Latest news with #fiscalResponsibility
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk, Who Called Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' A 'Disgusting Abomination,' Responds To Coinbase CEO's Warning That Bitcoin Could Replace Dollar If Congress Isn't Held Accountable
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk signaled agreement with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's warning Wednesday that government overspending could lead to Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) replacing the dollar as the reserve currency. What happened: Armstrong was responding to a post by World of Statistics that highlighted the alarming rise of U.S. federal debt in the last few years. The debt has ballooned to $36.9 trillion in 2025. "If the electorate doesn't hold Congress accountable to reducing the deficit and start paying down the debt, Bitcoin is going to take over as reserve currency," Armstrong said. Trending: — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different cryptocurrency mogul said that while he loves Bitcoin, he also desired a 'strong America' that is fiscally responsible. Musk responded to Armstrong's arguments with a U.S. flag emoji, indicating an It Matters: Musk has lashed out at the latest congressional spending bill, describing it as a 'disgusting abomination.' The White House has dismissed the criticism, stating that the bill does not contribute to the deficit. The House passed the $3.8 trillion tax-and-spending package, which President Donald Trump calls the "big, beautiful bill." While it promises an immediate economic boost through wide tax cuts and higher defense spending, market analysts warn of serious long-term fiscal ramifications. Entrepreneur and investor Anthony Pompliano stated last month that concerns about debt and inflation could fuel Bitcoin's growth. Read Next: New to crypto? Get up to $400 in rewards for successfully completing short educational courses and making your first qualifying trade on Coinbase. A must-have for all crypto enthusiasts: Sign up for the Gemini Credit Card today and earn rewards on Bitcoin Ether, or 60+ other tokens, with every purchase. Photo Courtesy: Shutterstock/Joshua Sukoff This article Elon Musk, Who Called Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' A 'Disgusting Abomination,' Responds To Coinbase CEO's Warning That Bitcoin Could Replace Dollar If Congress Isn't Held Accountable originally appeared on
The Guardian
a day ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump bill set to add trillions to US debt pile – can America stop it climbing?
In this febrile political era, few issues command stronger bipartisan support than the need for fiscal responsibility. Barack Obama and Donald Trump committed to curtail the US national debt on their respective roads to the White House. And yet, no matter the party, Americans have been able to count on one thing above most: the national debt will keep climbing. And here we are again. With Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' threatening to add once more to the US's huge debts, several Republican senators are threatening to block his current spending plans, with Rand Paul of Kentucky among those highly critical. Departing the White House, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, branded the bill a 'disgusting abomination'. But this administration is not alone. For decades, economists have expressed concern about US debt. Politicians have repeatedly pledged to tackle it. All the while, the pile continued to swell. Back in 2008, when Obama declared on the campaign trail it was high time Washington started 'taking responsibility for every dime that it spends', it stood at about $14.46tn. Back in 2015, when Trump promised on the trail to 'bring it down big league and quickly,' it stood at about $24.07tn. Last year, it rose to $35.46tn. On Wall Street, concern has been mounting to the brink of panic. Calling on Trump to reduce the deficit – the gap between what the US federal government spends and the money it raises, mainly via taxes – the billionaire investor Ray Dalio warned in March of a crisis within three years. 'I can't tell you exactly when it'll come,' he told Bloomberg. 'It's like the heart attack.' Trump appears to have paid little attention. While he dispatched the billionaire industrialist Musk to wield the axe across the federal government in the name of efficiency, Trump also pushed for sweeping tax cuts that impartial analysts estimate will add trillions of dollars to the debt pile. The anxiety stepped up a gear last month, when the ratings agency Moody's stripped the US of its last major top-tier credit rating, and cited the size of the debt pile now – and how large it expects it will grow. 'Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,' said Moody's, predicting that 'current fiscal proposals under consideration' would not lessen spending or reduce deficits. 'Over the next decade, we expect larger deficits as entitlement spending rises while government revenue remains broadly flat.' There is technically a cap – known as the debt ceiling, or limit – on what the federal government can borrow. The first such broad limit, introduced in 1939, was set at a mere $45bn. Time and again, the US treasury department has been forced to ask Congress for the ceiling to be lifted, or suspended. This process has repeatedly sparked legislative battles on Capitol Hill in recent years, drawing in unrelated issues as the US drifted towards default on its debts, and prompting questions over the reliability of US debt as an investment – and calls for the limit to be scrapped altogether. