Updates . . . special session, report your dry well
3:18pm – Live streaming now on the Texas Senate Floor, requires basic RealMedia
1:20pm – Senate Committee on Education (now recessed) takes up Shapiro bill (SB 31 – analysis) extending bond guarantees from Permanent School Fund to Charter Schools
Special session today | Statesman | By Jason Embry – First Reading: Votes on redistricting, teacher furloughs likely in Senate today: Afternoon sessions in the Legislature today, Perry invites governors to pray and HOA reformers say they got much of what they wanted. House is in at 1. Senate is in at 3. The Senate, which passed a few bills on Friday, will come in at 3 today and could take up two more: the bill that would allow school districts to furlough teachers and the one that redraws congressional districts.
From the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District: As you are aware, the drought is upon all of western Hays County. The District is encouraging anyone to document their “dry well” or “lowering of their pump” by filling out the Dry Well Reporting Form on our website. The District would like to keep a record of this scientific data for future drought condition scenarios. If you should have questions or concerns, please contact the District office, 512.858.9253.Send your comments and news tips to roundup.editor@gmail.com or click on the "comments" at the bottom of the story
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Reprinted from the Washington Post | Read the complete story
By Lori Montgomery, Published: April 30
Graphic: Politico.com
The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.
In January 2001, with the budget balanced and clear sailing ahead, the Congressional Budget Office forecast ever-larger annual surpluses indefinitely. The outlook was so rosy, the CBO said, that Washington would have enough money by the end of the decade to pay off everything it owed.
Now, instead of tending a nest egg of more than $2 trillion, the federal government expects to owe more than $10 trillion to outside investors by the end of this year. The national debt is larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any time in U.S. history except for the period shortly after World War II.
Polls show that a large majority of Americans blame wasteful or unnecessary federal programs for the nation’s budget problems. But routine increases in defense and domestic spending account for only about 15 percent of the financial deterioration, according to a new analysis of CBO data.
The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue. That’s nearly half of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt. Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.
Big-ticket spending initiated by the Bush administration accounts for 12 percent of the shift. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have added $1.3 trillion in new borrowing. A new prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients contributed another $272 billion. The Troubled Assets Relief Program bank bailout, which infuriated voters and led to the defeat of several legislators in 2010, added just $16 billion — and TARP may eventually cost nothing as financial institutions repay the Treasury.
Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus, a favorite target of Republicans who blame Democrats for the mounting debt, has added $719 billion — 6 percent of the total shift, according to the new analysis of CBO data by the nonprofit Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative. All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.
4 comments:
Anyone with half a brain knows most of the current national debt was created by compounding interest based on debt from a (1) wars created by a bunch of neoCON Republican Party chickenhawks, (2) tax cuts for the rich, and (3) their further decriminalization of Wall Street crime. And all of this followed the Clinton trashing of the Glass-Steagel Act and his implementation of anti-American worker trade agreements such as NAFTA.
But it is too easy after 2 years of Obama to give him a pass on why the national debt is expanding.
Obama spent the past two years proving to his right wing enemies and the American industrial-Pentagon war machine that he could be a war President with the best of them. His Drone attacks that kill innocent women and children and his refusal to admit failure in Afghanistan is inexcusable.
And his mindless bailing out of the Federal Reserve Board / Government Sachs cronies on Wall Street without any criminal prosecution would in and of itself be grounds for not re-elected him.
Unfortunately we don't allow third party presidents and the Republican Party candidates are mostly casting rejects from the Dukes of Hazzard.
We are at a time when our duoploy party imperialism war budgets and our growing hate of American worker and consumer rights is killing our economy and our nation's ability to retain its middle class.
I suggest if the US economy and our current political dysfunction such as the social fascism legislation being implemented at the state level continues on its current path, parents need to make sure their children speak a second language fluently so they can have options about what country they want to live in the future.
Funny I thought the Dems were the tax and spend liberals. Looks like we can lay most of this at Ronnie's feet.
Reagan, if that is who you mean by "Ronnie," IS the original right wing corporate President. Yes, the middle class decline started with him.
To quote Gil Scott-Heron, Ronald Raygun.
To quote Country Joe McDonald, the drugstore truck driving man.
To quote George H W Bush, voodoo economics.
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