WASHINGTON — In 2008, an imminent collapse of the banking system consumed Congress before lawmakers delivered a bailout. Three years later, a debt limit crisis enveloped Washington and led to a series of spending cuts after a dangerous brush with default and a first-ever downgrade in the nation’s credit rating. Now unease about the banking […]
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WASHINGTON — Anyone wondering how a Democratic president and the newly installed Republican speaker of the House would work together got their first real preview this month, when President Biden released a budget that Republicans vowed to torpedo and Speaker Kevin McCarthy signed his first bill — one the president has promised to veto. In […]
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Months after losing control of the House in 2010, President Barack Obama and his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., released a budget proposal that bowed to Republican warnings about the need to rein in spending by promising a freeze in popular programs like education. Now president, Mr. Biden is confronting the same equation, with […]
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On Thursday the White House released its latest budget; Republicans haven’t offered a specific counterproposal, but they seem to be coalescing around a plan released by Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s last budget director. Neither plan will become law. Instead, they’re intended to position the two sides for the looming confrontation over the federal debt ceiling. […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday proposed a $6.8 trillion budget that seeks to increase spending on the military and a wide range of new social programs while also reducing future budget deficits, defying Republican calls to scale back government and reasserting his economic vision before an expected re-election campaign. The budget contains some $5 […]
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The director of the budget office, Phillip L. Swagel, briefed lawmakers about deficit projections on Wednesday at the Capitol, warning they would eventually need to raise taxes, cut spending or both in order to mitigate rising debt. The office’s projections “suggest that, over the long term, changes in fiscal policy would need to be made […]
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Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, used his testimony before lawmakers this week to lay out a more aggressive path ahead for American monetary policy as the central bank tries to combat stubbornly rapid inflation. Mr. Powell, who spoke before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Banking Committee […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday will propose policies aimed at trimming federal budget deficits by $3 trillion over the next 10 years as his administration embraces the politics of debt reduction amid a fight with Republicans over raising the nation’s borrowing limit, a senior administration official said on Wednesday. Mr. Biden’s plans, which will […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday will propose policies aimed at trimming federal budget deficits by at least $2 trillion over the next 10 years as his administration embraces the politics of debt reduction amid a fight with Republicans over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. Mr. Biden’s plans, which will be detailed as part of […]
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“We’re in a total strategic cul-de-sac on the right, and our fiscal warriors and strategists have totally failed in the sense that, point to any cuts we’ve had success-wise since 1997,” Mr. Vought said in an interview. “I actually think that that’s the worst part of the federal spending, because it’s the bureaucracy. Understand the […]
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy could quickly shed a million jobs and fall into recession if lawmakers fail to raise the nation’s borrowing limit before the federal government exhausts its ability to pay its bills on time, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Mark Zandi, will warn a Senate panel on Tuesday. The damage could spiral to seven […]
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Biden administration officials blame Mr. Trump and former President George W. Bush for running up debt, particularly with tax cuts. They claim credit for a decline in the budget deficit under Mr. Biden, even though that mostly occurred because the federal government stopped passing emergency aid bills as the pandemic eased its grip on the […]
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WASHINGTON — More than 20 state governments, flush with cash from federal stimulus funds and a rebounding economy, shared their windfalls last year by sending residents one-time payments. This year, the Biden administration added a sweetener, telling tens of millions taxpayers they did not need to pay federal taxes on those payments. That decision by […]
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WASHINGTON — The United States faces a default sometime this summer or early fall if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt ceiling, a Washington think tank warned on Wednesday. The projection from the Bipartisan Policy Center is the latest estimate of when the government could run out of cash to pay its bills. […]
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In his State of the Union speech this month, President Biden pledged to block any reductions in scheduled Social Security and Medicare benefits. He also promised that any tax increases would be limited to families that earn more than $400,000 — roughly the top-earning 2 percent of American families. Together, these promises are almost certainly […]
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WASHINGTON — A sweeping new entitlement program to provide medical care to millions of veterans who may have been exposed to trash burn pits on U.S. military bases around the world may increase federal spending on veterans by at least $400 billion and as much as $789 billion over a decade, according to the official […]
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WASHINGTON — The United States is on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than previously forecast, as a result of rising costs for interest payments, veterans’ health care, retiree benefits and the military, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday. The new forecasts, released […]
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WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department’s ability to continue paying its bills and prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt could be exhausted sometime between July and September if Congress does not raise or suspend the cap on how much the nation can borrow, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday. The estimate […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden scored an early political point this month in his fight with congressional Republicans over taxes, spending and raising the federal debt limit: He forced Republican leaders to profess, repeatedly, that they will not seek cuts to Social Security and Medicare. In the process, Mr. Biden has effectively steered a debate about […]
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Since he defeated former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, Mr. Biden has had difficulty conjuring a useful political villain, in part because Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. For much of his first year, Mr. Biden seemed to be fighting more with his own party — specifically, Senators Kyrsten Sinema […]
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Bret: I won’t make any predictions because they’re bound to be proved wrong. What should happen? I like a proposal made by Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator — and Democrat turned Republican — in The Wall Street Journal: Raise the debt ceiling but “claw back unspent funds” from the $6 trillion in pandemic-related spending, […]
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Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Two years after a Democratic president took office and pushed ambitious policies through Congress, Republicans have regained control of the House. They don’t have the votes required to repeal the president’s achievements, but a quirk of U.S. law — which requires that Congress vote a second time to […]
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