Spending By Federal Government To Increase 55% Under Obama’s Fiscal Cliff Plan

[Doc91678]

Via Weekly Standard:


Spending will increase 55 percent over the next decade, if President Barack Obama’s budget plan goes into effect. The finding comes from the Republican-side of the Senate Budget Committee, which notes that Obama’s “Proposal Would Spend $880 Billion Over Already Projected Increases.”

Here’s a chart, detailing how Obama’s plan would bring spending from $3.62 trillion in 2013 to $5.63 trillion in 2022.


Keep reading…
Spending to Increase 55 Percent Under Obama's Plan | The Weekly Standard

 

[waltky]

Time to kick the can down the road - again...

Obama Wants Temporary Fix to Avoid Automatic Defense Spending Cuts
February 5, 2013 – As the deadline for automatic cuts in federal spending (“sequestration”) approaches, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass a smaller package of spending reductions and tax "reforms" to avoid cuts to the military budget.

“I know that a full budget may not be finished before March 1 and, unfortunately, that's the date when a series of harmful automatic cuts to job-creating investments and defense spending -- also known as the sequester -- are scheduled to take effect,” Obama told reporters on Tuesday. “So if Congress can’t act immediately on a bigger package, if they can't get a bigger package done by the time the sequester is scheduled to go into effect, then I believe that they should at least pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the economically damaging effects of the sequester for a few more months until Congress finds a way to replace these cuts with a smarter solution,” said Obama. “There is no reason that the jobs of thousands of Americans who work in national security or education or clean energy, not to mention the growth of the entire economy, should be put in jeopardy just because folks in Washington couldn’t come together to eliminate a few special interest tax loopholes or government programs that we agree need some reform,” Obama continued.

Rep. Howard Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, issued a joint statement in response to the president. “America's military has absorbed $487 billion in defense cuts under President Obama, with $500 billion yet to come with sequestration,” read the statement. “Refusing to consider reforms to the mandatory spending [on entitlements] that is driving our debt crisis, while using our troops as a piggy bank to keep unsustainable spending programs on life support, will have both fiscal and strategic consequences,” the statement continued. “We urge the President to lead, rather than loop endlessly around a beaten path. It is in his power to forge a deal that reigns in our debt without levying more taxes on struggling Americans, and without hollowing out an at-war military.”

Under the terms of the sequestration deal reached in 2011 – the Budget Control Act -- the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is responsible for coming up with $1.2 trillion in cuts in discretionary appropriations and mandatory spending to take place between 2013 and 2021.

Obama Wants Temporary Fix to Avoid Automatic Defense Spending Cuts | CNS News

See also:

Napolitano touts “incredible” spending on border enforcement
2/4/13 - Notes vast improvement in border security

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured the Mexico border Monday to trumpet increased enforcement as she campaigned for an overhaul of immigration laws. The former Arizona governor highlighted “incredible” spending on border enforcement, 40-year lows in “illegal immigration numbers” and relatively low violent crime rates in major border cities like San Diego and El Paso, Texas. “What we have seen now compared to 20 years ago is like the difference between a rocket ship and a horse and buggy,” Napolitano said at a news conference in San Diego after a helicopter tour. Napolitano continues her border tour Tuesday in El Paso, while the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on immigration reform. The House panel includes several immigration hawks.

A bipartisan group of senators wants assurances on border security as Congress considers proposals that would bring the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly three decades. Last week, a bipartisan group of senators released a blueprint that would bring a path to citizenship for people living in the U.S. illegally, but they demanded assurances on border security first. President Barack Obama does not endorse such a linkage in his own immigration proposal. But Republicans in the Senate group, including John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida, say they cannot support an immigration bill that doesn’t make a pathway to citizenship conditional on a secure border. “I believe the border is secure. I believe the border’s a safe border. That’s not to say everything is 100 percent,” Napolitano said.

Peter Nunez, chairman of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates a restrictive immigration policy, acknowledged substantial increases in border spending over 40 years but said it was impossible to declare whether the border is secure because there are no easy metrics. “How are you going to define secure?” said Nunez, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego. “It’s a subjective thing. It’s just nonsense.” The Border Patrol made 356,873 apprehensions on the Mexican border during the 2012 fiscal year, up 8.9 percent from the previous year but still hovering near 40-year-lows. U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s budget nearly doubled to $11.7 billion in 2012 from $6.3 billion in 2005, according to figures from the Migration Policy Institute.

Read more: Janet Napolitano touts progress at border - Associated Press - POLITICO.com

 

[waltky]

Obama gonna raise ever'body's taxes - again...

Obama threatens severe cuts if no agreement
Sunday, February 10, 2013 - White House pushes for more tax hikes, but GOP is opposed

The White House on Sunday stepped up pressure on Republicans to adopt a short-term budget patch that would cancel the $85 billion in spending “sequesters” due on March 1, saying that government spending is still needed to prop up a stubbornly sluggish economy. Late last week, White House officials laid out a list of potential cuts they would have to make if the sequesters aren’t averted, saying they’d be forced to kick children out of the Head Start education program and cut federal loans to small businesses. The officials even warned that more American workers could die as a result of furloughs for occupational safety inspectors.

Those are the latest moves in what’s become a continuous chess match between the GOP and Democrats as the former pushes for spending cuts, and the latter argue for higher taxes. “We should have a debate over how to best reduce the deficit,” White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said in a blog Sunday, expanding on an attack the administration began last week. “But with only three weeks until these indiscriminate cuts hit, Congress should find a short-term package to give themselves a little more time to find a solution to permanently turn off the sequester. That package should have balance and include spending cuts and revenues.”

