Category Archives: Fiscal Freedom

Congress' next few month are likely to be filled with drama, as lawmakers face tackling the debt ceiling, negotiating a new budget deal to lift limits on government spending and trying to head off a government shutdown this fall.

Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week from their Memorial Day recess facing two solid months of legislative hurdles before their scheduled five-week recess in August.

"There is so much to do, and there's so much uncertainty out there, that we are heading into a very intense two-month work period, and if we're going to do anything this year, we have to do it now," warned Jim Dyer, principal at the Podesta Group who previously served as the House Appropriations Committee's staff director.

Budget experts, including Dyer, and lawmakers are expecting a negotiation for a major fiscal deal with the timing for that likely to be determined by the deadline to address the debt ceiling. That is, lawmakers might have to reach a deal before Congress moves on to approving government funding for 2018.

If Congress fails to complete these tasks, the U.S. could default on its debt; all discretionary spending -- including both defense and non-defense -- would be slashed with cuts; and the government would shut down.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called on Congress to raise the debt limit before lawmakers leave for the summer and has specified that it should be a "clean" increase -- a demand that the conservative Freedom Caucus quickly rejected. The group said in a statement that any debt ceiling increase should be coupled with spending cuts in exchange. For context, Democrats have only ever agreed to a "clean" lifting of the debt limit.

Play Video

The House speaker discusses how Congress and the Trump administration plan to deal with the debt ceiling

For the last debt ceiling deadline in 2015, Congress was able to wait until October to address it. As it usually does, the Treasury Department has been relying on so-called "extraordinary measures" since mid-March of this year to buy more time but time may be running out sooner than previous years. When the threat of a default becomes more pronounced, that could spur a much larger fiscal deal.

"If there is to be a budget deal, and I believe there has to be a budget deal, I think the action-enforcing event will be the debt ceiling," Dyer said. "It's like the bitter medicine that no one wants to take, but they know they have to take it anyway if they're going to survive."

Since 2013, Congress has twice passed two-year bipartisan budget agreements to lift spending limits that were put in place by a 2011 law.

The first was negotiated by then-House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and his Senate counterpart, Patty Murray, D-Washington. The last one, in 2015, was reached by then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky and his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid of Nevada. The 2015 deal will expire at the end of September, and if Congress doesn't pass a new one, spending limits from the 2011 law will take effect.

In his budget blueprint for 2018, President Trump proposed raising defense spending levels by $54 billion and cutting the same amount, $54 billion, for non-defense domestic programs, which cover the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Health and Human Services, among others. If his plan were to become law, domestic programs not related to defense would face $57 billion in cuts below their current level of funding.

While Congress, including Republicans, declared the president's budget "dead on arrival," most Republicans agree the military needs more funding. Many also agree that non-defense domestic programs don't require spending hikes. Under President Obama, Democrats only accepted equal increases between both sides of the budget. But now with a unified Republican government, this debate over what to increase, and by how much, is expected to be the biggest sticking point in these negotiations.

"I don't believe all dollars are the same. I think defense dollars are the absolute priority right now," said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, following a closed-door GOP conference meeting about the budget agenda. Granger chairs a subcommittee that oversees Pentagon funding.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, signaled that he'd support a bipartisan budget deal that also raises the debt ceiling, saying he would be "agreeable to anything that increases defense spending." But asked if he'd also be in favor of domestic spending increases, he wasn't as adamant.

"No, no, no, no," McCain said. "Although there are some that I would increase: the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security and those, but I don't think that some of our domestic programs are in the same level of urgency as defense is. This is the same strategy that gave us sequestration: treat them all the same. That's crazy."

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Kentucky, ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said that a budget deal that only raises spending limits on defense is out of the question.

"Absolutely not," he told CBS News. "That would be a non-starter. I don't think there would be any Democratic votes for that."

A leader of the moderate Tuesday Group, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pennsylvania, is urging his colleagues to craft a bipartisan budget deal that raises the debt limit and lifts both spending levels for defense and non-defense, satisfying Democratic demands.

"It's unrealistic to think that we're going to be able to increase defense entirely at the expense of non-defense," Dent said.

Neither Ryan's office nor McConnell's office responded to requests for comment.

While a budget deal would increase spending caps, Congress would still need to pass an appropriations package that complies with those new limits. And despite GOP control of the White House and Congress, Democratic votes will be needed to advance a budget agreement that in turn would determine spending levels for an appropriations package. Both pieces of legislation require 60 votes in the Senate in order to reach a final vote.

"If you're going to prevent a government shutdown in September, you have got to have renegotiated budget caps," Dyer said.

Experts suspect Congress will, as they've done each year in recent memory, pass a continuing resolution (CR) by Sept. 30 to prevent a government shutdown to buy more time for the larger negotiation that would eventually determine the substance of a 2018 government spending package in December.

