Budget

On Morning Joe Tuesday, the panel discussed President Donald Trump's upcoming address Tuesday evening to a joint-session of Congress. His speech is expected to cover his latest budget proposal, which includes a $54 billion increase in defense spending from which the panel deduced that the Commander-in-Chief "does not sound like a peace-time president."

Tuesday on ABC’s Good Morning America, anchor George Stephanopoulos interrogated Mick Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director, over President Trump’s proposed budget plan. The ABC journalist and former Clinton staffer downplayed the fiscal effects of the plan as inconsequential in balancing the budget while at the same time touting Democrats’ criticism that Trump was taking a…

Things got bizarre during NBC Nightly News on Monday when reporter Hallie Jackson seemed to suggest that President’s Donald Trump wealth somehow precluded him from increasing military spending. “The President who's talked plenty about his money now spending the taxpayers',” she chided while a clip of Trump talking about his money played, “In a new budget blueprint that's as much a political…

On Tuesday morning's MSNBC Live, Louise Mensch, though she claims to be a conservative, put forth what I suspect will be the left's core economic argument if the economy improves under Donald Trump. That argument: The economy is "fantastic" already, and Trump will have had nothing to do with whatever economic improvements over what is already "fantastic" we might see.

It was Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman who made famous the adage, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Professor Friedman could have added that there is a difference between something's being free and something's having a zero price. For example, people say that there's free public education and there are free libraries, but public education and libraries cost money. Proof that they…

Deficits matter … if there is a Republican in office. At least, according to The Washington Post. The Post’s Editorial Board criticized “the [government’s] reckless return to deficit spending” on Jan. 28, 2017. They warned “the country cannot borrow ever-increasing amounts [of money] without consequence” referring to President Donald Trump’s proposed economic plans and potential deficits. …

In a Tuesday morning dispatch about President Donald Trump's federal hiring freeze, the Associated Press's Matthew Barakat presented a quote from Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer. He followed it with a statistic which he wants readers to believe refutes Spicer's claim. That statistic does no such thing, but I expect, even though it's remarkably lazy and misleading, that it will become a very…

ABC’s Last Man Standing has certainly breathed some life into Hollywood’s bashing of Democrats. They continue by bashing how they like to solve problems: just throw money at it.

Because he was the "singular 2016 (GOP) presidential contender never to fall in line behind Trump," Ohio Governor and two-time former presidential candidate John Kasich now has the Associated Press's deep respect. This largely explains why the wire service has been all too willing to ignore the fact that Kasich alone owns Ohio's impending budget problems.

There are predictable signs that after eight years of giving the problem inadequate attention and occasional ridicule, the business press has decided that federal budget deficits and the national debt are going to start to matter again. Gosh, I wonder why? The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber was relatively subtle about it in a report on Uncle Sam's December and year-to-date budget deficits…

Andrew Ross Sorkin is considered a financial guru - a savant of all things business.  So how is he so very, very wrong about government teat specialist Elon Musk?: “Donald Trump: Please think about calling Elon Musk….Mr. Musk…(is) the real-life Tony Stark behind Tesla, the electric car company; SolarCity, the solar power provider; and SpaceX, the rocket company….” Actually, Elon Musk isn’t the…

President-elect Donald Trump has warned companies that they are not going to leave the United States anymore "without consequences." He has lived up to his threat by pressuring Carrier to give up its planned move to Monterrey, Mexico, in exchange for a taxpayer handout. It is a safe bet that other U.S. companies will be descending on Washington looking for handouts in the name of "fair trade" and…

After nearly eight years of competing theories, the essence of the Tea Party has been determined, says Jonathan Chait. In a Wednesday post, Chait claimed that Donald Trump’s election as president verifies liberals’ explanation of what the movement stood for. The right, wrote Chait, was wrong to argue that the Tea Party was all about “timeless principles of conservative movement thought” such as “…