Budget

McConnell: Entitlement Cuts Probably Won’t Happen Under Trump

By Yuval Rosenberg

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) unleashed a storm of Democratic criticism earlier this week by telling Bloomberg News that rising deficits and debt are driven by Social Security,...
Trump Wants Federal Agencies to Cut Spending by 5%

By Michael Rainey and Yuval Rosenberg

President Trump instructed his cabinet secretaries Wednesday to reduce their departmental spending by 5 percent or more next year. “Some of you will say, ‘Hey, I can do much more than five,’” Trump...
Hurricane Michael Might Have Damaged More Than $1 Billion Worth of F-22s

By Michael Rainey

By the time Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle last week, most of the aircraft based at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City had been flow out of harm’s way. But between four and 17 F-22...
Federal Deficit Jumps 17 Percent to $779 Billion

By Yuval Rosenberg

Despite a strong economy and robust job market, the federal budget deficit swelled to $779 billion in fiscal 2018, up $113 billion from 2017, according to final numbers released Monday by the...
Mnuchin Spins a False Claim About Tax Cuts and the Deficit

By Yuval Rosenberg

The Congressional Budget Office projected last week that the federal government’s fiscal 2018 deficit would total $782 billion. The final numbers will be released by the Treasury Department, but...

Pentagon Grounds All F-35s

By Michael Rainey

The U.S. Defense Department grounded all F-35 jets on Thursday, on the heels of a crash on September 28 in South Carolina. Investigators examining the loss of an F-35B, the Marine Corps’ version of...
Trump’s Border Wall: A Christmastime Clash Is Coming

By Yuval Rosenberg

There won’t be much holiday cheer on Capitol Hill this year, Politico’s Playbook warns : “Over the last few days, we’ve seen a massive ramp-up of the ‘build-the-wall’ rhetoric from key Hill...
How GOP Rhetoric on Entitlements Has Changed

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The Washington Post’s David Weigel describes how Republicans have changed their tune on Medicare and, for this year at least, largely abandoned the idea of entitlement reform: “[O]ver eight years,...
How the Army ‘Found’ $25 Billion

By Michael Rainey

The U.S. Army has been combing through its existing programs to identify potential sources of funding that can be applied to its ambitious modernization program, and according to Army Secretary Mark...
529 Plans Are Growing — and So Is Their Cost to the Government

By Yuval Rosenberg

Education savings accounts called 529 plans have grown dramatically since 2010, both in terms of the number of accounts and total assets, according to research by The Pew Charitable Trusts . And they...

Price Drops for Next Batch of F-35s

By Michael Rainey

The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have reached an agreement on the financial terms for the next batch of F-35 Lightning IIs. The so-called Lot 11 production will include 141 stealth jets, with 91...
One Key Way the US Lags Behind Finland (and Denmark and Taiwan)

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The U.S. ranks 27th in a new study that ranks 195 countries based on “expected human capital” — the population’s overall level of survival, health and education, considered a key determinant of...
Congress Fails to Pass Farm Bill

By Michael Rainey

The federal farm bill expired at midnight on Sunday, leaving dozens of programs in limbo until Congress can pass a new spending package or an extension of the old one. Lawmakers were unable to agree...
What’s in Trump’s New NAFTA?

By Michael Rainey

President Trump announced a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico Monday that is intended to replace NAFTA, the 24-year-old trade agreement that regulates roughly $1.2 trillion worth of trade between...
The US Government’s Biggest Financial Asset: Student Debt

By Michael Rainey

We hear a lot about government debt, but what about government assets? Jill Mislinski of Advisor Perspectives looked at the Federal Reserve's financial accounts data and found that student loans make...