A budget deal that raises spending limits and debt ceiling won't be a "grand bargain," said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who spent 25 years on Capitol Hill working on budget issues and appropriations. But he said it might encompass "modest modifications to the tax code," rather than a comprehensive tax reform package.

"The debt limit, the funding of the government, health care and maybe a little bit on the tax side will all be front and center come this fall and this is the opportunity for some tradeoffs," he said. "[As for] the man who wrote the book "The Art of the Deal," this is when we'll have to see whether or not he can really pull off a deal and pull all these pieces together."

More here:

Will the government fall off the fiscal cliff? - CBS News

Its possible that President Donald Trump will appoint Gov. Sam Brownback to be his ambassador for international religious freedom. In a May 12 article in The Atlantic, Emma Green writes, The latest rumor, shared with me by roughly half a dozen policymakers, is that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback will get the post. Tom Farr is president of the Religious Freedom Institute, and he said something similar a week later: Ive had people say, I hear its going to be Gov. Brownback.

If these rumors are true and Brownback accepts the position, it has the potential to dramatically alter the political dynamics in the Statehouse. Brownback has been the largest obstacle to comprehensive tax reform because he wants to retain as much of his 2012 cuts as possible. When House Bill 2178 was passed in February, his veto forced the Legislature to attempt an override something the House was able to accomplish, but not the Senate. Although the Legislature hasnt sent another tax bill to Brownbacks desk since then, the threat of his veto has made it much more difficult for lawmakers to develop a viable solution to our enormous revenue shortfall.

The Supreme Courts school-finance ruling which may require the state to invest hundreds of millions of additional dollars in education has made the political terrain even more difficult to navigate. Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, explains that Brownback has been a decisive factor in preventing progress on the two largest issues that Kansas faces: A big hindrance this entire session is trying to rectify bad tax policy and implement good education policy at the same time, because hes been standing in the way. Like many of his colleagues, Holland says the prospect of Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer taking over could really help break up a logjam.

Rep. Russell Jennings, R-Lakin, points out that Colyer would have strong political incentives to stop carrying the weight of Brownbacks negative legacy into the next election cycle. Holland said the same thing, arguing that Colyer could minimize blowback to the Republican brand heading into the 2018 gubernatorial race. But there are more fundamental reasons why the next governor whether its Colyer or someone else should refuse to perpetuate the mistakes that Brownback has made over the past six years. Republicans are right to be worried about Brownbacks negative legacy hes consistently ranked one of the least popular governors in the country, and his approval rating is 27 percent.

From the maintenance of his destructive tax cuts year after year to his rejection of Medicaid expansion in our state, Brownback has repeatedly proven that his conservative ideology takes precedence over the needs and wishes of Kansans. Most representatives and senators recognize this they know voters elected them to clean up the fiscal wreckage of Brownbacks policies and move the state back toward the political center. And they can see the numbers for themselves the billions of dollars our state has forfeited in tax revenue; the tens of thousands of Kansans who dont have health insurance; the underfunded agencies.

Our next governor needs to have a trait that isnt often associated with politicians: humility. While any good leader should be confident and assertive, Kansans have learned that the governor simply has to be someone willing to say, I was wrong. Brownback still refuses to say anything of the sort, which is one of the main reasons this is one of the longest legislative sessions in history.

The Topeka Capital-Journal

More here:

Governor blocking tax reform - Salina Journal (subscription)

Advertisement

George Cahlink, E&E News reporter

Lawmakers have a mounting to-do list before their next recess. Gage Skidmore/Flickr (Ryan, McConnell); Peter Makeyev/Flickr (Capitol)

As Congress returns for a monthlong legislative stretch, Cabinet members will make long-awaited appearances, lawmakers and the White House will work to avoid financial crises, tax talks will heat up, and midterm election-watchers will seek clues about who's running.

Here are four questions on energy and the environment:

Congress is certain to hear this month from U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for the first time since their confirmation hearings earlier this year.

All three are due before House and Senate authorizing and appropriations committees to defend President Trump's fiscal 2018 budget. Zinke is already on the agenda for this week (see related story).

Advertisement

Pruitt, a pariah among Democrats for his fierce opposition to the Clean Power Plan, is likely to face bipartisan criticism over a proposal to cut the agency's budget by 31 percent. Both parties have said the plan is dead on arrival.

Pruitt is also likely to get plenty of questions about Trump's decision to exit the Paris climate accord. While Democrats will bash him for his anti-Paris advocacy, conservatives like home-state ally Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) will praise Pruitt.

Zinke will likely face queries, especially from House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), about whether he will recommend the administration revoke or reduce 27 national monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah.

Zinke will have an ally in Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on a budget proposal to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for energy exploration, but she will likely take issue with other aspects of the spending plan.

Perry, a former Texas governor, has kept a relatively low profile as he has visited DOE sites around the nation hoping to learn about a department he previously admitted to having little knowledge about.

