“Debt” on The Daily Caller

California Gov Jerry Brown revealed his revised plan Monday to close the state’s $16 billion budget deficit by slashing $8.3 billion in government spending and imposing temporary tax increases. His new proposal increases cuts $4.1 billion from the January proposal. (more)

The Bank of Spain announced that it is looking rescue Bankia SA by taking a controlling share, according to the Wall Street Journal. (more)

The United States is rushing toward a health and economic catastrophe, with significant repercussions on our global competitiveness and national security. The emerging obesity epidemic has no real parallel with any other health crisis in our history. In the past, we have met the challenges of epidemics and other serious diseases and emerged with new knowledge, new technologies and superior tools to better our nation’s health. We need to take the same approach with obesity, coming up with tested and reasonable programs that both address the problem and help inspire new life-saving and wealth-creating technologies. (more)

The United States government’s annual take of over $2 trillion is larger than the GDP of all but the eight largest countries in the world. So why are we broke? Although federal revenue is projected to increase to its historical average of 18% of GDP in a few years, the pundits inform us there’s no way we can have a strong defense and modest tax rates, at least not without “slashing” sacred programs like Social Security and Medicare. (more)

If two people have their feet set in concrete, neither can move very far. That is true in life and especially when serving in the United States Congress. (more)

If you’re concerned about our nation’s growing fiscal crisis — and regardless of political persuasion, you should be — then Senator Tom Coburn’s new book, The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America, should be the next title you pick up. Coburn identifies the root of the current problem, exposes the devastating effects of staying the course and provides detailed solutions for getting the nation back on track. Pulling no punches, the senator goes after both Republicans and Democrats who are content with serving their own self-interests while ignoring the greater economic situation. (more)

The news that Social Security will face shortfalls in the near future is not good news for the federal program that millions of American seniors and disabled folks rely on to help make ends meet. Clearly something needs to be done to fix Social Security. My fear is that Republicans are going to try to gut Social Security under the cover of “reforming” the program by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse.” (more)

President Barack Obama has done something no other president has ever done. (more)

For decades, the federal budget deficit has been a strong issue for Republicans because voters believe that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to balance budgets. That’s why Mitt Romney is hoping that the large budget deficits of the past five years will weigh heavily on voters’ minds in November, while President Obama is hoping that voters will instead focus on issues like his contraception mandate and the membership policies of Georgia country clubs. (more)

Last week Chuck Blahous, a prominent policy analyst who was deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Bush, produced a report showing just how much Obamacare could increase spending and our debt. The Obama White House didn’t like it. Like a schoolyard bully who feels threatened by the smart kid in class, the White House responded with lots of attacks and few real answers. (more)

A 58-year-old man has set himself on fire outside of a tax office in Bologna, Italy, Ansa.it reports. (more)

Paul Ryan’s GOP House budget plan offers too little too late. (more)

House Republicans are reportedly going to release their new budget next week. The big question is whether the Republican budget will be a balanced budget. For all the talk about their newfound fiscal responsibility, Washington Republicans have yet to introduce a single budget that meets the simple test of balancing over 10 years. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. (more)

Interest on the federal debt is expected to rival defense spending by 2017, totaling nearly $566 billion annually. (more)

WASHINGTON — The United Kingdom’s former secretary of state for defence, Dr. Liam Fox, gave warning Tuesday morning at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., saying that Great Britain’s “national security is inextricably linked to the health of our national economy,” and that the United States is no different. (more)

The budget President Obama released this week demonstrates the administration’s detachment from our current fiscal situation. As a physician, I’m particularly concerned about the president’s refusal to offer a plan to reform Medicare so it will be here for future generations. The budget is a tremendous opportunity to create policy, yet the president’s budget of more spending, taxing, and debt won’t prevent Medicare from going bankrupt. If that happens, people will inevitably be denied access to care. And instead of increasing freedom and choice in the Medicare market, this budget focuses on increasing federal control — a tactic that continually fails. (more)

In today’s partisan atmosphere, it was predictable that President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget plan would sidestep the tough choices required to address the long-run imbalance between entitlement spending and tax revenue. Sure enough, the budget plan includes no fundamental restructuring of the big entitlement programs and no broad-based tax increases. Instead, the plan sticks to the president’s longstanding approach of raising taxes only on a small group of high-income households, placing further tax burdens on the saving and investment that fuel long-run economic growth. The president even doubles down on this strategy, proposing a far larger dividend tax hike than in his previous budgets. (more)

President Obama put forward his FY 2013 budget yesterday. Meanwhile, there was rioting in Greece. If you think these events are unrelated, there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you. (more)

President Obama’s 2013 budget is fundamentally disappointing. The lesson of history for countries with the “U.S. disease” — poor growth and bloated current and projected debt — is fairly simple: keep taxes low, reform the tax code to make it more pro-growth, and cut spending by focusing on transfer programs while preserving and making more efficient the core functions of government, like national defense, infrastructure, basic research, and education. (more)

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, told The Daily Caller that the U.S. will “continue to see downgrades” if the federal government keeps spending at its current level. (more)