Campaign for America's Future News

Sunday, May 19, 2013, was one of the saddest and most notorious moments in the sordid history of the federal budget. Let's start from the beginning. Read Post

There was a time when a $200+ billion reduction in the federal budget deficit would have been big news and hailed as a singular achievement worthy of either fiscal sainthood or a dance-on-the-table party...or both. Yet yesterday's Congressional Budget Office report showing that the fiscal 2013 federal deficit will be $642 billion, $203 billion less than CBO's previous estimate of $845 billion, did not create any spontaneous cannonizations or celebrations. It also didn't change the still-stalemated and crisis-oriented federal budget debate by even a small amount. The bottomline: It's in almost no one's interest to be happy about the budget news that should have made everyone happier. Here's why. Read Post

Last August and September, I did a series of eight posts about how, contrary to Tea Party and John Boehner assertions, federal spending was actually very popular. As I said at the time, Americans don’t want less government; they just want government that costs less. The latest installment — episode 9 — happened last week [...] Read Post

As I posted on March 1, the sequester -- the across-the-board spending cuts ordered by the Budget Control Act-- would only become real for most voters when the predictions of the impact of the reductions actually started to have a effect on their lives. The fact that labor-intensive programs didn't reduce services immediately when the sequester began on March 1 never meant that it wasn't coming. It always was and the protests that the White House was playing fiscal chicken little were simply wrong. That why it's hard not be be at least somewhat amused by the mock congressional Republican outrage over the problems that started to be felt this week by airline passengers because of the sequester-related furloughs and other personnel changes at the Federal Aviation Administration. Read Post

This is not a post about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) exercise and diet program. It is, however, a post about how he's planning to produce a budget that gets to balance in 10 years without actually balancing anything. What Ryan is proposing is the fiscal equivalent of him saying that he wants to lose 20 pounds but isn't going to counting the fat around his midsection to achieve it. Read Post

How did the sequester happen? How is it possible that what supposedly was the worst possible way to cut the deficit somehow became what actually happened? Over the weekend Ezra Klein, in a much retweeted blog post that was the talk of large parts of the political blogosphere, said that the GOP was never going to make a deal to avoid the sequester if it included a tax increase. Nothing...not the prospect of reductions in military spending, not the projected reduction in GDP, not the estimated increase in unemployment, not the lost possibility of a bigger deal to reduce the deficit and not the overwhelming likelihood that Republicans would get blamed for all of this...made any difference. The GOP's position seems to defy all economic and political commonsense until you realize how much GOP politics have changed in recent years. Read Post

The Clinton administration didn't play as much hardball as it could have during the 1995 and 1996 federal shutdowns because it decided that the air traffic control system was a critical government activity. Doing the opposite -- and it definitely was a discretionary presidential decision rather than a legislated mandate -- likely would have ended the shutdowns much faster because of the outcry when planes were grounded and everything from Fed Ex to business trips to honeymoons were affected. The economic damage and anger would have been immediate and intense. The Obama White House appears to be going in a very different direction with the sequester Read Post

A quick post about the new Bowles-Simpson plan that was announced yesterday because that’s all it deserves: It’s a total nonstarter. (If you haven’t heard about it, here’s Jeanne Sahadi’s story from CNMoney.) Bowles and Simpson didn’t have enough support to get their original plan through their own commission in 2010, so why do they or [...] Read Post

Quick note about tonight's State of the Union Address: I'm not expecting too much to be said about the budget, deficit or debt. This is not to say that the president won't mention the budget, just that I expect he'll do so in sweeping, grandiose terms rather than with specifics. He'll likely call for a process that moves comprehensive tax and entitlement changes, for example. Stopping the constant warfare on the budget may also be an applause line. Read Post

Anyone who thinks H.R. 325 -- the No Budget No Pay law that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wants everyone to believe will do so much and be so important -- will, in fact, make any difference is both falling for Boehner's spin and doesn't understand how the congressional budget process really works. Read Post