Government Spending

President Obama called for more spending on community colleges, job training, infrastructure, and research and development as he touted an election-year budget that seemed to complete his shift in focus from budget cutting to job creation. Arguing that the country can't "cut our way to growth," Obama delivered a $3.8-trillion budget plan to Congress and blew through a promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Obama's budget projects a $1.3-trillion deficit in fiscal year 2012 and $901 billion in 2013, both over the $700 billion that would have made good on his pledge.

The European elections have concluded and the results are clear: Voters in France and Greece are a lot smarter than economic policymakers in the United States. Or at least they're a lot more attuned to the folly of relying on austerity as a tool of economic growth. If you've missed the weekend's headlines, French voters elected their first Socialist president since Francois Mitterand left office in 1995. The new president, Francois Hollande, won after promising to loosen the reins of economic austerity and impose more sacrifices on the rich.

When Rick Santorum stood in front of voters at a yacht club in this small town and pledged to slash government spending, especially entitlement programs, Nancy Garvin knew she had found her candidate. Garvin, 54, said she was sick of seeing government squander money through agencies that don't do anything, and wants expenditures cut "in half. " "Washington is throwing money away through a lot of wasteful spending," she said, sitting at a picnic table beneath trees draped in graying Spanish moss.

Compared to the rest of Ohio, Marysville is booming. Honda of America recently announced plans to build a new version of the Acura NSX sports car near its gargantuan plant here. Unemployment in Union County, where Marysville is located, is just 6.2%. Union County was one of the few places in Ohio to grow in population between 2000 and 2010. Yet business owners casting their vote in the GOP primary say the economy isn't improving quickly enough, suggesting that even in areas relatively immune to the economic downturn, the specter of rising gas prices and uncertainty still looms large.

Not long ago, shortly after one of a series of meetings on next year's federal budget, President Bush was chatting with a small group of reporters. "Darman just walked out," he said, "and when you see him walking out, I go through a period of about 60 minutes of gloom." Richard G. Darman, Bush's budget director, often makes people here gloomy. It is certainly understandable.

Do your letter writers really believe that the money spent on space exploration or the arts or the Bosnian peace intervention or any government spending, were it not spent on that particular item, would therefore go to feeding, educating or otherwise assisting the poor and the diseased? Don't they know the savings would merely go to lowering the taxes for the rich? MURRAY LAMISHAW Laguna Hills

Government spending for law enforcement increased by 75% from 1979 to 1985 to $45.6 billion, while spending for all government services rose 90% in that time, according to a federal study issued Sunday. In addition, the study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that just 2.9% of total government spending financed law enforcement activities in 1985.

Recommendations for cutting federal government spending, including the proposed elimination of some military bases in Southern California, will be discussed by the featured speaker at the Feb. 1 meeting of the World Affairs Council of Orange County. George S. Goldberger, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, will speak at the session, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Anaheim Marriott hotel.

At the halfway point in its six-year term, the government of President Miguel de la Madrid has undertaken a piecemeal effort to strengthen the floundering Mexican economy. Some of the steps taken recently seem to be aimed at opening the economy to greater competition and less government domination. Others are attempts to correct mistakes made by the government in 1984, mistakes that have stimulated the country's crippling inflation.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered a stern warning to Congress on Thursday to address the national debt, saying spiraling government spending could lead to a "vicious cycle" of even bigger federal budget deficits. "The longer we wait, the more severe, the more draconian, the more difficult the objectives are going to be" in responding to the crisis, he said. "The right time to start was about 10 years ago." Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.

President Obama called for more spending on community colleges, job training, infrastructure, and research and development as he touted an election-year budget that seemed to complete his shift in focus from budget cutting to job creation. Arguing that the country can't "cut our way to growth," Obama delivered a $3.8-trillion budget plan to Congress and blew through a promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Obama's budget projects a $1.3-trillion deficit in fiscal year 2012 and $901 billion in 2013, both over the $700 billion that would have made good on his pledge.

Greece's precarious financial and political situation was shaken further Friday by a nationwide strike and a wave of Cabinet resignations over demands by the European Union for ever-deeper spending cuts. Four Cabinet members — two Socialists and two far-right conservatives — quit their posts in protest over the demands. Their exit forced Prime Minister Lucas Papademos to consider an urgent reshuffle to stanch the tide of defections before a crucial parliamentary vote on the austerity measures, scheduled for Sunday.

When Rick Santorum stood in front of voters at a yacht club in this small town and pledged to slash government spending, especially entitlement programs, Nancy Garvin knew she had found her candidate. Garvin, 54, said she was sick of seeing government squander money through agencies that don't do anything, and wants expenditures cut "in half. " "Washington is throwing money away through a lot of wasteful spending," she said, sitting at a picnic table beneath trees draped in graying Spanish moss.

Deeply divided, angry and unsettled, the country faces a presidential election of unusual significance this year, as candidates sort through the causes and consequences of the Great Recession and fight over how best to stoke the nation's fragile recovery. Both sides agree the 2012 contest will turn on big issues, not the trivialities -- flag factory visits, candidate wardrobe critiques -- that characterized past campaigns. But as voting starts Tuesday in Iowa, the consensus ends there.

Congressional leaders are negotiating an endgame for the "super committee" that could come as soon as Monday as Democrats and Republicans blame one another for what appears to be the panel's failure to come up with a $1.5-trillion deficit reduction plan. Despite a flurry of last-minute proposals and closed meetings, it appeared increasingly unlikely that members of the bipartisan committee could compromise on the contentious issues of taxes and entitlement spending that have deadlocked the talks.

With Congress showing little sign of being able to agree on a budget, the battle has now shifted to authorizing a temporary extension of the government's ability to spend money without a budget. Without such an extension, most government spending would have to stop, throwing the country's finances once again into chaos. And even if an extension is passed now, it would expire Nov. 19, forcing a replay of the whole ugly spectacle. A similar situation occurred in 1995, the year I returned to Congress after a special election.

On Feb. 18, 1981, in a huge auditorium jammed with television cameras and White House officials, then-Budget Director David A. Stockman unveiled the first spending plan of the new Republican era, promising to cut taxes, increase defense outlays and--by cutting overall spending--close the federal deficit by 1984. Twelve years later, in a small room with a table full of reporters and minimal fanfare, Stockman's successor, Richard G.

More than 500 people gathered in Griffith Park on Sunday to demand less government spending and voice their opposition to any government-run healthcare plan. The rally was the latest stop on a national tour -- dubbed the Tea Party Express II -- that began Sunday morning in San Diego and plans to visit 38 cities in 19 days. Organizers are calling the tour a "Countdown to Judgment Day" for elected officials, timing it to one year before the 2010 congressional elections. Sal Russo, chief strategist for the Tea Party Express II, said that his group is calling on politicians to "clean up their act" and stop voting for deficit-increasing measures.

Former President Clinton chided President Obama for his economic proposals, saying that new taxes and spending cuts should be delayed until the economy gets out of the doldrums. Clinton, who naturally supported his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, now Obama's secretary of State, in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2008, has had a bit of a rocky relationship with Obama, though he backs the president on many issues. In an interview this week with Newsmax.com, Clinton called for a bipartisan approach to dealing with the nation's economic woes and urged the parties to start with a resolution of the home mortgage crisis.