on the Pelosi plan to increase taxes next year.

We urge Members of the House to vote no on the procedural rule to stop the Pelosi/Boehner tax plan from coming to the House floor for a vote.”

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Rejects Boehner’s Offer to Boost Millionaires’ Tax Rate in Exchange for Spending Cuts

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President Barack Obama quickly spurned House Speaker John Boehner’s latest compromise offer, as the federal government continues its scheduled progress towards the $600 billion so-called fiscal cliff in January.

The rejection came Sunday, two days after Boehner had offered to raise tax rates for Americans earning more than $1 million dollars per year.

News of Boehner’s compromise will likely spur protest by the GOP’s small-government wing.

On Friday, Boehner also proposed to raise the government’s debt limit by roughly $1 trillion over its current level of $16.3 trillion. That’s also controversial, because Republican advocates of smaller government want to use Congress’ control over the debt-limit to curb the federal government’s 10-year $45 trillion spending plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Washington Post Suggests Selling Alaska to Solve Nation’s Debt Problem

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photo credit: alaska dude

The prospect of once again hitting the federal debt ceiling has provoked the ritual round of hand-wringing about the intractable nature of this $16 trillion conundrum. But there is a simple, elegant option that involves no tax increases, no spending cuts and just a bit of imagination.

Sell Alaska.

That’s right. Put the entire state — from Juneau to Deadhorse, from the Bering Strait to the Beaufort Sea — on the auction block.

Absurd? No more absurd than the spectacle taking place right now as we skid closer to the “fiscal cliff.”

Selling real estate at top dollar is all about timing, and now’s a great time to unload the Klondike state. The federal government, which owns 69 percent of Alaska, could cash in on the vast, resource-rich state at a time when oil prices are high and wild salmon is flying off the shelves at Whole Foods. Selling Alaska could fetch at least $2.5 trillion and maybe twice that amount, enough to lop off a huge chunk of the national debt and perhaps as much money as President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner hope to save or raise over the next decade.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner Is Giving Away The Farm

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photo credit: gage skidmore

House Speaker John Boehner has already conceded the biggest tax increase in history – $800 billion – in negotiations with Barack Obama and Democrats.

But now he is reportedly offering much more than that if the administration will agree to much deeper cuts to entitlement programs.

There are several problems with this that illustrate, again, why it is totally unacceptable for Boehner to remain in the position as the most powerful Republican in Washington.

No. 1: The definition of “cuts” in Washington: Most Americans think of budget cuts as actual money not spent. That is the not the definition Washington uses. Each and every year, spending for entitlements and many other budget line items increases automatically and substantially. When government programs don’t grow as much as they would normally grow, that is considered a “cut” in Washington. Under that definition, even when the budget is growing, in Washingtonese, the politicians say they are “cutting” spending.

No. 2: The only cuts that are really meaningful are those proposed and enacted in the current session of Congress. Most of the “cuts” talked about in these negotiations are phantom cuts Congress will try to impose on future Congresses – something they don’t have the authority and enforcement power to do. That means to have any real impact, the cuts have to be made between January 2013 and January 2015. You have to front load them. Believe me, Obama and the Democrats will never do that.

Read more from this article HERE.

Let “Progressives” Own the Fiscal Cliff

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photo credit: gage skidmore

The Federal Reserve plans to keep short-term interest rate near zero until unemployment drops below 6.5 percent and inflation reaches 2.5 percent. This means given the current equations used to calculate those numbers, Fed interest rates will remain at current lows until mid-2015 or beyond.

The Fed will also continue spending $85 billion a month on bond purchases to keep long-term borrowing costs low and to stimulate the U.S. economy. They will also spend $45 billion a month on long-term Treasury purchases and continue buying $40 billion a month in mortgage bonds.

Why are such moves deemed necessary by the Federal Reserve?

Why does the U.S. debt ceiling need to be raised every few years?

Why is America stressed about a “fiscal cliff?”

Because the United States of America spends entirely too much money.

To those who remember history, it is self-evident that politicians, elected or not, who subscribe to the “progressive” (read Marxist) philosophy have little to no interest in compromising with their political opposition. History informs that “progressives” in America are more inclined to attempt eliminating their Conservative political opposition than reaching any compromise. How else can it be explained why “progressives” continue to cling to their uncompromising position?

