Our resources section is meant to be just that, a place where you can come to find news and information related to the current economic situation as well as the decisions being made by our leaders in Washington. As deficits spiral out of control and our children's future is mortgaged, you can count on StopSpendingOurFuture.org as a place to keep up-to-date on the latest information.
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If you aren't one of the 2 million + viewers who has seen it, watch Daniel Hannan MEP explain to Britain's PM Gordon Brown why he can't spend his way out of recession or borrow his way out of debt. |
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Even a recession and record $1.4 trillion budget deficit has not altered Congress's business-as-usual culture of spending and pork. While families and entrepreneurs are responsibly bringing their own budgets under control, Congress is spending and earmarking as if nothing has changed in the economy. The House has already passed—and the Senate will soon take up—a mammoth FY 2009 omnibus appropriation bill that:
- Provides an 8 percent discretionary spending hike for the second consecutive year;
- Combines with the "stimulus" bill for a staggering 80 percent increase in these discretionary programs;
- May contribute to a permanent $2,000 per-household tax hike;
- Contains 9,287 pork projects at a cost of nearly $13 billion; and
- Likely terminates the Washington, D.C., school voucher program, removing 1,715 low-income students from their current schools.
This bill represents nearly everything Democrats had criticized about the earlier Republican Congresses. It forces lawmakers to vote quickly on a bloated package combining nine separate appropriations bills. It irresponsibly expands the already-record budget deficit. And despite strongly worded proclamations about cleaning up Washington, the 2009 appropriation bills will have the second-most earmarks in history. During this time of recession and skyrocketing budget deficits, America cannot afford budgets that continue to spend and earmark as usual. Read more
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A week after muscling through possibly the most expensive spending bill in America history, President Obama has called on Congress to support fiscal discipline. Specifically, he has proposed a Pay-as-You-Go (PAYGO) statute requiring that tax cuts and entitlement expansions be collectively deficit neutral.
Since 2007, Congress has had a PAYGO rule mandating that each new tax and entitlement bill be deficit neutral. Because it is merely a congressional rule, lawmakers can (and do) waive it easily. By contrast, a PAYGO statute--which existed from 1991 until 2002--would operate differently. Instead of requiring that each tax and entitlement bill be deficit neutral, this law would keep a running scorecard of all enacted bills (allowing one bill to offset another). If, at the end of the year, the net effect of all tax and entitlement legislation was to increase the budget deficit over the next decade, an automatic series of entitlement spending cuts ("sequestrations") would be triggered to offset those costs. Read more
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Early reports suggest that President Obama will propose a budget that reduces the budget deficit to $533 billion by 2013. This is hardly ambitious. Given the budget's assumptions of peace (deep cuts in spending on the global war on terrorism) and prosperity (the economy should be recovered by then), a $533 billion budget deficit should not be a heavy lift. By contrast, President Bush oversaw budget deficits that typically ranged between $150 billion and $450 billion even while fully funding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Furthermore, early indications suggest that tax increases would trump spending restraint in reducing the deficit. Indeed, spending would remain above 22 percent of GDP—a level that has been reached only eight times in the past 62 years. Yet tax rates would reportedly rise for individuals and businesses in order to finance items such as a down payment on national health care. And the President is reportedly considering statutory Pay-as-You-Go (PAYGO) rules, which are biased in favor of tax increases over spending restraint.
A responsible federal budget proposal would contain these elements. Read more
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Two scholars question the logic behind burdening taxpayers with higher taxes and spending away their money as hundreds of thousands of jobs continue to be shed each month. |
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