"Austerity." The word means "self-denial" but politicians rarely "deny" themselves anything.

Despite the media wailing about "austerity," there have been few real cuts. Few in Congress actually want to cut spending. Senator Rand Paul explains why he is one of the few who does.

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Here's the bad news: Last year, government spent hundreds of billions of dollars more than it did at the end of the big-spending Bush administration.

But good news: spending has basically flattened.

It actually fell a little, according to the CBO: From 2011 to 2012 the budget shrank $61 billion... continue reading »

"The Chosen Ones" are people selected by government to get perks... special favors, tax breaks, cronyism... what I call crapitalism... continue reading »

Those terrifying sequester cuts sure haven't crippled America. This week in my syndicated column, I point out that if you look at all government spending, the sequester wasn't even a cut.

That may surprise you, since President Obama likened the sequester to taking a "meat cleaver" to government, causing FBI agents to be furloughed, prosecutors to let criminals escape and medical research to grind to a halt!... continue reading »

Yesterday, I pointed out that even with the supposedly "devastating" sequester cuts, government spending still grows.

But the sequester does bring some actual cuts. The parts of the budget labeled "discretionary" (about a third of it) would be cut about 7%.

But that doesn't mean there's a need for "devastating" cutbacks or even cuts in basic services like air traffic control. As Senator Rand Paul points out on my show tonight at 9PM ET:... continue reading »

President Obama says the sequester is like taking "a meat cleaver to the budget."

I wish that were true. This week, I grab a meat cleaver and point out what ought to be cut.

Despite the big spenders' hysteria about "long TSA lines, no meat inspection, abandoned children!", the sequester doesn't even cut the budget! It just slows it's growth... continue reading »

President Obama warns that if Congress allows automatic budget cuts known as the "sequester" to happen:

"Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off... tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care... Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, causing delays!"

The media is hysterical, too.

"Watch out! Like the asteroid headed to earth, they're coming -- $86 billion in automatic budget cuts," CNN anchor Carol Costello warned... continue reading »

Last night, in his State of the Union speech, President Obama claimed: "both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion - mostly through spending cuts".

What? That's ridiculous. The "reductions" were mere promises to increase future spending less.

Here's a graph of inflation-adjusted federal spending. Can you spot any president's spending cuts?... continue reading »

President Obama told John Boehner that America does not have a spending problem. But we do!

I was astonished to learn that in 2006, when George W. Bush was President, then-Senator Obama was actually upset about our national debt. From the Congressional Record:

I rise today to talk about America's debt problem... Our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘trillion' with a ‘T'...It took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This administration did more than that in just 5 years... continue reading »

People have short memories when it comes to big government. We forget the lessons of central planning failure in the USSR. So I'm grateful to states like California and Illinois! Because they spend and regulate so much--they remind us how we DON'T want to live.

In my syndicated column this week, I look at population shifts:

In the last decade, 2 million people left California... continue reading »