All posts in Federal Budget

Issa threatens Holder with contempt over Mexico gun probe

by Admin on February 1, 2012 in 2nd Amendment, ATF, Border Patrol, Bryan Terry, Federal Budget, Homeland Security, Justice Department - Eric Holder, Project Gunwalker with 1 Comment

By Susan Walsh, AP The chairman of the House's chief investigative committeetoday threatened Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress if he failed to provide additional documents in the panel's ongoing inquiry into allegations that federal agents allowed hundreds of weapons to flow to Mexico and into the hands of drug cartel enforcers.

In a four-page letter, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., charged that the Justice Department was actively attempting to “obstruct” the panel’s investigation and that documents sought under an October subpoena be delivered by Feb. 9.

“If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress,” Issa wrote.

The chairman’s letter comes just two days before Holder is scheduled to appear before Issa’s committee to discuss the botched gun-trafficking investigation known as “Operation Fast and Furious.”

The Justice Department said it has provided “numerous” officials and witnesses for testimony and interviews, as well as thousands of pages of documents related to the operation.

Monday, the chief of the Arizona U.S. attorney’s office criminal division, Patrick J. Cunningham, left his post, the latest casualty of the scandal, Main Justice reports. He announced his intention to resign two weeks ago.

Cunningham has declined to testify before Issa’s committee, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

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BREAKING on Fast and Furious: Arizona Moves to Prosecute Those the Feds Won’t

by Admin on January 23, 2012 in 2nd Amendment, ATF, Border Patrol, Bryan Terry, Federal Budget, Gun Control, Homeland Security, Justice Department - Eric Holder, Media Bias, Project Gunwalker with 2 Comments

Via: Big Government, by AWR Hawkins

Nationally, Fast and Furious has entered the vernacular. As a result, Americans of all walks of life now know that the ATF and DOJ oversaw the sale of approximately 2,500 guns to straw purchasers who, in turn, passed them to criminals in Mexico and elsewhere. Moreover, Americans know that the plan from the get-go was to have these guns carried across an international border and passed to criminals whom the ATF then planned to arrest (but they never got around to arresting them because they hadn’t bothered tracing the guns from the point of sale).

Therefore, Americans also know that of the 2,500 guns originally sold, approximately 1,300 are still on the streets and unaccounted for. At least two of these guns were found at Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder scene in December 2010, and Americans increasingly know that while Terry may have been the first American victim, odds are he won’t be the last with such a large number of weapons on the loose.

Lastly, Americans know that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both denied complicity in Fast and Furious, particularly in the gun-running aspects of it. Throughout the course of denying complicity, Holder has changed his story more than once, Obama has demonstrated confusion over when he first learned about Fast and Furious, and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke (Arizona) was allowed to retire without charges although he was demonstrably involved in covering up the connection between Fast and Furious and Agent Terry’s death.

Perhaps through all this, the one thing the American people have witnessed to a sickening degree is the stark failure to prosecute those involved in Fast and Furious to the full extent of the law. Holder has been handled with kid gloves, Burke is now living a private life, and Obama is not being asked to clear up the many discrepancies in his timeline.

Enter Arizona.

Where the same state that brought you S.B. 1070—the immigration law aimed at allowing the state to do the job the feds won’t do—is set to open their own investigation into Fast and Furious and bring state charges against those the feds have heretofore refused to charge. Andy Tobin, Arizona’s Speaker of the House, will announce tomorrow (Monday, January 23rd) the scope of the investigation, and will call for state investigators to have their findings back to him no later than March 30.

The bottom line: Arizona is about to the do the job the feds won’t do – again.

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Geithner Raids Federal Pension Funds – Déjà Vu from Last May

by Admin on January 17, 2012 in Corruption, Disfunctional Congress, Federal Budget, Federal Reserve, Obama Propaganda, Tyrrany with No comments

By David DeGerolamo, Tea Party Nation

Tim Geithner once again is raiding the federal pension funds since the debt ceiling has been breached. Don’t worry about federal retirees not getting their pension check: the government is required to pay them whether money is in the pension fund or not. In other words, the federal pension fund is just another slush fund and its assets are available to be spent as necessary without any penalties. If an “evil corporation” did this, their officers would be put in prison after a well publicized trial.
Remember last may when Geithner blackmailed Congress using this same trick?