Perry's most pointed questions will come from appropriators over proposals to cut energy research that don't have much political support outside the White House.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member on ENR, will want an update from Perry on nuclear cleanup work at the Hanford Site in her state after a recent leak of radioactive materials there.

Congressional Republicans and the White House agree they want to move tax reform legislation. But it remains an open question whether a proposal riling the energy community will be a part of the package.

The administration and congressional leaders are likely to accelerate talks over the shape of their tax bill this month as they press toward what seems like a long-shot August deadline.

Lawmakers are sure to note the six-figure digital advertising campaign launched last week by the Koch brothers-backed American for Prosperity that pushes Republicans to move an overhaul without including what's been its most controversial proposal, a border adjustment tax.

The BAT, championed by House GOP leaders, would create a 20 percent tax on imports while exempting exports. Backers argue the policy shift is vital to raising $1 trillion in revenue over the next decade that would allow them to make the deepest cuts in corporate and individual rates since the Reagan years.

Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, however, have suggested the BAT won't fly in their chamber amid concerns it would unfairly hit oil importers and other manufacturers.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have also begun warning that the BAT could sink tax reform. The administration has offered reservations, too.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has signaled some openness in recent weeks to BAT "alternatives," but the man to watch for signs of a deal is House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), who continues to press for the idea.

The White House and Capitol Hill Republicans will be looking for ways over the next several weeks to avoid a politically treacherous fiscal meltdown this fall.

House Republicans are floating the idea of wrapping all 12 fiscal 2018 spending bills into an omnibus package that they would move before August recess.

The decision could help avoid a possible government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. It would also sidestep messy floor fights over attaching riders to individual spending bills, particularly ones covering energy and water and Interior and EPA.

Conservatives could still balk at moving massive spending legislation, and Senate Democrats have the votes to filibuster any omnibus that ignores their funding priorities.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin surprised many observers recently by suggesting Congress will need to sign off on a clean increase of the nation's borrowing authority, also known as the debt ceiling, before its August recess.

Without an increase, the U.S. would default on billions in loans and risk starting a global financial crisis. But many lawmakers on Capitol Hill thought the increase would not be needed until fall.

Conservatives, including many members of the Freedom Caucus, have come out against Mnuchin's plan, saying they will require at least a framework for future cuts to go along with any debt increase.

Such sentiments echo Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a former House hard-liner who directly contradicted Mnuchin in comments last week. He also wants spending adjustments.

If the 30 or so members of the Freedom Caucus hold together, they could force leaders to rely on Democrats to pass a debt ceiling increase.

But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that Democrats might not back even a clean raise if the GOP moves ahead with a tax plan that favors the wealthiest Americans.

Almost six months into 2017, many questions remain about next year's midterm elections.

Former House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) continues to eye a possible challenge to the Great Lakes State's senior Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) next year. It would surely be one of the most competitive and expensive races of the upcoming cycle.

Stabenow is already in campaign mode, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has run pre-emptive online ads against Upton.

The strength of his fundraising numbers for the first half of the year, due on June 30, could offer some hint as to whether he'll pursue the challenge.

So far, no sitting senators have announced they will not seek re-election in 2018, one of the longest stretches in recent history.

The biggest retirement questions surround the future of the longest-serving Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.

The seven-term senator has danced around the issue, first saying he would retire and then suggesting he was eyeing another run. Hatch, 83, has floated 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as his possible replacement.

Other potential retirees on the Democratic side are: Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, 83; Tom Carper of Delaware, 70; and Bill Nelson of Florida, 74.

All three have said they expect to run and would be favorites to win, but they all have been subject to frequent speculation about those plans changing.

One definite retirement is coming at the end of the month, with House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) leaving Congress.

The House Republican Steering Committee will meet this week to pick his replacement, with Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) strongly favored to get the gavel.

Advertisement

As Congress returns for a monthlong legislative stretch, Cabinet members will make long-awaited appearances, lawmakers and the White House will work to avoid financial crises, tax talks will heat up, and midterm election-watchers will seek clues about who's running.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The essential news for energy & environment professionals

1996-2017 Environment & Energy Publishing, LLCPrivacy PolicySite Map

Read more:

4 energy and environment questions as Congress returns - E&E News

George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen has just published a timely new book, "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream."

Cowen's message is that America is a nation that has lost its edge.

Entrepreneurism and the willingness to take risks key factors that once defined the American economy and made it the growth engine of the world are in decline.

Income is stagnating; productivity is down; startups as a percentage of overall business activity are down; the percentage of Americans under 30 who own a business is less than half of where it stood in the 1980s; the percentage of Americans who stay in the same job is up; the interstate migration rate declined 51 percent from the 1970s to 2013.

Cowen attributes this stagnation to a complacency that now grips our culture. He offers a number of explanations, but key factors include adversity to risk and a sense that a society can be created in which risk is eliminated.

Cowen's book is timely. It has arrived at the same moment that President Donald Trump has submitted his new budget to Congress.