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Explaining its downgrade last month, Moody's noted that, as US deficits and debt have swollen, interest rates have risen, and interest payments on US government debt have increased markedly. The ratings agency expects the federal debt burden, equivalent to 98% of US gross domestic product (GDP) last year, to rise to 134% of GDP by 2035. 'Talk is cheap. People can say a lot of things,' said Owen Zidar, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. 'It's easier to see what the policies have actually been.' When faced with a choice between prioritizing deficit reduction or an expensive policy, such as Obama's widening of health insurance coverage, 'it's not unreasonable to prioritize health insurance coverage', Zidar suggested. 'The key thing is to avoid big mistakes that are hard to reverse.' The Clinton administration made some 'hard choices' about where, and where not, to spend, he said, adding that tax cuts and the Iraq war under the Bush administration in early noughties were 'a big part of why we have debt and deficit problems today'. Presidents have historically managed to reassure investors, up to a point, that they shared their concern. 'If we stay on the current path', Obama said during a debt ceiling battle in 2011, 'our growing debt could cost us jobs and do serious damage to the economy.' But the volatility of Trump, who called himself the 'king of debt' and once even mooted only paying back half during his first run for the presidency, has added a layer of doubt. 'The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe,' he wrote on Truth Social, his social network, this week. 'An erratic administration that generates a lot of uncertainty and calls into question things that have been true for most of the western world, that is a frightening prospect when the fiscal fundamentals aren't as good as they have always been,' said Zidar.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Illinois Legislature passes record-high $55.1 billion budget
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WTVO) — Illinois legislators passed a record-high $55.1 billion state budget early Sunday. 'The passage of the FY26 balanced budget is a testament to Illinois' fiscal responsibility,' said Governor JB Pritzker. 'Even in the face of Trump and Congressional Republicans stalling the national economy, our state budget delivers for working families without raising their taxes while protecting the progress we are making for our long-term fiscal health. I'm grateful to Speaker Welch, President Harmon, the budget teams, and all the legislators and stakeholders who collaborated to shape and pass this legislation. I look forward to signing my seventh balanced budget in a row and continuing to build a stronger Illinois.' Democrats, such as Sen. Laura Ellman (D-Naperville), said, 'This budget allocates investments in priority areas – putting Illinois on the right path to fiscal responsibility and meeting fiscal obligations. We are continuing our commitment to evidence-based funding and education, significantly support Medicaid access, preserving employee pensions and wages, as well as furthering the economic health of our state through investments in our workforce programs and state infrastructure.' Critics, including the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, say the budget includes more than $350 million in new taxes, including corporate income tax increases, gaming taxes, short-term rental taxes, nicotine taxes, telecommunication taxes, and increased fees. 'Starting January 1, 2026, customers would pay a delivery tax on most deliveries to their homes — $1.50 at a time,' Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Cherry Valley) said. 'It's a regressive tax that would hit working families, seniors, people who simply can't afford a car and those on fixed incomes the hardest. For families just trying to make ends meet, it would be yet another burden they didn't ask for.' The budget contains funding for the , redevelopment of the Singer Mental Health Center, allow Stellantis flexibility to reopen the Belvidere Assembly Plant, and includes increased funding for local K-12 schools, according to Sen. Steve Stadelman (D-Rockford). The budget allows $500 million in funding for site readiness initiatives, including the Surplus to Success program, which will be used to make state-owned sites, such as the abandoned , 'shovel ready' for new development. The plan secures $275 million from the Capital Investments program for the Rockford to Chicago , which is expected to be operational by 2027. The announced plan was to run two trains, seven days a week. The trip to Chicago is expected to take 95 minutes. The location of the station will be on South Main Street, just south of downtown, on the Union Pacific line. IDOT said the line will connect Rockford to Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Carbondale, and twenty other communities in between. Additionally, the budget includes enhancements to the Advanced Innovative Manufacturing for Illinois Tax Credit and the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles (REV) programs to include additional supply chain industries for electric vehicles. The budget doubles the Illinois Child Tax Credit to $600 per child for eligible families with children under the age of 12. Scholarships and grant funding through MAP grants will increase by $10 million to $771.6 million annually. Operating funding for pubic universities and community colleges will increase $44 million, and the state will maintain $748 million in annual spending for Smart Start Early Childhood Block Grants, which has created 11,000 new preschool seats in the last 2 years. A new Prescription Drug Affordability Fund will use $25 million for pharmacy benefits, while the Medical Debt Relief Program will use $15 million to pay down medical debt for Illinois residents. The budget allows $24 million for reproductive health initiatives, including abortion, which includes $10 million for a public hotline. Additionally, the budget expands abortion rights by shielding Illinois abortion providers from punishment for providing services to college students. The budget also plans to streamline college admissions by proactively offering admission to Illinois public universities based on academic performance. The state will spend an additional $46 million on gun violence reduction programs. 