Federal Budget, Spending Cuts | featured news

Congressional Democrats and Republicans appeared far apart Sunday on a deal to avert $85 billion in federal spending reductions next month, with a top House Republican saying the cuts appear “inevitable.” The automatic cuts, known as sequester, kick in March 1 because the parties have failed to agree on a less-drastic plan to cut the federal budget and deficit.

The Pentagon has begun laying off most of its 46,000 temporary and term employees and cutting maintenance on ships and aircraft in an effort to slow spending due to fears of new defense budget cuts, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Friday.

In a sharp turnaround, House Republican leaders Monday dropped a key demand that the cost of extending the payroll tax cut be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Americans blame the failure of the debt "super committee" on everyone involved, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday, despite the best efforts of Democrats and Republicans to point fingers at each other.

It's just about over for a special deficit-reduction supercommittee, which appears set to admit failure today in its quest to sop up at least $1.2 trillion in government red ink over the coming decade. The bipartisan 12-member panel is sputtering to a close after two months of talks in which key members and top congressional leaders never got close to bridging a fundamental divide over how much to raise taxes. The budget deficit forced the government to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spent last year.

This is what a smaller government will look like: There will be less money for local cops, but more money for FBI agents. Less to repair public-housing complexes. More to feed hungry children. There will be less to fix polluted rivers. But more to fix crowded prisons.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses urged the deficit-reduction supercommittee Wednesday to “go big” as it nears a deadline to avoid mandatory across-the-board cuts, telling the panel it has significant congressional support for a deal that would cut the deficit by about $4 trillion. But Democrats and Republicans on the supercommittee later held separate meetings amid mounting pessimism that the 12-member panel would be able to reach an agreement.

US President Barack Obama will ask government agencies on Wednesday to find cost savings by cutting back in areas ranging from travel and vehicles to purchases of promotional coffee mugs and gadgets.

It's an outrageous tale: The federal government spends one out of every $10 in transportation aid on wasteful projects such as refurbishing a giant roadside coffee pot and constructing turtle tunnels.

A proposal to phase out the $1 bill and replace it with a $1 coin could be gaining currency as the "supercommittee" looks to find ways to save the government money... The move to a coin would cost money in the short term, but eventually save money because paper currency lasts about 42 months — while coins theoretically last forever. Moving to a coin could save $5.6 billion over 30 years, according to the Government Accountability Office.