It's a courageous budget designed to turn around a ship of state that is sinking from fiscal excess.

What's the connection to Cowen's book? Our federal budget is bloated with social spending programs that have expanded massively over the years, whose real objective is to take any risk out of life.

Few would argue that the government should provide some temporary safety net for citizens who fall on hard times. But these spending programs aren't that. They are the product of an illusion, the result of a culture of rampant materialism, that all of life is a social engineering problem. If designed correctly, the thinking goes, society can purr like a well-oiled machine with all pain and suffering engineered out of it.

This great lie is bankrupting us and producing a culture of victimhood, and, as Cowen defines it, complacency.

Regarding our federal budget, here's what the Congressional Budget Office says: "If current laws remain generally unchanged, the United States would face steadily increasing federal budget deficits and debt over the next 30 years reaching the highest level of debt relative to GDP ever experienced in this country."

Liberals are crying about "cruel" budget cuts in the Trump budget. But as Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute points out, what liberals call "cuts" are not cuts at all they merely slow the rate of spending. The Trump budget increases federal spending over 10 years by $1.7 trillion.

Medicaid, one of the largest items in the federal budget, increases from $378 billion in current spending to $524 billion. And consider that Medicaid spending in 2000 was $118 billion.

Or consider food stamps. Spending has increased from $18 billion in 2000 to $71 billion now. Or Social Security Disability spending, from $56 billion in 2000 to $144 billion.

American Enterprise Institute economist Mark Perry notes that direct payments to individuals have increased from less than 30 percent of the federal budget to 70 percent today. He says that the federal government has essentially transformed into a "gigantic wealth-transfer machine."

We should see the Trump budget as a cultural as well as fiscal initiative. It attempts to restore fiscal sanity while restoring individual freedom and personal responsibility to our culture.

Star Parker is an author and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Contact her at http://www.urbancure.org.

Go here to read the rest:

'Wealth-transfer machine' failing - Bismarck Tribune

Economic Freedom Index is not a sacrosanct scorecard neither is it a predictor of investors confidence

The writer is an honorary Fellow of the Consortium for Development Policy Research

Pakistan has achieved a growth rate of 5.3 per cent, the highest in nine years. Now what can be done to sustain this growth? Economists believe that governments should pursue policies advancing economic freedom to stimulate growth and the rest can be taken care of by private enterprises and individuals.

In 2017, Pakistans economic freedom score hit the lowest-ever mark, bringing down the countrys ranking to 141 amongst 186 countries, all the way from 126 in 2016 and 121 in 2015. While there could be endless debates on whether this is an accurate reflection of future growth potential, it is hard to ignore the clear correlation between economic freedom and prosperity.

The recently released Economic Freedom Index 2017 revealed that countries lying in the top 25 per cent of economic freedom scores are six times as prosperous as those in the bottom quartile. Moreover, the top countries GDP per capita has been growing at more than double the rate of growth for bottom countries. In laymans terms, this means the difference in prosperity of these two groups with varying economic freedom will widen over time and one cannot have one without the other. In Pakistan, on the one hand, the federal and provincial governments are trying to lure in foreign direct investments through incentives, one-window facilitation and investment roadshows, while on the other, the lack of economic freedom is constraining existing businesses. It, therefore, calls for some introspection on where exactly are we going wrong. Economic freedom means that individuals and businesses are free to own and control their labour, capital and goods with minimal intervention by the state institutions. The Economic Freedom Index, created by Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, is based on four pillars: rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency and open markets. These pillars in turn depend on 12 indicators ranging from property rights to fiscal health and from business freedom to financial freedom.

A closer look at these indicators reveals that Pakistan has scored extremely low on six counts: property rights, judicial effectiveness, government integrity, fiscal health, labour freedom and financial freedom. Three of these indicators constitute the rule of law pillar, making it the weakest area for the country.

It will be unfair to attribute this low score to any recent development, as since 1996, Pakistan has been categorised as a mostly unfree country. If at all, since 2013 Pakistan has shown steady improvements in government integrity as well as in monetary, trade and investment freedom. Judicial effectiveness and fiscal health have recently been added to the index so there is no historical trend available. But there has been little improvement in property rights, no improvement at all in financial freedom and a steady decline in labour freedom.

Looking at property rights, while the government does allow private ownership, it is quite difficult to protect personal property in case of disputes due to prolonged litigation, deterring entrepreneurial activity. It must be noted that property rights here pertain to both real and intellectual properties as well as to investor protection and quality of land administration.

Labour freedom, on the other hand, refers to excessive labour regulations in the country, limiting businesses ability to deal with redundancies. The low labour force participation rate of 15 per cent, much below the world average of 62 per cent, manifests poor labour opportunities in Pakistan and negatively affects their freedom. Lastly, financial freedom depends on factors like government influence on allocation of credit and capital market development, both of which are weak spots for Pakistan. Domestic credit to private sector for instance, is merely 15 per cent of Pakistans GDP, as opposed to 44 per cent in Bangladesh and 52 per cent in India. Claims on the central government, on the other hand, stand at 29 per cent of the GDP.

