Why won't Congress and Pres. get serious about debt crisis?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
The federal government has been operating without a budget for six months, instead lurching from one stop-gap spending measure to the next. And the inability or unwillingness of the president and Congress to do the jobs they were elected to do is starting to have an impact.
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A new report on CNN Money.com highlights some of the growing money woes:
The U.S. military has delayed a total of 75 projects. And the Army has deferred contracts for new equipment like Chinook helicopters and held off on refurbishment projects of war-torn Humvees.
No big deal. We're only fighting three wars.
There are hiring freezes at the Justice Department, Social Security Administration and Congressional Budget Office. And the Army and the Marine Corps have temporarily stopped hiring civilians.
Eight new Social Security offices will not open.
National Institutes of Health officials are underfunding some grants, due to uncertainty over the budget.
Almost one year ago, President Obama launched the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan deficit commission. The group released its final report in December, but the suggestions have been all but ignored.
This week, ten ex-chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers wrote an opinion piece on Politico.com urging Congress and the President to act quickly. They said, "The unsustainable long-run budget outlook is a growing threat to our well-being. Further stalemate and inaction would be irresponsible." Want to bet that's ignored too?
Here’s my question to you: Why won't Congress and the President get serious about America's debt crisis?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 6pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
Is the federal government broken beyond repair?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Today is the 158th day the federal government has operated without a budget. The clock is ticking on the two week extension Congress approved last week which kept the government from effectively shutting its doors for business this morning.
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Here's sort of where we stand: Republicans want to cut spending by at least $61 billion which was what the House of Representatives agreed on a few weeks ago in their bill. But the Democratic majority in the Senate only wants to cut $10.5 billion.
Hello, we're looking at a projected deficit of $1.65 trillion for this year alone.
Not to suggest that our Congress people lack guts, but last Friday Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn introduced a bill that would cut about $400 million a year from the budget by stripping all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They want to kill Big Bird and Elmo.
Not a word about touching entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare; but children's programming apparently is on the table.
In this week's Time magazine cover story, Fareed Zakaria wonders if America's best days are behind us. He points to how the U.S. now compares with other wealthy countries when it comes to student test scores, graduation rates, life expectancy, crime, and of course national debt. We're falling behind on all fronts. Zakaria says: "The larger discussion in Washington is about everything except what's important." Like killing funding for Sesame Street.
Here’s my question to you: Is the federal government broken beyond repair?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Would you favor a gov't shutdown until significant cuts are agreed on?
(PHOTO CREDIT: PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
There's a pretty good chance now that the federal government will not shut down at midnight on Friday.
The House approved a new spending measure this afternoon that could keep the government running for two weeks past Friday's deadline. Democrats and Republicans agreed to $4 billion in spending cuts - mostly to earmarks and other programs, many of which President Obama proposed in his own budget. The measure now moves on to the Senate.
You can bet those cuts are the easy ones - not any of the heavy-handed cuts House Republicans passed in a bill a few weeks ago that included ending funding to Planned Parenthood and making cuts to education programs and the EPA. And there still isn't total agreement on the $4 billion measure.
The President and some Democrats were hoping for a four to five week extension cutting as much as $8 billion.
According to a recent poll, 58 percent of Americans say they would rather have a partial government shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what spending to cut than have Congress avoid a shutdown altogether by keeping spending at the same levels as last year.
And since both parties can't agree on how much should be cut from the budget for the rest of the year and which programs should face the ax, a shutdown could be a reality very soon.
Here’s my question to you: Would you favor a government shutdown until significant spending cuts are agreed on?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Will the federal government ever agree to meaningful spending cuts?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Democratic and Republican lawmakers returned to work today and they've got a big deadline looming.
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If Congress doesn't reach an agreement on spending cuts by Friday, the government will face a shutdown for the first time in 15 years.
The House already approved $61 billion in spending cuts in a measure passed earlier this month, but Senate Democrats have said that the proposed cuts go too far and that they will not vote in favor of them.
So the Republicans have proposed an interim spending plan that would give Congress a two-week extension. It would involve just $4 billion in cuts and would keep the government funded until March 18.
