The 20th government shutdown since the passage of the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 started and ended early in the morning of Friday, February 9, 2018, when, following a filibuster publicity stunt in the House of Representatives by minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and a more principled filibuster by Senator Rand Paul…
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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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President Trump has tapped Mick Mulvaney head of the Office of Management and Budget, to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a bad sign for a number of reasons. As we noted back in 2012 in Financial Crisis and Leviathan, the CFPB was created during the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, not…
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On Friday, September 29, 2017, after months of dysfunctional delay, the U.S. Senate finally got around to passing its own version of a budget blueprint for the U.S. government’s 2018 fiscal year, which officially got underway on Sunday, October 1, 2017. Politico‘s Sarah Ferris describes some of the politics that are built into the…
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The U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding finally surpassed the grim milestone of $20 trillion on September 8, 2017, following President Trump’s surprising deal with Congressional Democrats to suspend the statutory debt ceiling through December 15, 2017. On that Friday, the national debt jumped by $317.6 billion to reach $20.16 trillion. The total public…
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“Budget cuts threaten forests’ roads, hunting, fishing,” headlines the piece by McClatchy reporter Anshu Siripurapu. Trails “could get messier,” and maintenance on bridges, dams and recreation sites “could” become tougher. “That’s the potential fate of national forest projects, thanks to President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal 2018,” Siripurapu warns. The president seeks $100…
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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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Sanctuary cities decline to enforce U.S. immigration laws and comply with federal customs and immigration enforcement. President-elect Donald Trump’s crusade against sanctuary cities is supposed to be a blow against criminals, but as Chriss W. Street of Breitbart shows, California could suffer serious consequences. There are some 300 sanctuary cities and counties nationwide and…
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While millions around the world watched the Academy Awards on February 28, Brian Lamb of C-SPAN was hosting Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. The interview confirmed that when it comes to wasting taxpayers’ money, government bureaucrats are endlessly creative. Lamb recalled the first Golden Fleece award in 1975, a project of…
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The California Department of Transportation hired Alex Morales III as statewide coordinator for compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As Jim Miller notes in the Sacramento Bee, Mr. Morales III, who was paid a base salary of $74,912, has been arrested for allegedly accepting “at least $100,000 in bribes, including an…
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