Budget

Did you survive the budget cuts from the last debt ceiling fight? President Joe Biden called them “draconian,” while Republicans praised the deal’s “historic reductions in spending.” But both parties conned us, as my new video explains. What they call “cuts” were just a reduction in their planned spending increase. Instead of raising spending by 7.8%, they increased it by “only” 3.9%. Only…

During a discussion on former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment related to January 6, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle went on a bit of a digression on Wednesday’s The 11th Hour to discuss Fitch downgrading the U.S.’s credit rating, which according to her was caused by “was the chaos created by the GOP” including January 6. Of course, Fitch’s own explanation was a little bit more…

There is actually a Democratic governor who cares about economic freedom! He’s Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. He’s the subject of my new video. Before Polis got into the ugly field of government, he did useful work. He was an entrepreneur. He started an online flower company, modernized his parents’ greeting card company, and founded charter schools, an internet access company, Spanish-speaking…

CNN This Morning bashed Republicans for a military spending bill that excluded payments for abortion, diversity promotion, and transgender care to military personnel on Friday. Its reporters exaggerated the past bipartisanism of the bill, claimed Republicans were throwing a fit and using the military as a political pawn, and seemingly compared the cut benefits to rolling back racial…

On Thursday, the House held a joint Oversight subcommittee hearing looking into the financial management of the Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD’s budget constituted 15 percent of total government spending and half of discretionary spending but failed its previous five audits. The hearing exposing the extraordinary extent of the failure to report spending did not receive any live coverage…

CNN This Morning’s anchor Poppy Harlow pressed New York Republican Congressman Michael Lawler on Wednesday for saying that the proposed budget would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the 2023-2033 period. Harlow hyper focused on one specific aspect of the bill which would supposedly cost $2.1 billion more over the next ten years and repeatedly chided Lawler for not mentioning…

CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans criticized Republicans for the amount of money the potential budget deal allotted to the IRS on Tuesday. The proposed plan included $60 billion for the IRS as opposed to the $80 billion that Democrats favored. Romans portrayed Republicans as opposed to the public good because they didn’t want to increase the bureaucracy’s budget. She failed to…

In their coverage of the just-concluded debt ceiling stand-off, ABC, CBS and NBC put the onus for a potential default on Republicans, ignored the dangers of the rising national debt, and hyped GOP proposals to trim spending as extreme attempts to “gut” or “slash” liberal programs.

A new Media Research Center study finds broadcast network reporters never criticized the size of the most massive spending bills (more than $1 trillion) passed by the Congress going back to 2018. Instead, reporters usually echoed the politicians promoting this spending by repeatedly listing the benefits of each bill, without discussing how the spending would affect the national debt or…

Given their government funding, citizens should expect public broadcasting’s news coverage to be scrupulously neutral, yet an exhaustive Media Research Center study of PBS NewsHour found coverage of the first four months of the new Congress has been heavily slanted against Republicans.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. On Tuesday night, NBC Nightly News cried crocodile tears over proposed GOP spending cuts that weren’t actually cuts, and how the budget proposal would supposedly cause poor people to go hungry. In addition, NBC huffed that this could happen if the United States went into default due to President Biden’s refusal to negotiate with…

The very term “debt limit” makes a mockery of any kind of responsible budgeting. Each time the government reaches the “limit” it gets raised with the familiar scenarios that include threats of a government shutdown (an idea that increasingly appeals to some conservatives) and the claim that the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. is at stake. We have faith and credit? Who knew?

Republicans have been trying to get America’s runaway spending under control so future generations aren’t saddled with unimaginable levels of debt. But that’s hard to do when there are bad-faith actors like Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell on CNN This Morning portraying the GOP as terrorists taking “hostage[s]” and holding “a gun to the head of the global economy…

On the top right of the Monday Washington Post came this glaring headline about "Far-right bloc is flexing muscle: Freedom Caucus pledges fiscal war." In the story, the reporters used the term "far-right" ten times to describe House Republicans. As they acknowledge, that neatly matches Biden's campaign rhetoric about "MAGA extremists."