NEWSMAX
Monthly Federal Deficit Doubles, Nears $1 Trillion
by Newsmax Wires
June 12, 2012
The U.S. government budget deficit dramatically widened in May, as spending jumped 31.3 percent from the same month a year ago.
The deficit expanded to $124.6 billion from a $57.6 billion shortfall in May 2011, according to Treasury Department data released today in Washington.
Overall, the federal budget deficit is approaching $1 trillion for a fourth straight year even though the government is collecting more tax revenue than last year.
The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the deficit grew by $124.6 billion in May. That put the deficit through the first eight months of the budget year at $844.5 billion/
The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the deficit for the entire 2012 budget year, which ends Sept. 30, will total $1.17 trillion. That’s only a slight improvement from the $1.3 trillion deficit recorded in fiscal 2011. And it is certain to keep the federal budget near the center of the presidential campaign.
So far this year, government receipts are running 5.3 percent higher than a year ago. A better job market and modest economic growth have led to higher tax revenue.
Receipts in May totaled $180.7 billion, the second-largest tax take for the month of May, The Associated Press reported.
Read more on Newsmax.com: Monthly Federal Deficit Doubles, Nears $1 Trillion
TOWNHALL
Republican Surrenderists on Obamacare
by Michelle Malkin
June 13, 2012
During the summer of 2009, conservative activists turned up the heat on Democratic politicians to protest the innovation-destroying, liberty-usurping Obamacare mandate. In the summer of 2012, it's squishy Republican politicians who deserve the grassroots flames.
In case you hadn't heard, even if the Supreme Court overturns the progressives' federal health care juggernaut, prominent GOP leaders vow to preserve its most "popular" provisions. These big-government Republicans show appalling indifference to the dire market disruptions and culture of dependency that Obamacare schemes have wrought.
GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, vice chair of the Senate GOP Conference, told a St. Louis radio station two weeks ago that he supports keeping at least three Obamacare regulatory pillars: federally imposed coverage of "children" up to age 26 on their parents' health insurance policies (the infamous, unfunded "slacker mandate"), federally mandated coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions ("guaranteed issue," which leads to an adverse-selection death spiral) and closure of the coverage gap in the massive Bush-backed Medicare drug entitlement (the "donut hole fix" that will obliterate the program's cost-controls).
Some Republicans are even trying to out-Obama Obamacare. GOP Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio is pushing a proposal to increase the mandatory coverage age for dependents to age 31. And once a fire-breathing dragon for repeal, GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee hem-hawed when asked by the liberal Talking Points Memo website whether Republicans would be introducing specific bills to preserve the guaranteed issue and slacker mandate provisions.
Where does presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney stand? Despite repeated assurances that he will abandon Obamacare in its entirety, Romney is surrounded by GOP socialized medicine helpmates. In January, Romney adviser Norm Coleman said, "(We're) not going to repeal the act in its entirety ... you can't whole cloth throw it out."
Earlier this month, Romney named former Utah GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt his transition leader. Leavitt supports and has profited handsomely from Obamacare's health care exchange mandate. Then there's the Romneycare mandate in Massachusetts, conceived by Obamacare architect and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, which includes the very same slacker mandate provision enshrined in the Democrats' law.
Who needs enemies when you've got Republican Surrenderists for Obamacare waiting in the wings?
Read more: http://bit.ly/KTAQi8
Scarborough: It Felt Good to Vote for Ron Paul
by Stephanie Wang
June 12, 2012
For Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” voting for Texas Rep. Ron Paul in the Republican presidential primary was an easy choice.
Far easier, writes Scarborough in an op-ed for Politico, than making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for example.
Scarborough wrote that he feels good about his vote. Sure, he isn’t in agreement with Paul about many things, but he appreciates Paul’s consistency.
The one-time Republican congressman offered some unkind words for presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, describing him as a “big government Republican who will say anything to get elected.” Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, he wrote, was a “pro-life statist who helped George W. Bush double the national debt.”
Scarborough wrote that he voted for Paul in protest of America’s “broken” political system. Despite his first “protest vote,” Scarborough remains optimistic that “[w]e’ll get there one day — and then we can focus on progress, not protest.”
In the op-ed, Scarborough did not say which candidate would have his vote in the general election, but did write that he “would never vote for a GOP candidate who was the godfather of Obamacare,” presumably referring to Romney.
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