US RAIDS CIVIL SERVICE PENSION FUND AS IT HITS $14.3 TRILLION DEBT …

Deutsch: Offizielles porträt des US-Finanzmini...

Timothy Geithner, Us Treasury Secretary

The US has suspended payments into a civil service pension fund to free up almost $150bn as the major debtor nation approaches its legal borrowing limit.
Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, announced the move in a letter on Monday to Congressional leaders as he explained that the move extends the government’s breathing space to August 2 to avoid an unprecedented default on its borrowings.

How did that work out for us?After eight months and another $1 trillion later, we are once again going down the same path. Remember the spending cuts Boehner wanted in order to agree to the August debt ceiling increase? John Boehner is more concerned about election results than doing his job and the people continue to pay the price for his incompetence.
David DeGerolamo

TREASURY DIPS INTO PENSION FUNDS TO AVOID DEBT LIMIT- REUTERS

The Treasury on Tuesday started dipping into federal pension funds in order to give the Obama administration more credit to pay government bills.
Treasury started suspending reinvestments in a federal pension fund known as the G-Fund in order to avoid hitting the country’s $15.194 trillion debt limit.
“I will be unable to invest fully” the federal employees retirement system fund, beginning Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote Wednesday on the Obama administration’s request to increase the debt limit by $1.2 trillion.

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JFK CONNECTED THE DOTS…

by Admin on January 14, 2012 in Federal Budget, Federal Reserve with 2 Comments

JFK really really tried to warn ALL OF US.

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” -Galileo

IN JFK’S OWN WORDS HE IS TRYING TO WARN THE U.S. ABOUT A MONOLITHIC & RUTHLESS CONSPIRACY AROUND THE WORLD WHERE HE ASKED THE MEDIA TO HELP ALERT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. THE MEDIA DID NOT ALERT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. THE EVIL HE TRIED TO STOP CONTINUES!!!

JFK “The President and the Press,” before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, 27 April 1961

George Carlin sums it up quite witty. YOU AND I HAVE OWNERS

George Carlin -”Who Really Controls America”

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Obama Grows Government at Record-Shattering Pace

by Admin on January 14, 2012 in Federal Budget, Fiscal Responsible Government with No comments
English: Barack Obama delivers a speech at the...

Via: National Review

Palo Alto — Barack Obama is the Barry Bonds of Big Government. He offers America liberalism on steroids. While he earns grand slams for spending and debt, his pitiful results constitute strikeouts.

In an address to the Hoover Institution here last Monday, Stanford University economics professorMichael Boskin detailed President Obama’s truly historic profligacy.

Under Obama, federal spending has risenfrom 20.7 percent of gross domestic product to 25.3 percent, Washington’s largest slice of apple pie since 1945. In fiscal year 2011, which ended September 30, Uncle Sam spent a record $3.6 trillion, up an inexcusable 4 percent since FY 2010. So much for Obama’s demands for “shared sacrifice.”

Obama’s spend-o-rama includes federally funded green jobs that Boskin dismisses as “the leprechaun economy.” The apotheosis of this blarney was last month’s $1.2 billion Energy Department loan guarantee to SunPower Corporation of Richmond, California. Its solar-equipment project promises 15 permanent positions. Cost per job-created: a staggering $80 million.

Even worse, if possible, the Fox Business Network’s Gerri Willis reports that SunPower received this federal largesse even though its share price has plummeted93.5 percent — from $133.61 (its Dec. 7, 2007, peak) to $8.09 on September 30, when it won Energy’s loan guarantee. SunPower’s market capitalization stood at some $800 million, just below its $820 million debt. SunPower released an earnings warning after scoring this federal subsidy. The company also faces a class-action lawsuit in which investors claim that it has made false public statements.

Would you invest in SunPower? You already did!

You can’t make up this stuff !

This kind of fiscal recklessness helped swell FY 2011’s federal deficit to $1.298 trillion, just ahead of FY 2010’s $1.294 trillion in red ink, though behind FY 2009’s record $1.416 trillion. Obama has authorized three consecutive trillion-dollar deficits. Now he demands another $447 billion for Stimulus, Jr.

