Can Washington (and America) come together to avoid the fiscal cliff?
OutFront tonight to discuss how Washington can avoid sending America over the year-end "fiscal cliff" are Steve Rattner of the Steering Committee for the Fix the Debt Campaign and former "car czar" for President Obama, and Stephen Moore, an economist and writer for the Wall Street Journal. FULL POST
As winners celebrate and losers figure out what went wrong, the fiscal cliff looms large
OutFront tonight - nothing has changed.
After six-billion dollars spent on the election, hundreds of thousands of miles traveled by the candidates and all who come with them, and millions of pizzas consumed by hardworking campaign volunteers - we are right back where we started: on the edge of a fiscal cliff. FULL POST
What will it take to slow down the exploding deficit?
Today the treasury reported the government added another $60 billion to the deficit in June. The grand total on money we've borrowed so far this year? 904 billion dollars. But the real headline, the one that worries us the most, is that that number confirms we are on track to hit a $1 trillion deficit for the fourth year in a row.
Meanwhile, Congress seems more content to symbolically vote down the health care law for the 33rd time instead of working together to find a way to avoid America's fiscal cliff at the end of this year.
What's it going to take for everyone to wake up? Dan Gross, Yahoo! Finance editor and former Senior Editor at Newsweek, and economist Peter Morici come OutFront to try and figure it out.
Deficit will reach $1 trillion this year; Congress still wasting time with blame game
Outfront tonight: A damsel in distress.
America is the woman in Hazards of Helen, tied to the train track, helpless. Her only hope is that's she's rescued before it's too late.
Today the treasury reported the government added another $60 billion to the deficit in June. The grand total on money we've borrowed so far this year: 904 billion dollars. But the real eye-catching headline? That number confirms we are on track to hit a $1 trillion deficit for the fourth year in a row.
Just to give you a sense of how much money we're burning through that we don't have: the 1.2 trillion dollars in automatic cuts coming at the end of the year (you know, the ones that everyone – including us – is saying will kill us) are spread out over 10 years! We're burning through that amount every single year on borrowed money.
And don't let the partisan rhetoric fool you – it's been going on for years, under presidents from both sides of the aisle. Over that time, there's been plenty of lip service about the deficit problem. Everyone is always blaming someone else.
A lot of talk, but no action... at least on our spending problem.
Congress is working hard, symbolically voting down the health care law for the 33rd time and voting to use the Capitol visitor's center for an event to celebrate the one-time king of the Hawaiian Islands.
All the while, the clock is ticking on the fiscal cliff. Just yesterday, the Federal Reserve lowered its projected GDP growth, blaming the uncertainty that's coming out of Washington.
Congress, what's it going to take for you to wake up?
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