The Economic Freedom Index is not a sacrosanct scorecard neither is it a predictor of investors confidence. However, it does provide a lens through which many investors look at investment prospects and also presents a menu of options to governments where targeted reforms can be undertaken.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2nd, 2017.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.

Read more from the original source:

Do we have economic freedom? - The Express Tribune

Ridgecrests Parks and Recreation Department is requesting a total of $1,701,601 for fiscal year 2018. This represents an increase of $31,601 over the fiscal year 2017 requested budget of $1,670,00.

That was the word from Recreation Supervisor Jason Patin, who presented a proposed draft budget to the Ridgecrest City Council during a special budget hearing Wednesday. The budget will not be finalized until the council approves it at a later date. The next special session on the budget is set for June 6 at 5 p.m., at council chambers at City Hall.

Patin attributed the increase over the previous fiscal year to things out of our control like PERS [retirement system], salaries and an increase in utilities.

Of the requested amount, $217,323 is requested for parks administration. This includes salaries/wages and benefits for personnel; services including transportation and training, postage, and laundry services; operating supplies and food, clothing, and safety supplies; and an allocation for fleet maintenance. Of this, $204,899 is for personnel, $5,950 for services, $1,100 for materials and $5,374 for the fleet.

The recreation department is requesting $392,094 for personnel and services, including salaries and wages, benefits, advertising, miscellaneous service dues and publications and bank service charges. Of this amount, $291,964 is for personnel; $27,000 is the total for summer camps; and $33,000 for youth sports, among other expenses.

Recreation programs include adult sports, the fitness program, preschool, summer camps, recreation sports, concessions and youth sports.

The department is requesting $1,092,184 for parks and facilities maintenance. Parks and recreation facilities include Parks Shop, Leroy Jackson Park, Pearson Park, Upjohn Park, the Youth Sports Complex, street medians, the Kerr McGee Center, City Hall and the Senior Center. Funds are being requested for salaries and wages; benefits; utilities; waste disposal; maintenance supplies; equipment; tools; janitorial supplies and the fleet, which includes maintenance trucks.

This is really the biggest one, because it handles such a wide range, Patin said. Year by year that is drastically different because of the nature of the beast, he said referring to maintenance and repair costs. We never know what is going to break and where.

The department's Wish List, jokingly presented on a blank check, includes facility improvement funds, or things we could have done or should have done but did not have the funding, Patin said. He used Pinney Pool as an example.

Over the years that facility deteriorated and now it's closed. We don't want to see that happen to other facilities that we have. (For more on Pinney Pool, see related story this edition.)

Patin also asked council consider starting a large equipment contingency fund with $50,000 to $75,000 set aside for equipment repair. He said the fund could roll over from year to year if unused.

Patin quoted City Manager and Public Works Director Dennis Speer as saying, it's not a matter of if but when big-ticket items break.

I am a proponent of contingencies because there are things that are going to break down, Speer agreed.

Mayor Peggy Breeden ultimately sent the contingency fund topic to the city's finance committee for a recommendation.

Patin's wish list also included funds for a parks assessment study.

Patin discussed projected revenue from youth and adult sports, preschool programs, summer programs, concessions and room rentals. Projected revenue for fiscal year 2018 is $342,600, which is down $29,640 from projected revenue of $372,240 for this fiscal year.

Patin attributed most of the difference to the closure of Pinney Pool. That was a huge revenue source to us.

He also discussed projects not funded by the general fund but rather by Tax Allocation Bond funds. TAB funded projects include Pearson Park, Upjohn Park, Freedom Park Enhancements (including a Splash Pad and an outdoor movie theater).

Patin said that judging by Councilwoman Lindsey Stephen's Facebook postings, the park improvement projects are generating a lot of positive local interest. People are really paying attention, Patin said. The last one is the Kerr McGee Youth Sports Complex project, which we are in the middle of putting together, he said. This would include sports field lighting at existing football field, existing parking lot improvements, new site accessibility improvements for ADA compliance and renovation to all five existing baseball fields. Patin reported that scope of work was developed a long time ago, costs are being calculated and the project still has to go out to bid.

Patin did not go through his budget line by line, but his detailed presentation is available online at http://ridgecrest-ca.gov/budget

For more on the city's budget, see upcoming editions of the Daily Independent.

Original post:

Parks and Rec Dept requests $1.7M for 2018 fiscal year - News ... - Taft Midway Driller

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

Cuomo, Univisin, the New York Yankees, Coca-Cola, JetBlue, Goya, and AT&T pulled out of the June 11 parade in the wake of the decision to give convicted terrorist Oscar Lpez Rivera the title of national freedom hero. Additionally, NYPD Commissioner James P. ONeill, as well as the NYPD and FDNY Hispanic societies, refused to attend the parade.