'We've delivered another balanced budget that addresses Illinois' challenges head on, while maintaining fiscal responsibility. I'm proud to support a budget that does not raise income or sales taxes, supports working men and women and boosts economic development in the Rockford-Belvidere area,' said Stadelman. An analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute showed the budget will implement a $43 million property tax hike by cutting the Property Tax Relief Grant; divert $171 million in gas tax revenue from the Road Fund to pay state employee healh care, and create $394 million in tax increases. 'As a result, the budget will push Illinois' nation-leading property taxes even higher and worsen the state's fiscal standing. The budget also increases pension benefits for public sector workers by more than $13 billion, yet at the same time shorts the state's annual pension payment by over $5 billion, according to the plans' actuaries. These decisions put retirements at risk, especially if the market sees another significant downturn,' said Illinois Policy Institute's fiscal and economic analysis director Bryce Hill. Rep. John Cabello (R-Machesney Park), said state Democrats chose to fund projects in their own district, and give millions in taxpayer funder benefits for undocumented migrants at the expense of families, small businesses, and law enforcement. 'This budget doesn't reflect Illinois values—it reflects bad governance,' said Cabello. 'Every dollar spent on enabling Illinois' financial crisis is a dollar taken away from the law-abiding Illinoisans who pay their taxes, play by the rules, and now feel abandoned by their government.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We are heading for economic ruin, and no political party has what it takes to stop this
What a dreadful week. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether there will be anything left to salvage. I don't mean for Sir Keir Starmer. No, I mean for Britain. Everything that elevated us above the run of nations is being lost: our competitiveness, our sovereignty, our credit-worthiness, our prestige. We are diminished morally, financially and, after the Chagos surrender, physically. At the start of the week, a different future looked possible. Labour had put the Chagos deal on hold, reluctant to hand billions of pounds to a foreign government while cutting benefits at home. There was talk of how, under the influence of his no-nonsense enforcers, Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer was becoming more sensitive to voters. Just as the foreign aid budget had been cut to increase defence spending, so we were told to expect hard-edged policies on immigration, net zero and welfare. But, when the moment came, Labour returned to its comfort zone. Instead of cancelling the payments to Mauritius, it cancelled its sole attempt to trim the benefits bill, namely the removal of the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners. At that moment, any hopes of a more fiscally responsible Labour Government dissolved. All those briefings to the effect that Labour would act where the Tories lacked public trust – cracking down on bogus sicknotes, ending the state's monolithic control of healthcare – were exposed as wishful thinking. When push came to shove, Labour would not challenge the prejudices of its core constituency. That core constituency is no longer the working class. Rather, it is what we might call the perking class, made up of those who depend directly or indirectly on state handouts: quangocrats, BBC employees, civil servants, human rights lawyers, white-collar shop stewards. A subset of the perking class is the shirking class: people who will vote against any party that makes it tougher to get signed off work. If Labour could not slow, even slightly, the ballooning of the state pensions bill, we can forget about Liz Kendall's benefits cuts. The pensioners who would have lost their winter fuel payments were largely Tories. The working-age people who watch YouTube videos on how to qualify for invalidity payments are Labour. Here was a vision of the next four years: a Labour Government prepared to spill the cash in every direction while doing nothing to generate more wealth. Mauritius was paid to take over territory that it had already been paid for renouncing. The EU was paid for graciously taking over our food standards – just in time for its trade war with the US, our chief export destination. Meanwhile, the welfare bill continued to grow. We are heading for national penury. Labour is not just expanding the state, giving pay rises to its public-sector friends while making their work-from-home arrangements permanent. It is simultaneously driving taxpayers to less punitive jurisdictions. Ministers seem not to understand why there might be a problem with pushing out a millionaire every 45 minutes. Leftist commentators positively cheered when it was reported that Britain had suffered the largest fall in the number of billionaires since records began. But who do they imagine is picking up the departing plutocrats' share of the tax bill? In any case, it is not just plutocrats. The real story, masked by our net immigration figures, is that we are also losing young entrepreneurs at