Where Are My Keys?

You know what is a good measure of how things are going in your Country?

I'd probably start with how many of your households are on food stamps.  Stands to reason, doesn't it?  If you have a lot of folks on food stamps, things probably aren't going very well.  So how many in the good old US of A are being fed by the White House these days?

More than 23,000,000 households you say?  And that's a record, you say?  And it increased by almost 900,000 since the same year?

Nice economy, Mr. Obama.

City Workers finally having to contribute like the rest of Us..

Cities around the Country are waking up to financial reality, and *gasp* asking new hires to pay their portion of retirement expenses.  You know, like we do:

Pension costs have caused several recent high-profile municipal bankruptcies recently, so other cities are trying to avoid suffering similar disasters by asking employees to begin paying part of their pension costs.

In Sacramento, Calif., City Manager John Shirey said today he will hire 58 new police officers only if current officers agree to pay the employee share of their pension payments. The police union is one of few groups of employees in the city who don’t pay any of their own pension costs,  according to the Sacramento Bee.

Most public pension plans are set up with a set contribution for employers and employees, but employee unions often negotiate for employers to pay both the employer share and some or all of the employee share, which makes pension payments a large chunk of many cities’ budgets. Bankrupt Stockton, Calif., for instance, owes the California Public Employees Retirement System $900 million.

It's not just Sacramento seeing the light:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduced a bill today that would require city employees to pay part of their share to address $681 million in unfunded pension liabilities, according to the Baltimore Sun. The bill would require employees to put 5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund by 2018. Rawlings-Blake’s office estimates it would save $53 million over nine years, according to the Sun. “The costs of outdated benefits have crippled our ability to pay workers what they truly deserve in their paychecks,” the mayor said in a statement. “We must make tough choices to rebalance the way we compensate our hard-working employees by reforming unsustainable benefits and instead invest in better wages up-front.”

Look for more and more this to happen in cities near you.

Remember, something that can't go on forever, won't.

When your Budget Director doesn't know about your budget, what does it say about your judgement in filling that position?

 

Compare the various budgets..

All in one easy chart, you can check out the various budget offerings.  The chart is interactive, so follow the link to the site to play with different scenarios.

The Democrats have no interest in trying to solve our fiscal issues.

Here's how the "P" in those pesky "PIIGS" I talk about is thinking about paying workers..

Not in cash, like every other civilized Country out there.  Nope, Portugal is thinking about paying workers in T-Bills. 

As reported late on Friday, just as the market closed, the Portuguese constitutional court decided that several provisions of the country's 2013 budget were not constitutional. According to the high court, cuts in wages and pensions of public employees were unfair (there's that word again) because they targeted only the public sector. The court rejected plans to cut one of the 14 paychecks that public workers usually get each year and to slash 6.4% from pensions for retirees.  This coincided with the government warning that the court's decision would put into question the country's ability to fulfill its €78 billion international bailout program, which in turn would send bondholders of Portuguese sovereign debt scrambling for the exits as suddenly the country mayfind itself in the ECB's "dunce" corner, with Draghi preparing to pull a "Berlusconi" on a government which can't even whip its judicial branch in line. However, of more immediate concern is how will the government now plug a hole of up to €1.3 billion in its €5.3 billion 2013 budget. A solution has, luckily, presented itself: bypass the unconstitutional provisions by paying government workers not in cash, but in government bills!

This will certainly end well.

A metaphor for his Presidency..

 

Better late than never..

Obama is only 65 days late submitting this year's budget.  If there is anything I have learned from his blatant disregard of this important duty (he's been late 4 of 5 times), is that when a President is late with his budget, Democrats don't care.

President Obama will release his budget for fiscal year 2014 on April 10, the White House announced Thursday, more than two months after he was legally required to submit one.

This is the fourth time in five years Obama has missed the statutory deadline to submit a budget, which is more times than any president dating back to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921.

Further, it’s the third year in a row Obama has failed to submit a budget on time; he is the only president to ever miss the legal deadline in consecutive years. This year’s budget will officially be 65 days late, which is still shy of the all-time record for longest delay. Obama’s first budget in 2009 was submitted 98 days after the legal deadline.

I'm curious to learn if that mentality continues the next time a Republican is in office, and the budget is late.  Why do I have the feeling the answer is no?

Two charts that should scare you..

The Higher Education Bubble gets closer and closer to its inevitable burst.  Consider this:

Student loans continue to trend up as a component of overall debt, and those same loans rocket up (as all other forms of debt drop) as they increase in frequency as being delinquent.

The chart on the right shouldn't be too much of a surprise, as more and more college-aged kids are unemployed, have been forced to drop out, or are under-employed.  No big shocker that those student loans are getting paid last, if at all.  The chart on the left is more troublesome in my eyes, as student loan debt is not forgiven in bankruptcy proceedings (not yet, anyway).  Folks have saved more money, paid down debt, refinanced/renegotiated terms, and have otherwise gotten on the right track when it comes to non-student loan debt.

At some point, the other shoe is going to drop.  Remember, something that can't go on forever, won't.

The only "surprise" will be when the bubble actually bursts, and the MSM will wring their hands and wonder how this happened.

Way to go, Democrats!

After nearly four years of ignoring your duty to pass a budget, you finally get one passed (even though a few of your own jumped ship and voted "no").

Maybe now both Parties can work to get something passed, and we can stop funding the Government with continuing resolutions, and do it the way it is supposed to be done.

I'm not holding out a lot of hope, as the Democrats really don't want to do an actual budget, they just want to take a Republican talking point off the table.  When NPR calls your budget "symbolic", it should be a clue:

Joining all Republicans voting no were four Democrats who face re-election next year in potentially difficult races: Sens. Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., did not vote.

The vote came after lawmakers labored through the night on scores of symbolic amendments, ranging from voicing support for letting states collect taxes on Internet sales to expressing opposition to requiring photo ID's for voters.

The Senate's budget would shrink annual federal shortfalls over the next decade to nearly $400 billion, raise unspecified taxes by $975 billion and cull modest savings from domestic programs.

In contrast, a rival budget approved by the GOP-run House balances the budget within 10 years without boosting taxes.

I'll give Harry & Friends credit for actually bringing something to the floor.  We haven't seen that in a long time, and it's a start in the right direction.  The next step is for both Parties to focus on the challenges at hand, and get something together that brings down the deficit, and reins in our out of control spending.

Once again, the Democrat Senate shoots down another House-passed budget..

One of these years, Democrats will come up with something, right?

I'm old enough to remember one Party refusing to bring anything to the table being referred to as the "Party of No". 

Ahh, nostalgia.