Other politicians, such as liberal Mayor Bill de Blasio, said they would still participate in the march.

In an article for the New York Daily News, Lpez Rivera said he would still forgo the honor and instead march only as a humble Puerto Rican and grandfather.

I will be on Fifth Ave. not as your honoree but as a humble Puerto Rican and grandfather who at 74 continues to be committed to helping raise awareness about the fiscal, health care and human rights crisis Puerto Rico is facing at this historic juncture, he said.

Lpez Rivera was a key member of the radical Marxist Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), which conducted more than 100 bombings in the United States in the seventies and eighties, killing five people, injuring dozens, and causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

Lpez Rivera was convicted on charges of transporting guns and bombs and was released this month after serving 35 years. Former President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in January. Lpez Rivera has denied being a terrorist but said, colonized people have a right to use force against their oppressors.

The organizers said in a statement in May that, Oscars participation is not an endorsement of the history that led to his arrest, nor any form of violence. But rather a recognition of a man and a nations struggle for sovereignty.

In his article, Lpez Rivera said it was time to move on.

Lets be puertorriqueos and puertorriqueas. The honor should not be for me; it should be bestowed on our pioneers who came to the United States and opened doors. It should go for activists and elected officials who fight for justice and a fair society, he said.

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.

More:

Puerto Rican Day Parade Nixes 'National Freedom Hero' Award for Terrorist - Breitbart News

In the proposed budget for 2017-18, Finance Minister AMA Muhith has added an additional seven lakh new people to the social safety allowances, introduced two festival allowances for freedom fighters and gave an additional Tk2,200cr in block allocation for the local government division.

This unusual jump in the allocations in the governments last full budget in this term is being interpreted by many as a special offering with the next general elections in mind.

Towfiqul Islam Khan, research fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue sees the jump in allocation, especially for local government and rural development, as a way to robustly work with the common people.

Usually, political governments take such initiatives in their last budget to please people with a political impulse in mind, he added.

Muhith on Thursday proposed to raise the numbers of recipients of old age allowances to 3.5 million from 3.15 million, the allowance for widows and the oppressed to 1.27 million from 1.11 million, disability allowances to 825,000 from 600,000, education stipend for students with disability to 10,000 at both primary and secondary levels, and maternity allowances to 600,000 from 264,000.

Tk11.35 crore has been allocated as special allowance for transgender people, while the allowance for financially insolvent disabled people has been increased to Tk700 per month.

In addition, the government will continue the existing social protection programmes, including the Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) programme.

The total allocation of the governments Social Safety Net scheme for the fiscal 2016-17 is Tk45,230 crore.

At present, the government has been providing Tk2196 crore among 180,000 freedom fighters as monthly honorarium, in the fiscal 2016-17.

In addition to that, the government has proposed to provide festival allowance for listed freedom fighters to make their lives easier and improve their status.

In his budget speech, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said that In addition to their regular monthly honorarium, I propose to provide them with two festival allowances at Tk10,000 each from now.

Though the government has been increasing the coverage of social safety net, gradually each year, a significant jump for a certain community is a clear indication that the government trying to courts favours ahead of the next election, an economist, asking to remain unnamed, told the Dhaka Tribune.

The Election Commission has indicated that the next National Parliament Elections is likely to be held at the end of the next year.

Special protection scheme for Haor areas

The government has already employed emergency schemes to provide 30kg rice every month to each of the 330,000 destitute and flood-affected families in Haor areas, the finance minister said in his budget speech.

In addition, Tk57 crore has been allocated to provide cash assistance to the affected people on a monthly basis.

Tk82.07 crore has been allocated for 91,447 beneficiaries under the Employment Generation Programme for the Poorest (EGPP).

Loan recovery will remain suspended until the situation in Haor areas has improved, the minister said.

Besides, new loan at concessional rates have been disbursed among affected farmers, and facilities have been provided for re-scheduling credit, he added.

Block allocation

The proposed budget for 2017-18 fiscal also saw block allocation for different ministries and divisions through the annual development Programme.

The Local Government Division will get Tk2177 crore more than the running fiscal. The revised budget for this division in the current fiscal is Tk19,287 crore, while the proposed budget is Tk21,464 crore.

At the same time, the Rural Development and Co-operatives Division will receive Tk262 crore more than the current fiscal. The revised budget for this division in current fiscal is Tk1152 crore while the proposed budget is Tk1414 crore.

Excerpt from:

Social safety with an election bent - Dhaka Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government most move quickly to restore trust in its fiscal credibility, a governance reformer urged yesterday, pointing to the vast, wild differences between the new administrations forecasts and those of its predecessor.