The so-called fiscal cliff negotiations going on in Washington DC is a clear example of their motives and tactics.

The “progressives” are intentionally holding to a position untenable to Conservatives in hopes of creating divides within the GOP and causing them to lose credibility by caving on their principle of not raising taxes.

The best case scenario for “progressives” is for the GOP to stick to their principles and refuse to raise taxes. Then “progressives” and their co-conspirators within the “mainstream media”, aka the “progressive” Party Pravda, can place the blame for the economic results of sequestration on Conservative Republicans while, solely for their own political aims, temporarily championing members of the GOP who appeared willing to “compromise.”

Trying to negotiate a “grand bargain” simply means Republicans are aiding and abetting “progressive” Democrats in their quest to commit the biggest swindle in American history.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has a better idea that is good strategy for countering “progressive” actions:

“I think if we go halfway, or we split the difference with him, then both parties have their hands on it. When we go into recession, it’ll be confusing.

I have yet another thought on how we can fix this. Why don’t we let the Democrats pass whatever they want? If they are the party of higher taxes, all the Republicans vote present and let the Democrats raise taxes as high as they want to raise them, let Democrats in the Senate raise taxes, let the president sign it and then make them own the tax increase. And when the economy stalls, when the economy sputters, when people lose their jobs, they know which party to blame, the party of high taxes. Let’s don’t be the party of just almost as high taxes.

In the House, they have to because the Democrats don’t have the majority. In the Senate, I’m happy not to filibuster it, and I will announce tonight . . . that I will work with Harry Reid to let him pass his big old tax hike with a simple majority if that’s what Harry Reid wants, because then they will become the party of high taxes and they can own it.”

Conservatives can keep bashing Speaker of the House John Boehner and House leadership, perhaps Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell. But that does absolutely nothing to advance the Conservative position. Republicans made their bed a year and a half ago by agreeing to sequestration.

Give “progressive” Democrats what they want and let them own it. When average everyday Americans who happen to be Democrats or Independents start feeling the economic pain, let “progressives” explain a failure that is covered with their fingerprints and nobody else’s.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

What Soaking the Rich Gets Us: Deficits Forever

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Last week, the progressive think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) released their tax reform plan [pdf], supported by prominent left-wing budgeters and economists like Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. The net effect of this tax reform plan is a massive tax hike on “the rich” in order to fall far, far short of the revenue necessary to eliminate America’s deficit.

The CAP plan would eliminate deductions, close loopholes raise rates, implement new taxes, increase sales taxes, create new taxes… basically every form of a tax hike you can think of, all implemented on households with income above $250,000 per year.

What this gets, according to the Center for American Progress, is a tax system that barely raises Clinton-era levels of tax revenue, while the spending side of the ledger still projects to explode. CAP’s plan gets tax revenue of 20.3% of GDP, below the Clinton years’ high of 20.6% of GDP, with government spending projected to be significantly higher even under the most optimistic of situations. And by the 2030s, government spending is still projected to be over 25% of GDP in the most optimistic of scenarios. (You do not want to know what the pessimistic scenarios are. Something along the lines of an apocalypse.)

Read more from this story HERE.

The Federal Government Now Borrowing 46 Cents Out of Every Dollar It Spends

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photo credit: david gaines

After all of his seemingly endless campaign stops and harsh rhetoric about the rich not paying “their fair share,” it turns out that the president’s proposed tax hikes on “the rich” will only raise enough revenue to run the government for about eight days. But that doesn’t really matter, of course, because it’s all about “fairness.” In other words, if Washington lawmakers are serious about reducing the federal deficit — as they claim to be — the real solution is that they must stop borrowing and spending money we don’t have. We cannot carry on like this indefinitely:

The federal government borrowed 46 cents of every dollar it has spent so far in fiscal year 2013, which began Oct. 1, according to the latest data the Congressional Budget Office released Friday.

The government notched a $172 billion deficit in November, and is already nearly $300 billion in the hole through the first two months of fiscal year 2013, underscoring just how deep the government’s budget problems are as lawmakers try to negotiate a year-end deal to avoid a budgetary “fiscal cliff.”

Higher spending on mandatory items such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt led the way in boosting spending compared with the previous year, which also highlights the trouble spots Congress and President Obama are struggling to grapple with.

Read more from this story HERE.