Budget

Why Republicans Won’t Even Try to Pass a Budget for 2019

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Budget expert Stan Collender at Forbes slams Republicans for not even attempting to pass a budget for the fiscal year that starts October 1. “The House and Senate Budget Committees only have one job...
Deficit Owls Say You Shouldn’t Give a Hoot About $1 Trillion Budget Shortfall

By Yuval Rosenberg

As warnings rise about the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the federal budget deficit is on pace to top $1 trillion in 2020, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein on Friday highlighted a...
How Congress Cheats with Our Money — and How We Can Stop It

By Marc Goldwein and Zach Moller

The U.S. is on course to top its record debt levels set after World War II, and permanent trillion-dollar deficits — meaning, forever — are likely to return within two years . And unlike after World...
Will Work for Food? Republicans Push Stricter Rules for SNAP

By Michael Rainey

Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps, is provided in the farm bill, a massive spending and regulatory package Congress passes every...
April Is Financial Literacy Month. Someone Tell Congress.

By Joseph J. Minarik and Caroline L. Ferguson

February is Black History Month, March is National Women’s Month, and April? Well, it’s Financial Literacy Month, of course! The U.S. government gave financial literacy its own month in 2003. April...

Why All the Warnings About Unsustainable National Debt Could Be Wrong

By Michael Rainey

International economists are warning about rising global debt levels and deficit hawks in Washington are increasingly worried about what they see as unsustainable debt levels in the U.S., but a new...
The US Has an Exceptional Debt Outlook – and Not in a Good Way

By Michael Rainey

The International Money Fund’s latest global fiscal survey warns that in five years, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will be higher than Italy’s, a nation not generally known for its exemplary fiscal...
Why More School Districts Are Holding Class Just Four Days a Week

By Sophie Quinton, Stateline

The public school in Campo, Colorado, hasn’t required all its students to come to class on Fridays for nearly two decades. The 44-student district dropped a weekday to boost attendance and better...
When the Budget Won’t Balance, Just Get Rid of the Budget Committee?

By Michael Rainey

It may sound like a joke — Erik Sherman of Forbes said it seemed like something “from The Onion or Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker, only with less humor and pith” — but Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), chair...
With Recent Laws, Congress Has Added $540 Billion to the 2019 Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

Spending hikes and tax cuts passed since 2015 under the Trump and Obama administrations account for $540 billion of next year’s projected $981 billion budget deficit, or 55 percent, according to...

Trump Wants Pentagon to Pay for Border Wall

By Michael Rainey

President Trump is pushing for the Department of Defense to help build the border wall with Mexico, according to a report Tuesday in The Washington Post . Trump is reportedly upset about the low...
US Borrowing Nearly $300 Billion This Week

By Michael Rainey

The Treasury Department plans to sell a record $294 billion worth of bills and notes this week, according to Bloomberg . The tax cuts signed into law by President Trump are causing a decline in...
A Surprise Winner in the $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill

By Michael Rainey

President Trump had plenty of complaints about the massive spending package Congress sent him last week, at one point even threatening to veto the bill before finally signing it into law on Friday...
What We Learned from the Omnibus Spending Deal

By Yuval Rosenberg

Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes at The Washington Posts’ Monkey Cage that the deeper lesson...
Trump Brings Some Reality-TV Drama to the Spending Deal

By Yuval Rosenberg

After injecting some late drama and suspense into the $1.3 trillion spending bill, President Trump on Friday signed the legislation, avoiding a government shutdown by funding federal operations...