All of this, Boskin observes, has pushed the federal debt to 67 percent of gross domestic product, the highest since the aftermath of World War II. No wonder Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s sovereign debt last August 5 — another first.

Obama’s milestone-setting expenditures would be bad enough if they were the spectacularly high price for restoring prosperity. Instead, Obama has impoverished the Republic — for nothing.

Only 58.1 percent of the population is working, the lowest level since 1983, notesBoskin, chairman of Pres. George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and a Hoover senior fellow. Among America’s 14 million unemployed citizens, a record 45.9 percent have been jobless for more than 27 weeks.

Boskin compared snapshots of Obama’s and Pres. Ronald Reagan’s post-recession recoveries, 27 months after each downturn hit bottom. In September 2011, on Obama’s watch, non-farm payrolls had grown 0.6 percent, yielding 841,000 jobs since June 2009. Under the tax-cutting, business-boosting Reagan, non-agricultural employment swelled 8.7 percent, generating 7.7 million new jobs.

In January 2009, economists Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer (Boskin’s Obama administration counterpart) predicted that if Obama’s stimulus passed, “the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.”

In fact, Obama signed his $840 billion stimulus . . . and unemployment rocketed upward anyway. It peaked at 10.1 percent and now seems stuck at 9.1 percent. Boskin calculates that this 2.1 percent gap between Team Obama’s 7 percent fantasy and the cruel 9.1 percent reality that they perpetrated equals 16 billion foregone work hours. Even if one accepts the White House’s argument that the stimulus somehow “created or saved” 3 million jobs, that equals $280,000 per position — nearly quintuple the $58,510 that an average private-sector employer spends to hire a new employee.

This stagnation now finds 51 percent of Americans too poor to pay federal income tax (a modern record) while 47 percent of Americans receive at least one form of federal transfer payment (an historical high), as dependency on the ever-expanding state expands.

Obama’s stack of bills, Boskin predicts, means higher taxes — and soon. To underwrite Obama’s deficits (as well as those racked up by free-spending, left-wing Republican Baby Bush), top California earners, for instance, could see combined federal and state income and payroll taxes total 70.8 percent  of income by 2016. Those earning just $60,000 could pay 52.4 percent to Washington and Sacramento. Non-Californians also should anticipate higher taxes.

“A CEO who got it wrong this many times would be gone by now,” Michael Boskin concluded. Instead, Obama barnstorms campaign events, barks at the rich, and bellows for further federal outlays.

While Americans are stuck in the employment minor leagues, Barack Obama is bound for the Unlimited-Government Hall of Fame.

— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

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Eric Holder ‘sorry’ for murder of border agent

by Admin on November 10, 2011 in 2nd Amendment, Border Patrol, Federal Budget, Justice Department - Eric Holder, Obama Foreign Policy, Obama Propaganda, Project Gunwalker with 2 Comments

In their statement, the Terry family excoriated the Eric Holderl for not taking full responsibility. | AP PhotoClose

Politico By TIM MAK | 11/10/11 6:43 AM EST

Eric Holder has told the family of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry that he is “sorry for the loss of your son,” according to a private letter from the Attorney General obtained by POLITICO.

“I am sorry for the tragic loss of your son, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Brian was a hero who served his nation bravely and made the ultimate sacrifice,” writes Holder in a letter dated Wednesday.

“I agree with you that the tactic of allowing guns to ‘walk,’ as was permitted in Operation Fast and Furious, is completely unacceptable,” added Holder.

During Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked Holder whether he had apologized to the Terry family.

“I have not apologized to them,” Holder said.

Pressed by Cornyn to apologize on the spot, Holder said, “I certainly regret what happened to Agent Terry. I can only imagine the pain that his family has had to deal with, particularly his mother. … We are not programmed to bury our kids. It pains me whenever there is the death of a law enforcement official, especially under the circumstances. It is not fair, however, to assume that the mistakes that happened in Fast and Furious directly led to the death of Agent Terry.”

Kent and Josephine Terry, the parents of Brian Terry, had originally reached out to Holder through a private letter dated Nov. 1. In that letter, the two demand that Holder get to the bottom of the operation.