By balance, the White House means tax increases — something Republicans have rejected, arguing they already accepted tax increases at the beginning of the year when the agreement they struck with Mr. Obama raised payroll taxes on all Americans, and raised income-tax rates on the top 1 percent. “He got his tax hikes. Now we need to address our spending problem,” House Speaker John A. Boehner’s office said in a memo Friday, pushing back against the White House’s demands. Both parties are following much the same script as when confronting other budget deadlines over the past two years — though this time the stakes involve less than 10 percent of government spending, rather than an entire government shutdown or massive tax hikes on all Americans.

Still, the White House argues those cuts are untenable. “Across the government, we’ll see assistance programs slashed; we’ll see contracts cut; we’ll see employees out of work,” Danny Werfel, the federal controller for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told reporters last week. “And we’ll have no choice. The blunt, irresponsible and severe nature of sequestration means that we can’t plan our way out of these consequences or take steps to soften the blow.”

Read more: Obama threatens severe cuts if no agreement - Washington Times

See also:

Let the sequesters begin, some Republicans say
Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - Lawmakers see leverage on budget

Congressional Republicans are preparing to let $85 billion in automatic spending cuts begin to bite March 1, saying they have become convinced that letting the “sequesters” take effect is the only way they will be able to wrangle real spending cuts from President Obama.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and other Republicans are talking increasingly tough about the sequesters, saying they are willing to accept the deep cuts to military and domestic spending in order to force Mr. Obama to come up with his own counteroffer. “What happens on March the 1st is, spending goes down automatically,” Mr. Ryan said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are more than happy to keep spending at those levels going on into the future while we debate how to balance the budget, how to grow the economy, how to create economic opportunity.” The move is politically tricky and not accepted by some defense-hawk Republicans in the Senate.

It also comes at a time when the U.S. economy is contracting — the gross domestic product shrunk by 0.1 percent at the end of last year, according to numbers released Wednesday. The White House said slower defense spending last year helped push the economy into contraction and that even the mere threat of sequesters was part of the problem. “The GDP number we saw today was driven in part by — in large part by — a sharp decrease in defense spending, the sharpest drop since, I think, 1972. And at least some of that has to do with the uncertainty created by the prospect of sequester,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

He added it was “disheartening” to hear Mr. Boehner and other Republican leaders in Congress talk about the sequester as a bargaining chip. “It’s not a game. It’s the American economy,” Mr. Carney said. “Talk about letting the sequester kick in as though that were an acceptable thing belies where Republicans were on this issue not that long ago, and it makes clear again that this is sort of political brinkmanship of the kind that results in one primary victim, and that’s American taxpayers, the American middle class.”

Read more: Let the sequesters begin, some Republicans say - Washington Times

 

[Clementine]

Let the redistribution begin. Except that the wealthiest, like Goldman Sachs and other big banks won't be affected. It'll be middle class that takes the brunt, as always.

It's always been predicted that our country would be taken down from the inside. Here we go. Hang on, it's going to be a rough ride......

 

[waltky]

Granny says dat's prob'ly why dey ain't sent her dat 2nd stimulus check yet...

IRS Gave $14 Billion in Refundable Tax Credits to Illegals
July 17, 2013 - Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both said the immigration bill they helped push through the Senate was designed to "bring people out of the shadows."

Yet, if illegal aliens are truly in the shadows, why has the Internal Revenue Service been able to find enough of them to pay them more than $14 billion in refundable tax credits? For well over a decade, the treasury inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) has been pointing to the numerous problems the IRS caused when it made a bureaucratic decision to essentially amnesty illegal aliens for tax purposes and to decline to provide information it has about illegal aliens to federal immigration authorities. In 1996, President Clinton signed a law requiring federal agencies to share information about illegal aliens with federal immigration authorities. "The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 (the Illegal Immigration Reform Act), states that information concerning illegal alien status should be provided to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) notwithstanding any other law," TIGTA explained in a 1999 audit report. TIGTA insisted on bolding the word "notwithstanding."

But that same year, the IRS issued a new regulation creating what it called Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). The IRS would issue ITINs to two classes of people not qualified to receive Social Security Numbers: 1) aliens living outside the United States who nonetheless had a U.S. tax liability and 2) aliens living inside the United States who were not authorized to work here but who nonetheless owed U.S. taxes. Those in the latter group who filed W-2s claiming income from employment in the United States were by definition illegal aliens.

The IRS said ITINs would be covered by Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires the IRS to maintain the confidentiality of tax return information. "The IRS provides disclosure protection to illegal alien applicants," explained the IG, who determined that conflicted with the immigration law Clinton had signed. "IRS management and the Office of Disclosure Litigation indicated that the IRS intentionally will not provide the information to the INS," said the IG. "The rationale for this policy is that the Illegal Immigration Statute is a 'general' statute and does not change IRC Section 6103. ... This IRS policy, to 'legalize' illegal aliens, seems counterproductive to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) mission to identify illegal aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry," said the IG.

The IG also said the IRS policy raised concerns that "fraudulent refund issues are present on illegal alien tax returns." "Some of the tax advantages that are being realized by illegal aliens treated as residents include receiving spousal exemptions, standard deductions and even some erroneous earned income credits," said the IG. The problem was not fixed.

- See more at: IRS Gave $14 Billion in Refundable Tax Credits to Illegals | CNS News