The GOP's Deficit Trigger is a Self-Deceiving Budget Gimmick
Republicans want to create the illusion of deficit control.
Republicans want to create the illusion of deficit control.
This week's show covers the John Kelly phone flap, former presidents against Trump, and why Republicans are only pretending to be worried about the budget.
The president and congressional Democrats just worked together on a bad debt ceiling and budget deal.
Proponents of government spending warned of a budget full of cuts, but that's not what happened.
People like lower taxes, just not lower spending. Kansas is a lesson that you can't have the former without the latter.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The CFPB is fighting a three-front war against Congress, the Trump administration, and in the courts to maintain its unaccountable status.
The 2018 federal budget suggests small but necessary reforms.
Republicans dodge another opportunity to rein in spending.
Its projection relies on giddy GDP growth estimates that few credible economists, liberal or conservative, take seriously.
It doesn't cut overall spending, it's based on gimmicks, but it does slash some programs.
Congressional Budget Office projections vs. Office of Management and Budget projections
The president wants to cut Medicaid but leave Medicare untouched, rewarding supporters at the expense of America's long-term finances.
He'll cut less than we want, exaggerate economic growth, and pretend it all balances out in 2028.
What happens when rhetoric is good but totally divorced from reality, whether the topic is the budget or war?
Trump's abandoned "skinny budget" would have cut wasteful rail spending.
Libertarian-leaners are lonely voices on Capitol Hill opposing the latest bipartisan spending spree
Reason editors Katherine Mangu-Ward, Stephanie Slade, and Peter Suderman discuss the week's news.
The deal floated by the president reveals his governing priorities.
Ready for another round of tax cuts combined with spending increases?
GOP politicians admit that President Trump's draconian cuts to the regulatory state aren't going to happen.
Trump leaves the impression that Americans shoulder an unnecessarily large military burden because some NATO members underfund their military establishments. But that's nonsense.
Advocates of ever increasing spending will never meet a cut they won't overreact to.
It's a tragedy that President Trump didn't use this moment to try to cut more, and to cut the biggest unsustainable spending: Medicare and Social Security.
The NIH's track record suggest that Trump's proposed $6 billion budget cut won't be the end of science, progress, or discoveries.
The Trump "budget cuts" are best understood as a kind of theater or performance art.
Most chapters get majority of funding from philanthropy, not tax dollars.
Cutting those subsidies makes a lot of sense, and could be done without cutting rural communities out of the nation's transportation networks.
An unrealistically draconian budget that doesn't even cut spending is greeted with predictable hysteria.
HUD program a significant source of corruption and cronyism, and much less about helping the poor
Defense and Homeland Security hikes make up for cuts in discretionary spending. Does the government always need to spend $4 trillion?
But at least the TSA's totally useless behavioral detection program will face some cuts.
Trump says government has to learn to do more with less, but the military doesn't.
Is the OMB's kill list a sign of fiscal seriousness or the opposite?
They want to end the 2011 sequestration that caps defense spending.
The Kentucky senator is taking steps to distance himself from Republican leadership.
Trump's pick for the Office of Management and Budget isn't afraid to take on reckless defense spending.
Well...more than the non-zombie Congress already does.
With these kind of numbers, a balanced military budget is simply illusory.
The feds could save tens of billions just through better management.
A budget impasse leaves more than half a million in IOUs.
Congress pisses down our backs and tells us it's raining.
Legislators smuggled all kinds of questionable provisions into a last-minute, $1.1 trillion spending bill
The president wrongly believes government spending will grow the economy.
John Bel Edwards threatens to cut LSU football to pass one of the largest tax increases in state history.
More waste, fraud, and abuse hearings won't prevent more waste, fraud, and abuse.
(You don't really have to shut up, but here's my money.)
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