Budget Crisis

code1211

Senior Member
Apr 8, 2009
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There has been much criticism of the budget cuts proposed by the House of Reps.

The President has made no recomendations for the CR which must be brought forth to avoid a Government shut down.

The Senate leadership has made no effort to produce a bill to vote on to resolve the issue, but many of their number have joined the critique of the effort of the House.

Is it better to do nothing productive as has been the habit of the Senate leadership for the last 4 years or to do something to address the problem as the House has done in the one month since the change in the Party in control?

The Budget submitted by the President is a joke and is nothing short of a complete abdication of his Constitutional responsibility. It would have been better if he had just saved the paper. At least that would not have hurt the environment with additional trash.

We are in a serious dillema and it requires serious solutions. The Democrat Party seems to be AWOL in the face of the challenge. It has been absent in this situation for four years, now, but one always hopes that they might wake to the reality around them.
 
Granny wantin' to know what all dat money's for?...
:confused:
Actual Federal Expenditures Topped $1 Trillion in February Alone, Says U.S. Treasury
Thursday, March 03, 2011 - Federal expenditures topped $1 trillion dollars in the month of February alone, says the U.S. Treasury Department. A majority of this money was disbursed to meet the government’s escalating debt obligations.
In its Daily Treasury Statement closing out the month of February, the department reported that the government had expended $1.009944 trillion (rounded to the nearest million) during the month. Although the budget documents that the White House released last month estimated that the federal government would bring in $2.173 trillion in revenue this fiscal year and spend $3.818 trillion—running an annual deficit of $1.645 trillion—these calculations do not reflect the biggest factor in actual federal spending: maintaining the government’s massive and constantly churning debt load.

In February, in fact, according to the Treasury Department’s Daily Treasury Report, the government needed to expend $585.08 billion to pay off the holders of Treasury securities that matured during the month and were redeemed. That was by far the government’s greatest monthly expense. To help meet this obligation, the government turned around and borrowed $660.86 billion during the month by selling new securities that increased the net national debt by another $63.71 trillion—bringing the total national debt to $14.19 trillion ($14,194,764,339,462.64) by the end of the month.

(Given that the Census Bureau estimates there are 112,611,029 households in the United States, that $14.19 trillion debt equals $126,051 for every household in the country.) But making the debt load bigger by adding another $63.7 billion to the national debt was not all the government did to come up with the $1-trillion-plus it needed to spend in February. The Treasury also drew down the cash balance in its accounts by $158.5 billion--starting the month with $349.14 billion cash on hand and ending it with only $190.61 billion.

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White House Suggests $6 Billion in Cuts--In The Face of $1.65 Trillion Deficit
Thursday, March 03, 2011 : White House Agrees to $6 Billion More Budget Cuts
Washington (AP) - With only two weeks to cut a deal, the White House proposed more than $6 billion in spending cuts Thursday as part of its opening bid in negotiations with congressional Republicans over how to keep the government operating through Sept. 30 and avoid a shutdown. White House economic adviser Gene Sperling did not specify where the cuts would be made, but the figure set the stage for fresh talks Thursday between Vice President Joe Biden, White House budget officials and the bipartisan leadership of Congress.

House Republicans want to cut $61 billion from current fiscal year spending. Sperling says the $6 billion would be in addition to the $4 billion already cut in a stop-gap spending measure that expires March 18. "We're willing to cut further if we can find common ground on a budget that we think reduces spending in the right way while protecting our investments in education, innovation and research," Sperling said.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, Brendan Buck, dismissed the White House number as "little more than the status quo." Thursday's afternoon meeting comes a day after Obama signed the two-week, temporary spending bill and warned that it would be irresponsible for lawmakers to create the threat of a government shutdown every few weeks.

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