Robert Myers, a principal with the Organisation for Responsible Governance (ORG), told Tribune Business that the nine-figure gap between the Minnis administrations projections and those of the prior government threatened to undermine business, investor and consumer confidence - not to mention that of the credit rating agencies - unless the differences were properly explained.

He was speaking after the Government, in unveiling the 2017-2018 Budget, revealed that the upcoming years deficit is projected to be $323 million - an almost $300 million increase from the $28 million in red ink that was forecast by the Christie administration just 12 months ago.

Raising further questions about the former governments fiscal forecasting, K P Turnquest, the minister of finance, said the deficit for the current 2016-2017 fiscal year was now estimated to be $500 million - a five-fold increase upon the $100 million that was forecast last May, and $150 million more than the mid-year Budget estimate.

While Hurricane Matthews role in the deficit growing 400 per cent beyond projections, Mr Turnquest said the former government had exacerbated the storms impact by entering into unfunded spending commitments that had created a $300 million government payables backlog.

As a result, the Government yesterday tabled two resolutions seeking Parliamentary authority to borrow a collective $722 million, some $400 million of which is emergency funding to cover 2016-2017s fiscal holes. The balance is to fill the 2017-2018 deficit.

Mr Myers said the persistent overshooting of key fiscal targets by such massive amounts threatened to undermine the publics faith in the Governments financial management, and negatively impact economic growth by deterring local and foreign investment.

He added that consumers and the private sector were being pushed towards a trust but verify approach when it came to the annual fiscal forecasts, with yesterdays developments further highlighting the need for a Fiscal Responsibility Act and Freedom of Information Act.

Based on the previous governments lack of control we, civil society and the public, dont know what to trust any more, Mr Myers told Tribune Business. The previous government was saying they could get the deficit down to $28 million [for 2017-2018], and were now back up to $323 million.

How could you go from one administration to the next and be so wildly wrong? Whos cooking the books? Isnt it the same public servants doing this Budget? Where are the public servants providing this Budget and the numbers? Why dont they speak up? If the Christie administration was that wildly wrong, isnt the Government reflecting what the public servants are doing?

Mr Myers also pointed to the different GFS deficit elimination projections given earlier this year by Simon Wilson, the Ministry of Finances acting financial secretary, and former prime minister, Perry Christie.

Mr Wilson, addressing a Chamber of Commerce conference in mid-February, said a fiscal balance could be achieved within the next four years, pushing this out to 2020-2021. Yet Mr Christie, in the mid-year Budget presentation in late March, stated that the Government was forecasting a break even GFS deficit by 2018-2019 - some two years earlier.

Warning that this only served to sow confusion and uncertainty among the private sector, Mr Myers added: If you have two people in the same government saying something so abundantly different, who is the public supposed to trust?

Weve got to make this whole process transparent, so we can understand things. Foreign investors can understand things, businesses can understand things, and consumers can understand things. If this is not done, consumer and investor confidence will be harmed.

He argued that there should be complete cohesion between government ministers and officials when it came to critical fiscal issues, otherwise the Bahamas was in deep trouble. Mr Myers also urged top Ministry of Finance officials to publicly stand behind the Budget, so we really do trust theyre going to be able to reduce the deficit in the time they suggest.

Its prudent for the Bahamian people to trust but verify, the ORG principal told Tribune Business.

The new governments projections show that achieving fiscal consolidation, and the GFS deficits elimination, will be much harder - and take a lot longer - than the prior administration was forecasting.

The Christie administration was forecasting that the Government would eliminate the annual deficit by 2018-2019, and actually be running a $68 million surplus. However, the Minnis administration yesterday predicted it will still be incurring $228 million worth of red ink for that fiscal year - a $296 million difference.

That is 54.4 per cent less than the $500 million deficit projected for the current fiscal year, and the Government forecast that the red ink would halve again to $106 million in 2019-2020.

The latter figure, though, is higher than the Christie administrations initial projected deficit for 2016-2017, and indicates that Mr Wilsons timeline for its elimination is more accurate.

Its unfortunate for the current administration that the previous administration was so irresponsible, as it puts a bad light on - and causes distrust - in whichever administration follows, Mr Myers told Tribune Business.

It doesnt help that we have had these wild swings in what the Government is projecting.

Read the rest here:

$500m deficit 'threat to fiscal credibility' | The Tribune - Bahamas Tribune

We should see the Trump budget as a cultural as well as fiscal initiative.

It attempts to restore fiscal sanity while restoring individual freedom and personal responsibility to our culture. (Starr Parker, Trump Budget fixes our Broken Culture)

I think the most disturbing thing the present partisan discussion of the Federal budget is that its predicated on a patently obvious lie. As Starr Parker observes in the article quoted above, at present we are not dealing with Federal budget cuts. At best, were dealing with cuts in the rate at which overall Federal spending increases. So-called budget cutters (including Donald Trump) pretend they achieve that goal by proposing cuts here and there, affecting the activities of this or that agency or Department. But these cuts are not expected, or ever intended to reduce Federal spending overall.