every level. Never mind hedgies and property moguls. Beauticians, fitness instructors, IT consultants and estate agents are emigrating in pursuit of higher salaries, lower taxes and better weather. Many nurses in the UAE's top hospitals come from Scotland, as do a lot of the doctors. Who can blame them? Their colleagues in the UK are gearing up for yet another strike because what the Government manages to squeeze from the private sector is never enough. We train medical students expensively only to watch them cross the seas for better pay and conditions – in practice, if not in theory, ending their student loan repayments. Their places are taken by unskilled immigrants, most of whom become a net drain on the Exchequer. So the vicious cycle continues: higher tax rates, lower revenues, worse public services and a deterioration of the workforce. What might break the cycle? The first challenge is to forge a credible opposition. I don't intend to repeat all my arguments for a Tory/Reform entente. I have been periodically making that case in these pages since last year, but few in either party want to hear it. I will simply observe that, if I were to anonymise the reactions of the two parties to the EU and Chagos deals this week, you would not be able to tell which was which. Their divisions are rooted in past grudges, not present policy. Still, let's suppose that the two Right-of-centre parties managed to form a parliamentary majority. Do they have what it takes to nudge us out of our nosedive? To get back to the growth that we enjoyed before the massive expansion of the state under Gordon Brown, we need to cut government spending by a third. Nothing in either the Conservative or Reform programmes suggests that they are prepared for the radical solutions that the moment demands. Neither party backed Labour's mild reduction in pensioner benefits. Both theoretically favour smaller government; both oppose specific cuts. To be fair, they are accurately representing their voters. When the condition is as serious as ours, and the treatment so unpleasant, sufferers will often cast around for quack alternatives. Angela Rayner pretends we can solve our problems through even higher taxes – taxes of the most anti-competitive sort, falling mainly on savers. Reform and the Tories pretend that we can get the savings we need from foreign aid or efficiency drives or scrapping DEI programmes. The truth is that we need to abolish entire departments, halve the state payroll and remove the Government from swathes of public life. We need to dismantle the Blairite juridical state that prevents elected governments from implementing their promises. We need to repeal the laws on which that state rests – the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, the Climate Change Act – and the quangos they spawned. We need to let ministers appoint their own senior officials, and to allow the Lord Chancellor to remove activist judges. We need to overhaul the immigration system, automatically removing illegal entrants and letting them appeal against that decision only afterwards and from overseas. We need to replace the NHS with Singapore-style individual healthcare accounts. Instead of penalising our private schools, we should be replicating their success in the state sector by introducing school vouchers. We should scrap the EU-era tariffs and regulations that, five years on, still clog up our books. We should replace the ECHR with a Bill of Rights that would restrict itself to guaranteeing our basic liberties: free speech, free association, free contract, free worship and equality before the law: no more protected characteristics. Simply to list these things is to see how far any party or, indeed, public opinion, is from them. Even before 2020, Britain was in an authoritarian mood. Since the dreadful lockdowns, the state has become, for many, a first rather than a last resort. An ugly phrase kept coming into my head this week: De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, or On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain. It was the name of a tract by a fifth- or sixth-century Welsh monk, Gildas, who chronicled the destruction of his country by the invading Anglo-Saxons. To Gildas, the barbarians were simply an instrument of divine justice. It was the sinful Britons who had brought the disaster on themselves. Is there time to turn aside? Are we ready to vote for candidates who offer hard truths rather than sweet delusions? Are we prepared to accept that public spending is limited by the laws of scarcity, not the meanness of politicians? Perhaps. Or perhaps, like the Britons of Gildas's time, we have already left it too late.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CRA cutting up to 280 jobs, mostly in Ottawa and Gatineau
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) says it's cutting up to 280 positions, including some in the National Capital Region, as part of a larger workforce adjustment. The agency confirmed the news to Radio-Canada by email on Thursday, saying employees were told the news the same day. The cuts primarily affect "internal services" and are "concentrated" in Ottawa and Gatineau, a media spokesperson said in a French-language email. "Like any other government-funded institution, the agency must operate within its budget," the email said. "The financial challenges facing the agency are due to the end of funding for temporary programs, government-wide cost-saving initiatives, and a change in operational pressures. This decision was made by the agency in the interest of fiscal responsibility." The CRA laid off hundreds of temporary workers, mostly debt collectors, last year. The cuts announced Thursday are over and above those previous cuts, a spokesperson confirmed to Radio-Canada.
