It’s back! It was just two weeks ago that the U.S. Congress delayed a scheduled presentation of federal government shutdown theater until the holidays, and now that the holidays have come, the U.S. Congress has… delayed what could have been a Christmas pageant episode of federal government shutdown theater for another month. Mike DeBonis…
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Before he became president, Donald Trump perhaps made his biggest impression on Americans in his role on the reality TV game show The Apprentice. Today, with the release of the president’s so-called “skinny” budget, he looks to be in the starring role for a government-version of The Biggest Loser. Reuters reports on President Trump’s…
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For the U.S. national debt, the date of March 16, 2017, marks the day when the statutory debt ceiling, which limits how much money the U.S. government can borrow, will go back into effect for the first time since it was suspended back on November 2, 2015, as part of former President Obama’s last…
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In 2011, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner realized the most significant achievement of his entire career in the U.S. Congress when he reached a deal with the White House to restrain the growth of U.S. government spending: the Budget Control Act of 2011. Here, using the leverage of the threat of not…
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“People who owe old debts to the Social Security Administration are getting a reprieve this tax season,” explains Fox News. “The federal government won’t be seizing their tax refunds.” Before anybody starts celebrating, that requires some clarification. As we noted, the “debts” in question are highly dubious. Mary Grice, now 58, was four years…
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With the national debt soon to reach $17 trillion, it’s not surprising that even the President can’t quite grasp the concepts of the debt ceiling and our national debt (see: “Raising the Debt Ceiling … Does Not Increase Our Debt“)—numbers this size are notoriously difficult for any of us to accurately conceive. That’s why…
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There are two disparate views of our large and growing public debt. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, in a recent International Herald Tribune editorial “Cheating America’s Children” (March 30-31, 2013), considers those who have been worrying about our burgeoning public debt as “Chicken Littles.” Chicken Little, you may recall, is hit in the head by an acorn and subsequently runs about…
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Readers of MyGovCost will likely be interested in this week’s Econtalk podcast with Don Boudreaux on the nature and significance of public debt. Roberts and Boudreaux begin by discussing debt at the household level and then work to draw out which lessons apply to the spending of a federal government. In doing so, the…
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Last week, Moody’s cut Greece’s credit rating to the lowest level on its scale, citing risk of default despite the recent write-off deal. Moody’s said the rating decision was “prompted by the recently announced debt exchange proposals for Greece, which imply expected losses to investors in excess of 70%.” The sovereign debt crisis in…
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My colleague Jeff Hummel pointed out an interesting blog post by Ted Levy where he asks the question: what’s the point of the debt ceiling? Levy shows that since the debt ceiling was created in 1917, it has been raised over 100 times, 8 times in just the last ten years. In fact, Congress…
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