Implicitly, this understanding of the budget process leaves our nation wallowing toward bankruptcy, with the implied day of reckoning seemingly postponed by expedients and jerry-rigged projections of future results. This is far from anything like what is needed actually to reduce the governments spending and indebtedness. For that result, we would have to look to the example of past generations, for instance, in the aftermath of Americas war for independence. Put simply, they drew up a plan to discipline the governments spending, curtail any increase in its debt, and increase inflows of revenue. Then, in each budget cycle, they set aside a fixed portion of the surplus this discipline produced, and used it exclusively to reduce the governments indebtedness.

Of course, such plans were implemented before the American people ran afoul of the delusions of the so-called welfare state. Those were times when people didnt just talk about individual freedom and personal responsibility, they, perforce, accepted the fact that living according to those concepts required self-disciplinei.e., the willingness to keep their behavior within boundaries of right they could not whimsically disregard. This is reflected in the thinking expressed in Americas Declaration of Independence. It speaks of unalienable rights, with which all humanity is endowed by our Creator. This thought refers to necessary activities, inseparable from our existence as human beings, which we are bound to undertake in order to preserve our humanity.

Liberty, as it is listed among these God-endowed rights, retains the sense of freedom. But by listing it among the rights with which God provisions humanity, the Declaration makes liberty a distinct species of freedom. It involves doing what right requires, according to Gods prescription of right. That prescription distinguishes human beings from others of Gods creation. As part of that distinction, God endows us with a capacity for deliberate choice, along with the inclination (good conscience) to use it rightly.

The Declarations logic, in this respect, implies that, unless we rightly limit our use of freedom we cannot perpetuate our exercise of rights. For there can be no exercise of rights when the premise of right (which is the standard of God that makes it right) is no longer observed. In concrete terms, for example, do we not accept that it is right to preserve and perpetuate humanity? But to do so requires that we undertake the different activities required to do so. But, whereas it appears to us that other creatures have no choice but to respond to the imperatives of self-preservation, we humans have a choice. We may accept or reject our natural programming, going so far even as to deny and reject the limitations that serve humanity, in order to pursue, instead, activities that satisfy our own passions and self-conceits.

In our day, this goes so far as to reject what even our empirical science verifies as the natural distinction between male and female. Humanity conceives and perpetuates itself in terms of this distinction. Nonetheless, we now being forced to pretend that individuals can change from man to woman, from woman to man, as easily as alchemists once thought to change lead into gold. But if we may thus whimsically change our nature, why not change from man to wolf, from woman to eagle, or any other flight of fantasy? It sounds harmless enough until we contemplate what may be the consequences of these self-conceits. For if, by our own conceit, we change from human to wolf, when we rip out someones throat, as wolves are inclined to do, should we be held accountable as a beast or as a human being? The human must be tried for the crime. The beast we may shoot on sight.

But what of those who look like the self-conceived wolf, but choose to act as humanity requires? Will the confusion we encourage, by obscuring the difference between them, excuse those who see someone who looks like the self-conceited wolf, and shoots on sight; only to find the appearance was deceiving, with no mad, wolfish mind attached to it?

People who are pushing for this species of individual freedom pretend that they are serving humanity. But they may. In truth, be returning us to the days when human beings, mistaken for beasts on account of how they looked or publicly behaved, could be treated like beastskilled and/or enslaved according to the powerful whims and self-conceits of those powerful enough to do so.

Think this through and we begin to see the common sense involved in insisting that, for public purposes, people must be brought to behave according to a common standard of what humanity entails. Whatever people may fancy themselves to be in private, shouldnt they be required to conform, in their public lives, to a general standard of humanity whenever they interact with others? If not, isnt it society itself that, in the end, must pay the consequences?

Time and again Ive read articles in which people lament the costly results of the breakdown of family life. Our present budgets are burdened by those results, especially in respect of poverty, ill health and criminal behavior. Thanks to the delusions of the so-called welfare state. we have become inured to budget discussions that take it for granted that these costs must be met by public expenditures This, despite the fact that it means bankrupting our constitutional self-government. This makes no sense except to those who will benefit from its collapse, and are counting on positions of power in the oppressive regime that replaces it.

There is no way to avoid this tragic prospect but to end the delusion that makes it inevitable. Public monies should be spent for the good of the community as a whole. As for individuals, instead of encouraging their insane fantasies of unfettered existential freedom, we must confront them with the truthIndividual rights are rooted in responsibilities, responsibilities that are not personal to ourselves, but applicable generally to all humanity; responsibilities not toward our own conscience but toward the demands of human conscience as informed by our Creator, God. We will never end the nations spiral toward bankruptcy until we acknowledge that its true cause is our abandonment of the true meaning of rights, including liberty.

Excerpt from:

The Delusion That's Bankrupting America - The Daily Caller