Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

 Andrew Rudalevige at Good Authority: Probably the closest quasi-recent parallel is the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control in the Federal Government, convened by Ronald Reagan in 1982. PPSSCCFG was hardly a mellifluous acronym, so the body was usually...

The Fiscal Future

Mark J. Warshawsky at AEI: Last week, the Treasury Department released, with no fanfare, the massive Financial Report (FR) of the US Government. Using an accrual accounting basis, rather than a cash basis, the FR shows a much poorer picture of the current finances of...

Debt and Interest Payments

CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034 Debt held by the public rises each year in relation to the size of the economy, reaching 116 percent of GDP in 2034—an amount greater than at any point in the nation’s history. From 2024 to 2034, increases in...

Automatic Continuing Resolution

Ernest Istook at Newsmax: With a new U.S. House Speaker in place, Republicans now have a quick opportunity to re-unify, rallying around how they handle the level of massive federal spending and borrowing. They should revive the “automatic continuing...

Shutdowns, 1995 and 2023

Sarah Ferris and Burgess Everett at Politico: Members old enough to remember the 1990s are now looking to that era’s nasty stalemate between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich as the most apt comparison to their current predicament. Even former Speaker Gingrich...