Budget

Despite six months of positive economic growth, Treasury collections are continuing what is now a serious two-year downward slide. In August, the Congressional Budget Office projected that collections during the fiscal year that will end on September 30, 2010 will be $2.264 trillion (PDF; page 2 at link). That's $159 billion, or about 7.5% higher, than fiscal 2009's final total of $2.105…

On Thursday, the Treasury Department issued a press release, called "Update on Status of Support for Housing Programs." Its fourth paragraph reads as follows: At the time the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in September 2008, Treasury established Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (PSPAs) to ensure that each firm maintained a positive…

The Associated Press should seriously consider renaming itself "Associated Dems" or "Associated Leftists." This morning, the AP's Charles Babington uncritically relays the latest Democratic Party talking point about its statist health care plan that has been passed in two very different forms in the House and Senate. The supposed point is that anyone who voted to create Medicare Part D in 2003…

In keeping with the tradition of the holidays - the minds at MSNBC, the place for politics if you're of the lefty persuasion, decided rate the top 10 political stories of the decade. And leading this gang of masters of the political journalism universe was "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who on the broadcast of his Dec. 24 program, announced that conservative activism, mainly the tea party…

In connection with the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending monstrosity signed into law last week, an unbylined AP report on December 16 told us the following (bolds are mine throughout this post): Most Republicans opposed the bill, citing runaway federal spending. They also pointed to an estimated $3.9 billion for more than 5,000 local projects sought by lawmakers from both parties. The AP writer…

On January 1, 2009, the final 4.2% stage of a four-year, 21% cut in individual income taxes took effect in Ohio. State tax withholding tables reflecting the lower rates went into effect. Ohio employees began seeing a bit more net pay in each paycheck. This past week, the state legislature, faced with an $850 million shortfall and threats of immediate school funding cuts by Governor Ted…

CNN’s John Roberts and his guest, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, pushed for President Obama to break a campaign promise to not increase taxes on those who make less than $250,000, and implement a more “broad-based” tax hike. Sachs revealed his leftist stance by blaming the trillions of dollars in debt on not taxing the rich and banks enough and calling for an end to the wars in Iraq and…

Longtime readers of Associated Press dispatches have long since learned that many of the most important facts of a story -- especially facts that put the government, bureaucrats, and leftists in a bad light -- are often found in its final paragraphs. This is a way for the wire service to boast that it really did report all important facts while usually ensuring that harried broadcasters and other…

One of the favorite talking points that often comes from Fox News detractors is the claim that the News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) cable news is somehow an organ of the Republican Party. It's a claim that former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn made, along with countless other accusations from prominent Democrats. However, these Democrats would be doing themselves and their audiences a…

In his coverage of Uncle Sam's November Monthly Treasury Statement released yesterday, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger reached the wire service's usual quota of errors and misstatements. But what's remarkable is that the AP reporter's article seems to betray a belief that the country is still in a recession. Fascinating. Along the way, Crutsinger omitted the fact that November's deficit…

Blogger Doug Ross got to the news of the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Report (PDF) over the weekend, quite accurately observing that the establishment news coverage of its content barely existed. The results of searches at the Associated Press's raw feed page on "Congressional Budget Office" (not in quotes) and "CBO" confirm Doug's observation, as no result returned relates to…

The coverage yesterday by the Associated Press's Stephen Bernard of payroll and human resources giant ADP's monthly jobs report for November focused on a relatively small reduction in the size of the decline in jobs lost and not on the fact that continuing to lose jobs is a bad thing.That rhetorical sleight of hand enabled the AP reporter to tell us that ADP's reported private sector job loss…

On Wednesday’s Good Morning America, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos highlighted House Democrats’ opposition to any troop increase in Afghanistan on budget grounds, but did not address the inconsistency of this position, since most of these congressmen support spending hundreds of billions on health care “reform.”Before bringing up the budget issue, Stephanopoulos preemptively apologized for…

At the end of CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, host Bob Schieffer fretted over massive government spending but avoided blaming current Democratic proposals: “I’m not even talking about the cost of health care....It is now costing $1 million a year to keep one U.S. soldier on the ground in Afghanistan, not to mention that for every soldier there, we have one civilian contractor.”Schieffer also…