“We have been irrevocably harmed because of Operation Fast and Furious and its deadly ramifications. We seek accountability from our government… We ask that you immediately exhibit the leadership and accountability that is required as the Attorney General of the United States and accept responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious or identify who in the Department of Justice was responsible for its inception and implementation,” wrote the Terrys.

An official for the Justice Department said that Holder did not receive the letter until after this week’s hearing.

Terry was gunned-down in December 2010, during a violent incident linked to two weapons from the controversial Fast and Furious gun-walking operation that were found at the scene of his murder.

Terry’s family came down hard on Holder in a public statement Wednesday, saying he needs to “accept responsibility” after he declined to apologize to them during Senate testimony this week.

“Mr. Holder needs to own Operation Fast and Furious … [T]he attorney general should accept responsibility immediately. It is without question, the right thing to do,” said the Terry family in a statement Wednesday evening, according to ABC15. “In the end, Mr. Holder may choose not to apologize to the Terry family for the role that ATF and DOJ played in the death of Brian Terry.”

The family added that allowing guns to walk in Operation Fast and Furious “defied common sense.”

In their statement, the family excoriated the attorney general for not taking full responsibility.

“The fact of the matter is that the men who killed Brian Terry were armed with brand new military grade assault weapons and ammunition. The weapons were allowed to be purchased with the full approval of ATF and the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona; both agencies falling under the control of the attorney general,” the family wrote.

“The attorney general has said that he did not know about the flawed tactics being used by ATF in Operation Fast and Furious; if this is true and he did not know, then he should have known,” the family added.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68052.html#ixzz1dKmm01dj

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Debt Increased $203 Billion in Oct.–$650 for Every Man, Woman and Child in America

by Admin on November 2, 2011 in America in Decline, Federal Budget, Obama Propaganda with No comments

By Terence P. Jeffrey

Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama speaking on Oct. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(CNSNews.com) – The federal government’s debt increased by $203,368,715,583.63 in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury.

That equals about $650 per person for each of the 312,542,760 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.

At the end of September, the total national debt stood at $14,790,340,328,557.15, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. By the end of October, it had risen to $14,993,709,044,140.78.

The debt increased far more this October than it did last October. Between the last day of September 2010 and the last day of October, the debt rose from $13,561,623,030,891.79 to 13,668,825,497,341.36—for an increase of $107,202,466, 449.57.

October is the first month of the federal fiscal year. If the debt were to increase by an average of $203 billion for the remaining 11 months of the year, the national debt would increase by $2.436 trillion for the year.

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Senate Dem seeks federal funding for diapers

by Admin on November 2, 2011 in Disfunctional Congress, Federal Budget with No comments

The Hill
By Pete Kasperowicz - 11/02/11 01:55 PM ET

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumentha...

Image via Wikipedia

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Tuesday introduced legislation that would allow federal block grants that states now use to subsidize child-care services to also allow for the purchase of diapers and “diapering supplies.”

The bill, S. 1778, would amend the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 to allow diapers and related supplies to be bought with grant money provided to states. Under current law, the money is meant to subsidize child-care services to parents who are entering the labor force or are in job training and education programs. It also helps subsidize child-care services for certain eligible families.

Under the law, 4 percent of all funds must be used to improve the quality of child-care. A summary of Blumenthal’s bill indicates that it would allow the purchase of diapers under this provision, as it would “include the provision of diapers and diapering supplies among the activities for which funds may be employed to improve the quality of and access to child care.”

The federal program, called the Child Care and Development Fund, received $5 billion in fiscal 2011, which it distributed to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and scores of tribal governments. The program now helps to provide for an estimated 1.8 million children each month.

The program also received an extra $2 billion under the 2009 stimulus bill.

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Lee: Failed Motion Shows Commitment to Big Spending Remains

by Admin on November 1, 2011 in Disfunctional Congress, Economy, Federal Budget with No comments
Historical government spending by major functi...

Image via Wikipedia

Mike Lee, Senator, Utah

WASHINGTON—Today, Senator Mike Lee’s motion to maintain certain 2012 spending appropriations at 2011 levels was voted down. The motion would have affected legislation that will authorize funding for several departments, including agriculture, commerce, and transportation.