I wonder if they'll ever stop playing games and actually address our country's fiscal condition in a serious way.
Our national debt has now surpassed $14 trillion - a staggering sum that will never be repaid. And every day the government refuses to do anything about it, it just gets larger. We are bankrupt.
This weekend, Speaker of the House John Boehner called the national debt a "moral threat" to this country and said people "better start praying."
It will take more than prayers. It will take guts… the kind being displayed by people like the governors of Wisconsin and New Jersey.
Here’s my question to you: Do you think the federal government will ever agree to meaningful cuts in spending?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Tea Party the answer to cutting govt. spending?
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) greets a supporter during the first meeting of the U.S. Senate Tea Party Caucus today on Capitol Hill. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
For those who thought the Tea Party was a passing fad, it might be time to reconsider:
For starters, it seems like the Tea Partiers may be among the only people in Washington who are serious about reining in government spending.
While Democrats and Republicans talk... and talk... and talk about cutting spending and reducing our skyrocketing deficits and $14 trillion national debt, some in the Tea Party have real solutions.
Newly elected Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is proposing cutting $500 billion from federal spending in just one year. To be sure, he has some drastic suggestions - including cutting $42 billion from the food stamp program and $16 billion from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also on Paul's cutting block: the Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development, most of the Department of Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts. Massive cuts also for Homeland Security, the federal court system and the FDA. And that's just some of it.
Paul says he hopes he can start a dialogue in Congress about how to save the economy. It's clear that Paul and his fellow Tea Partiers are going to put some serious pressure on the republican leadership.
In fact, they already have. Look no further than Michele Bachmann's response to the president's state of the union address this week. it's unheard of to have two responses... but the republican leadership was afraid to say no.
Here’s my question to you: Is the Tea Party the answer to finally getting government spending under control?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Women politicians more effective than men?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Turns out you can add politics to the list of things that women do better than men. It's a long list.
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The Daily Beast reports on a new study that shows female politicians are among the most productive and persuasive ones in the country.
This research in the American Journal of Political Science is the first to compare the performance of male and female politicians. It shows women do a better job at securing pork for their home districts and shaping policy.
From 1984 to 2004, women politicians won about $50 million more a year for their districts than men did.
As for policy, women sponsored more bills and attracted more co-sponsors than their male counterparts. The female politicians' bills also made it further through the legislative process and got more media attention.
The authors say this is because women do a better job at "logrolling, agenda-setting, coalition building and other deal-making activities."
They suggest women make better politicians because they have to. Consider that women hold less than one in five of all national seats, so the ones who make it to Washington better be pretty good.
The study concludes that in order to overcome any bias against women in leadership roles, these female politicians have to work even harder to be seen as equals.
Sound familiar?
They call their study "The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson Effect," a reference to the first African-American player in Major League Baseball. He was also one of the greatest of all time.
The comparison here is that because of racism during Robinson's era, black baseball players had to be better than whites to make it to the big leagues.
Here’s my question to you: Why are women politicians more effective than men?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Where will federal government make deepest spending cuts?
(PHOTO CREDIT: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Ever since the proposals of the bipartisan deficit commission have started to emerge - critics from all over the political spectrum are trying to shout loudest about what they don't want to see cut.
And now, you can add Defense Secretary Robert Gates to that list.
Gates is blasting the proposed reductions in military spending, saying such cuts would be "catastrophic" to national security. He says he's trying to use a "scalpel instead of a meat axe" to make cuts to his department.
Gates adds that when it comes to the deficit, the Defense Department is not the problem.
But that is the problem here - no one wants to see the programs near and dear to them cut - yet, if we're going to get serious about reducing our $13 trillion-plus national debt, a lot of cutting is in order.
And the deficit commission seems to have put nearly everything on the table with its draft recommendations. The overall goal being to reduce the debt by $4 trillion by 2020.
In addition to defense cuts, the commission recommends cuts to: Social Security and Medicare, raising the retirement age, increasing taxes, cutting contractors for domestic government agencies, freezing the pay of federal workers, shrinking the size of the federal workforce, and eliminating all earmarks.
