The Congressional Budget Office released its 2017 Long-Term Budget Outlook this week, several months ahead of its usual schedule, which is typically published every July. The most interesting part of the new long-term budget outlook appears in the report’s appendix, where the CBO’s analysts illustrate how their new outlook for the publicly held portion…
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On March 23, 2017, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding added up to more than $19.86 trillion, or if you round up by another 0.014 trillion, we’re really talking about a national debt of 20 trillion dollars. That’s a big number, which for many people, is really tough to grasp just how big…
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Last December, Amtrak train number 527 approached a track switch near Davis, California, where the speed limit was 40 mph. The engineer roared through at 78 mph, jerking the train violently and causing five passengers to suffer injuries. The Federal Railroad Administration let Amtrak conduct its own investigation, and as one passenger told reporters,…
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With the April deadline looming, taxpayers might ponder the prospects of filing a return in which they fail to account for millions of dollars. As it happens, that is the case with a California tax agency. According to Board of Equalization member Betty Yee, who is now state controller, the BOE misallocated $47.8 million…
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According to the latest estimates, it will cost Californians upwards of $64 billion to build the bullet train envisioned by Governor Jerry Brown and the state’s legislature. That’s money that they don’t have today, but if they did, that’s also a lot of money that could be put to work to do more things…
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After the 2016 election, California governor Jerry Brown showed signs of early onset Trump Derangement Syndrome, pledging resistance and warning that California would “launch its own damn satellite” if President Trump backed off on climate research. On his trip to Washington this week, Brown toned down the defiance and held out the begging bowl….
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Every year for the past four years at least 40 billion dollars has gone to waste because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has declined to audit its own expenditures to ensure that unintentional medical billing errors are caught and corrected. That is a stunning claim being advanced by Kristin Walters of…
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As we noted, California’s troubled Victims Compensation Board will reportedly provide $4 million for the victims of the December 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The backstory here is that these seriously injured government workers have become victims of government agencies. “The problems started when San Bernardino County placed the terror victims into California’s…
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Since President Trump released his “skinny” budget last week, there has been a lot of political posturing, if not outright hysteria in the media, from the advocates of the various government programs targeted for reduced levels of federal spending. And perhaps more remarkably, there have been widespread accusations of spending cuts where none have…
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President Trump wants to cut the budget of the federal Environmental Protection Agency by 31 percent, from $8.2 billion to about $5.7 billion, a reduction of $2.6 billion and more than 3,000 positions. The proposed cuts have drawn attacks from politicians, the old-line establishment media, and regulatory zealots. For their part, taxpayers might keep…
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