“My motion to reduce current 2012 spending by roughly $10 billion should have easily passed at a time when the country is running an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion and is saddled with a national debt as large as the entire annual output of the economy. Instead, today’s vote shows that too many members of the Senate are still committed to fighting every attempt to enact even the smallest amount of savings.

“Worse still, today’s appropriations package will achieve its increased spending levels through accounting tricks and gimmicks that allow the true numbers to be hidden from the American public.

“I will continue to do whatever I can to make the federal government smaller and more transparent.”

Before the vote, Senator Lee made the following comments on the Senate floor:

“Mr. President, I filed this motion to recommit HR 2112 with instructions to send this ‘minibus’ back to the committee on appropriations for one simple reason.: it spends more for the same set of expenditures in fiscal year 2012 than it did in 2011 to the tune of about $10 billion. I understand that there are reasons for this excess. I understand that when we look at individual components of the 2012 provision, there may be some cuts in there.

“But the overall picture, the entire pie, is about $10 billion more than what we had in FY 2011. Unless we can be open and transparent with the American people and acknowledge the fact that we are, in fact, spending more, I think this is a problem. We’ve got to get this fiscal house in order.”

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Obama vows action on Fast and Furious

by Admin on October 18, 2011 in 2nd Amendment, Border Patrol, Federal Budget, Gulf Cartel, Justice Department - Eric Holder, Mexican Cartel War, Obama Propaganda, Project Gunwalker, Sinaloa cartel, Zetas with 3 Comments
Official photo as Deputy Attorney General, ca....

Image via Wikipedia

Politico

President Barack Obama vowed Tuesday that federal officials who made bad decisions in designing or carrying out the controversial gun-running probe known as Operation Fast and Furious will be “held accountable.”

“People who have screwed up will be held accountable,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s investigation used a tactic known as “gunwalking” which reportedly allowed more than 1000 weapons purchased under suspicious circumstances to flow unimpeded into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.The goal of the operation appears to have been to build cases against large-volume gun traffickers by tracing the routes cartels were using to obtain weapons from legal U.S. dealers. However, in many cases, there was little or no monitoring of the weapons once they were sold by the dealers to suspicious buyers.

“It’s very upsetting to me to think that somebody showed such bad judgment that they would allow something like that to happen,” Obama told ABC during a stop in his three-day bus tour of North Carolina and Virginia. “And we will find out who and what happened in this situation and make sure it gets corrected.”

The Arizona-based gun trafficking probe drew the attention of congressional investigators after two guns found at the scene of the killing of a Border Patrol agent last December were traced to the ill-fated ATF operation.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said the technique violated standing Justice Department policy, though he has noted that the tactic was apparently used in at least one investigation conducted when George W. Bush was president. At Holder’s request, the Justice Department’s inspector general is examining how Fast and Furious was planned and carried out.

In the wake of the congressional outcry over the operation, there have been several moves to reassign ATF officials and prosecutors. However, only one person is known to have left the government over the episode: the top federal prosecutor in Arizona as the probe unfolded, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke.

In May, William McMahon, the ATF’s deputy assistant director of operations in the West, was transferred to a headquarters job. In early August, William Newell and David Voth, ATF field supervisors in Phoenix who played key roles in designing Fast and Furious, were also reassigned to Washington.

On August 30, Burke tendered his resignation to Obama. On the same day, the Justice Department announced two other personnel switches: the acting director of ATF, Kenneth Melson, was transferred out of that job and into a DOJ post researching forensics issues, and Emory Hurley, the assistant U.S. attorney who was the line prosecutor on Fast & Furious, Emory Hurley, was reassigned from criminal cases to civil litigation.

Earlier this month, B. Todd Jones, Melson’s replacement, ordered a broad reshuffle of ATF management. He said the 11 new appointments, reaching as high as a new deputy director, were “aimed at refocusing the bureau’s direction on its core mission” following Fast and Furious.

At a White House press conference earlier this month, Obama expressed displeasure in terms similar to those he used Tuesday. Obama also declared his “complete confidence” in Holder and noted that the attorney general has said he didn’t know about ATF’s use of gunwalking.

“I think both he and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America. He’s assigned an inspector general to look into how exactly this happened I’ve got complete confidence in the process to figure out who in fact was responsible for that decision and how it got made,” the president said on Oct. 6.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66289.html#ixzz1bAlcsQcU

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