|
Several days after the Congressional Budget Office reported that the highly indebted United States Government ran up another trillion dollars of deficit spending in just the first five months of this fiscal year, senators are refusing to pass another spending bill without deep cuts to the federal bureaucracy. Just kidding. Democrats in the Senate are threatening to close the government unless Republicans agree to leave the bureaucracy completely undisturbed. No, this column can’t explain the logic of that position, either. While taxpayers still yearn for some modest fiscal responsibility in Washington, the Senate minority is discussing how to prevent any of the
government streamlining that voters endorsed only a few months ago. And it was only Monday of this week when the Congressional Budget Office explained once again the size of the hole politicians are still digging with this year’s spending: The federal budget deficit totaled $1.1 trillion in the first five months of fiscal year 2025, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. That amount is $319 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year. Revenues were $37 billion (or 2
percent) higher, and outlays were $356 billion (or 13 percent) higher. The House-passed bill does almost nothing to change this disgraceful state of the fisc, but even though Republicans have agreed to keep spending recklessly, Senate Democrats are upset about the way some of the dollars may be spent—as well as the faint possibility that a few taxpayer dollars somewhere in federal budgets may somehow not be spent at all. Terrifying, right? In the Washington Post Theodoric Meyer, Liz Goodwin and Marianna Sotomayor report:
|