Congress is already hard at work on that last one - voting on a symbolic, non-binding resolution to ban all earmarks. A non-binding resolution is about as worthless as Congress.
Here’s my question to you: In light of the deficit commission's draft recommendations, where do you expect the federal government to make the deepest spending cuts?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Calif. borrowing $40 million/day for unemployment benefits
Unemployed people search for jobs in an employment office in the southern California town of El Centro. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
California is borrowing $40 million a day from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits.
That means California is borrowing $40 million a day from you and me to pay unemployment benefits.
The Los Angeles Times reports the state will have a $362 million bill for interest alone due on a total debt of $10 billion next fall.
Thanks to the recession and poor management, California is an economic disaster zone, with one in every eight workers unemployed. More than 1.2 million Californians have lost their jobs since the start of the recession, and they're staying out of work for longer periods of time.
Plus in 2001, state lawmakers nearly doubled unemployment benefit levels without raising taxes. That was smart.
The result of all this is that if California keeps borrowing from the federal government, employers could face a steep hike in their unemployment taxes.
California is not alone here. 32 states in total have been borrowing from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits. The total is $41 billion. Some of these states are asking the feds for a deferral on repaying the loan until the economy improves.
The solution to this is fundamental: either increase contributions or decrease benefits - or both. Want to bet neither one happens?
Here’s my question to you: Should California borrow $40 million a day from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
What comes to mind when you hear phrase 'federal government'?
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
Our federal government has some serious image problems with the American people.
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A new poll shows that more than seven in 10 of those surveyed use a word or phrase that is clearly negative when asked to react to the federal government.
The USA Today/Gallup poll finds the most common descriptions of the term "federal government" include: "too big," "confused" and "corrupt."
And there are lots of other choice words the public has for our leaders, including: bloated, wasteful, broken, mess, complicated, terrible, dysfunctional, disappointing, pathetic, out of control and crooked. And those are just the ones we can say on television.
Overall, 72 percent of the responses about the federal government are negative. Only 10 percent are positive, and 18 percent give a neutral or mixed reaction. This poll includes men and women from all over the country - Democrat, Republican and Independent.
The overall negative opinions of the federal government are consistent with the poor ratings the government gets in Gallup's annual poll on the images of different industries.
In that poll, the government received a 58 percent negative rating, the second worst rating after the gas and oil industries.
Other sectors that got high negatives like the federal government include banking, health care, real estate and pharmaceuticals. Good company.
The dismal opinions of our federal government show yet again how sick the American people are of Washington and the way it operates. It also suggests that the public may be looking for a real change when they head into the voting booth three weeks from today.
Here’s my question to you: What comes to mind when you hear the phrase "federal government"?
Tune in to the Situation Room at 6pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.
And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your comment.
1 in 6 Americans taking government aid?
Traditional food stamps like the ones pictured here are no longer distributed. All 50 states now provide debit-style EBT cards. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
In case you think times aren't tough... a record one in six Americans is getting aid from the government. One in six.
USA Today reports on the stunning growth of programs like Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance and welfare.
Some numbers: more than 50 million Americans are on medicaid - that's up 17 percent since the recession started.
President Obama's new health care law will add another 16 million people to the health care system. Experts say doctors are already indicating "that they're at their limit."
More than 40 million people get food stamps - an increase of almost 50 percent during the recession. The food stamp program has grown steadily for the last three years.
Almost 10 million people are collecting unemployment insurance, which is about four times as many people that got unemployment in 2007.
Congress has extended unemployment benefits eight times, which now means the unemployed can collect a check for up to 99 weeks... almost two years.
And there are almost four and half million people collecting welfare - an increase of 18 percent during the recession.
Critics worry that it will be hard to cut back on all these programs once the economy recovers. While supporters say the government should be there to help people in bad economic times.
But just remember: we, the American taxpayers, are the ones footing the bill for all of these government programs. And as caseloads continue to increase... the soaring costs will be tacked on to our already skyrocketing deficits. The cost of the food stamp program alone is up 80 percent... and jobless benefits are costing us four times as much as they used to.
Here’s my question to you: What does it mean when 1 in 6 Americans takes government aid?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
@jackcafferty on Twitter
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