Deficit Spending

A new reform group is proposing several fixes to Sacramento's red-ink budget writing. And one fix doesn't require a vote of the people or even legislators. It requires only intellectually honest and civil discourse. "Just a personal observation," says former Washington insider Leon Panetta, co-chairman of the group called California Forward. "Part of the problem across the street [at the Capitol] is that they don't spend a lot of time talking to each other."

President Obama is scheduled to give his third annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, laying out his agenda for the federal government in 2012. It's safe to assume, though, that he'll find little or no support for his initiatives from Republicans in Congress. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) signaled Sunday that another year of partisan sniping and dysfunction had already started when he said it would be "pathetic" if Obama stuck with the policies he'd advocated in the past.

A revised budget for the Huntington Beach Union High School District foresees about $300,000 more in deficit spending than the original budget, passed in June. The original budget predicted a $1.3-million deficit. The revised document, approved on a 4-1 vote by the school board last week, now forecasts about $1.6 million in red ink. School board member Dirk Voss cast the only dissenting vote.

The leaders of France and Germany pledged to remake the rules of Europe, creating a closer economic union buttressed by strict rules on government spending and automatic sanctions against countries that break them. They now must persuade the rest of Europe to agree, and convince dubious financial markets that the steps are enough to regain control over a debt crisis that threatens to destroy the common euro currency. Compromising on their policy differences, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a joint news conference in Paris on Monday that the European Union — or at least the inner core of 17 countries that share the euro — requires greater budgetary discipline.

President Bush's economic policies have been a disaster for the country. "Federal Deficit Grows Deeper Than Expected" (Aug. 28) points out the mounting deficits resulting from his ill-advised policies. Bush inherited a nearly $300-billion surplus and in only 18 months turned it into a $165-billion deficit, an astounding negative $465-billion turn in the wrong direction. And now his smoke-and-mirror policies say his economic programs are going to produce a surplus in 2005--a projection not supported by fact.

Offering a revised fiscal plan that would balance the state budget by the end of his first term, Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday proposed $1.1 billion in deficit spending, deep cuts in health and welfare services for the poor and a major tax break for companies that buy manufacturing equipment. Wilson's new budget proposal, like the one he released in January, gives top priority to state prisons and to education programs for children in kindergarten through the 12th grade.

President Bush intensified his budget dispute with congressional Democrats on Friday as he stepped before cameras at the White House and blasted them for failing to complete the federal spending bills. "Congress needs to keep their promise, to stop wasting time and get essential work done," said the president, who criticized Democrats for failing to send him a single appropriations bill by Friday, a level of tardiness unmatched by Congress in two decades.

Minutes after the Senate gave final approval to the hard-fought debt-ceiling deal, President Obama declared that it was time again for Washington to focus on jobs. It's past time, really. But getting the divided ranks in Washington to agree on how to put people back to work won't be any easier than getting them to agree to raise the debt limit. The tussle over the budget reflects the deep split between the two parties not just over the capital's fiscal problems, but also over what those problems mean for the economy.

Conceding for the first time that the federal government cannot be counted on to bail California out of its fiscal mess, Gov. Pete Wilson offered a revised budget Monday that calls for deeper cuts in health, welfare and higher education programs. Wilson's spending plan, released just two days before the Legislature's deadline for enacting a new budget, also proposes more than $1 billion in deficit spending.

With a federal budget surplus suddenly within sight, both Republicans and Democrats soon may find themselves free of the fiscal constraints that have shackled their aspirations for decades. But who knows what they'll do without their chains.

Minutes after the Senate gave final approval to the hard-fought debt-ceiling deal, President Obama declared that it was time again for Washington to focus on jobs. It's past time, really. But getting the divided ranks in Washington to agree on how to put people back to work won't be any easier than getting them to agree to raise the debt limit. The tussle over the budget reflects the deep split between the two parties not just over the capital's fiscal problems, but also over what those problems mean for the economy.

Washington's prolonged fight over the current fiscal year's budget seemed to be wrapping up last week when negotiators for the House, Senate and Obama administration reportedly agreed in principle to cut spending by $33 billion — about as much as leaders of the Republican-controlled House initially sought. Then Republicans aligned with the "tea party" movement threatened to scuttle the compromise, demanding the full $61 billion in cuts that they'd pushed through the House in February.

Montebello is so short on cash it may have trouble making payroll or paying its bills in the near future if officials don't take "immediate corrective action," a city administrator warned this week. Interim City Manager Peter Cosentini, in a statement released late Tuesday, also revealed that "the true nature of the city's cash deficit was buried for many years" because of various accounting maneuvers. "Figuring out the math has been challenging, given the lack of sufficient documentation provided as well as the lack of transparency of individuals who prepared and or gave direction [for]

Lawmakers in Washington are expected to pass another short-term spending bill soon to keep the government operating for another few weeks, but they've been unable to agree on a broader measure that would fund operations for the remaining six months of the fiscal year. House Republicans, many of whom pledged during their campaigns to seek $100 billion in immediate cuts, are holding out for at least the $61 billion in reductions approved by the House last month ? as well as provisions blocking implementation of the healthcare reform law and numerous environmental regulations.

Voters in the United States weren't the only ones cleaning house last year. Their counterparts in the United Kingdom sacked the Labor Party government in May, ushering in a coalition of Conservative and Liberal Democratic lawmakers who pledged to close the country's outsized budget deficit. The coalition's austerity plan recently ran into an unexpected hurdle, however: The government reported that the British economy, which had appeared to be slowly recovering, reversed course and shrank in the last three months of 2010, raising fears of a double-dip recession.

Federal deficit spending will rise to $1.5 trillion this year, according to a report released Wednesday. Federal deficit spending will rise to $1.5 trillion this year, according to a report released Wednesday. The report comes on the heels of President Obama's State of the Union address and in the midst of a burgeoning debate in Washington over federal budget cuts and spending, a front-line argument between Obama and congressional Republicans. The report from the Congressional Budget Office said federal debt over the next decade will continue to balloon to unsustainable levels unless federal tax and spending policies change.

President Obama is scheduled to give his third annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, laying out his agenda for the federal government in 2012. It's safe to assume, though, that he'll find little or no support for his initiatives from Republicans in Congress. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) signaled Sunday that another year of partisan sniping and dysfunction had already started when he said it would be "pathetic" if Obama stuck with the policies he'd advocated in the past.

The recession is upon us. And that means war. War is an absolute certainty now, not because of oil, but because the only way the Administration knows how to extricate itself from a recession is through deficit spending. And the only justification that will persuade Congress to relax existing deficit spending limits is an actual war. It is also the sad truth that we voters will vote for the reelection of this President and this Congress only if they give us a war that is sufficiently hideous to justify deficit spending limits high enough to bring about an early end to this recession.

The new Republican majority in the House seems eager to prove its "reform" credentials by taking an ax to domestic spending programs. That may mollify some angry members of the electorate, but it's not the general public's top priority. What most Americans want is to reduce unemployment through faster economic growth. If the GOP's zeal to shrink the federal government causes it to ignore the lingering economic misery, it's destined to be written off by voters as out of touch, just as Democrats were in 2010.

In all the Hollywood journalism flicks, is there a more famous one-liner than the one in "All the President's Men" when Hal Holbrook tersely directs Robert Redford to "Follow the money"? It's truer now than ever. Bruce Beattie reminds us of the judicial branch's role in off-the-charts political spending. Dan Wasserman turns up the heat on big "tea party" donors. And Gary Varvel burned the president for deficit spending ? tight in his own backyard tour. So much for the checks. On to the balances.