ABOUT:
Defense policy analysis, commentary and discussion.Paul M. Krawzak covers the budget as a staff writer at Congressional Quarterly. In the past few years, he has reported on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Budget Control Act and the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee deliberations.
Prior to joining CQ, he wrote about Congress, the Pentagon and business for the Copley News Service Washington Bureau and San Diego Union-Tribune. Previously, he covered Illinois politics at Copley's Chicago Bureau, and before that, worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Illinois and Michigan.
A Detroit native, Paul earned a B.A. in English and economics from Hillsdale College.
Although he is relatively new to the Senate and to politics, Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson is making waves on budget issues. Over recent months, the tea-party-backed conservative has emerged as the numbers point man for a group of GOP senators who are holding private deficit reduction talks with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other administration officials.
A tea party favorite whose election to the Senate in 2010 marked his entry into electoral politics, Ron Johnson has displayed a genial demeanor that’s won friends on Capitol Hill even as he’s remained committed to the tough deficit-cutting talk that helped bring him to Washington.
Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray wants Republicans to engage in budget negotiations to replace the sequester before the August recess, saying bipartisan talks provide the only way for the parties to agree on higher defense spending levels.
When Congress created Medicare in 1965 to handle the health care needs of the older population, less than 10 percent of Americans were old enough to collect Social Security and the new medical benefit.
The aging of the American population is a decidedly different story from region to region.
The White House said Tuesday that Jeffrey D. Zients, reportedly a candidate to become the new U.S. trade representative, will remain as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget until the Senate confirms a new director.
House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan unveiled a fiscal 2014 budget plan Tuesday with an aggressive aim to erase the deficit in 10 years by cutting projected spending by some $4.6 trillion and calling for politically contentious changes in federal laws, including eliminating the 2010 health care law and overhauling the tax code.
House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan says he won’t have to make dramatic changes to the plan Republicans passed out of the House last year to bring the federal budget into balance in 10 years, in part because of improved economic circumstances and the tax increases that Congress approved this year.
Some Republican lawmakers, raising new alarms over the effects of automatic spending cuts on defense, are opening the door to new revenue with only days to go until the sequester hits, in contrast with widespread opposition to additional taxes among most in the GOP.
Budget expert Maya MacGuineas concedes that baselines and deficit and debt projections can be boring and arcane.
Last year, when lawmakers wanted to plot the possible future course of government spending and taxation, they could look at the Congressional Budget Office’s regular baseline or its alternative fiscal scenario.
The Congressional Budget Office, setting new terms for the coming budget debate in Washington, projects that the fiscal 2013 budget deficit will shrink to $845 billion under current law to its lowest level as a share of the economy since 2008.
Budget day came without a fiscal 2014 budget proposal on Monday, but congressional Republicans didn’t let the occasion go by without a sharp attack against the White House on its priorities and its inability to complete a federal spending plan by the required deadline.
The deadline has not yet been missed, but Republicans are already jabbing at the White House in anticipation that President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal is likely to be several weeks late.
The Obama administration’s fiscal 2014 budget is widely expected to arrive late on Capitol Hill, possibly not until sometime in March, primarily as a result of uncertainty created by fiscal cliff negotiations.
Congressional negotiators raced Saturday to write a compromise fiscal package that would limit the effect of tax increases due to take effect Jan. 1 while pushing many important decisions about the federal budget into the new year.
The return of the House on Sunday puts pressure on the Senate to act on legislation to avert rising tax rates and automatic spending cuts, while also keeping alive the chances that Congress and the president can pass at least a limited fix to the fiscal cliff.
President Barack Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner met at the White House on Sunday to discuss the fiscal cliff issues, resuming their direct negotiations on the looming tax and spending measures after several days of apparent stalemate.
The question of how to replace the sequester — the $109 billion in automatic, across-the-board spending reductions set to start cutting into the budget at the start of the year — is emerging as a sharp point of conflict standing in the way of a fiscal cliff deal.
A growing number of Republican lawmakers are reluctantly concluding they will have to abandon their bedrock opposition to increased tax rates to get an agreement that avoids the fiscal cliff.
While no agreement on a deficit reduction compromise is yet in sight, House Republican leaders are working on a strategy to muster GOP votes for what would likely be a politically painful package for the conservative-dominated majority.
When the Center for American Progress recently pointed to some potential savings from entitlement programs, the political implications were more important than the numbers.
If there is anyone who can bridge the gap between the two parties on overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, it may be economist Alice M. Rivlin.
Senate Democrats are keeping their proposals for curbing the cost of social programs under wraps in order to avoid a split in their ranks as talks on the fiscal cliff begin Friday.
House conservatives say they won’t necessarily insist on offsetting any additional disaster aid following the devastation caused by Sandy, in contrast to their push last year to trade disaster relief for new spending cuts.
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