The failure of the Congressional Super Committee last month initiated a new phase in the defense spending debate.
Barring intervention from the Congress and President, the Committee’s failure results in an average reduction of $55 billion per year over nine years, beginning in January 2013, from defense spending that now exceeds $700 billion annually. Both sides of the debate have begun employing wizardry to use a variety of numbers to make their respective arguments on the right level of spending. Keep reading →
Uncertainty continues for anyone involved with the federal budget. Just a few weeks ago, the hope was the Congressional Super Committee would set forth a clear path for deficit reduction. The framework would guide Congress to get the federal government back into a normal cycle of passing annual budgets by the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1.
Rather than toasting to the end of the federal financial wars as Congress heads into the Thanksgiving break, everyone might as well just relax and enjoy some time off from considering the implications of budget cuts as the next critical deadline in the ongoing saga now lies a year away.
When someone says they shop at Costco, you can likely assume they are either: 1) a member of the public seeking lower cost options to everyday expenses 2) a member of the retail community seeking to apply margins to low cost products. Either way, shopping at Costco or any other wholesale warehouse seems to have become a means of survival for those weathering the last few years of the infamous economic “downturn” and a symbol of consumer adaptation.
The Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. Super Committee) is struggling to reach agreement on a minimum of $1.2 trillion of deficit reductions over ten years.
The congressional Super Committee has received several proposals to reduce the federal deficit with more pay freezes and less benefits for federal employees and a smaller federal workforce overall.
Alan Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton University, was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton.
Rather than diving into salary freezes, furloughs or other federal workforce measures for cutting government costs, the congressional “super committee” created by the 
This August was a little different than most in Washington and not just because of earthquakes and hurricanes. The anxiety surrounding the federal sector is palpable after a year marked by spending debates that nearly shutdown the government in April and took the country to the brink of default in early August.