Campaign 2012: Bring on the Cash Money
With primary season over, the race for president — and the race for cash — is about to heat up.
Campaign finance experts expect President Obama and Mitt Romney will attract enough money to break all previous fundraising records. For… Continue reading
Student loan rate hike: What you need to know
On July 1, the eye rates on student loans subsidized by The government will double to.8%.
The upshot? Students getting loans for an additional school year must dig deeper of their pockets to pay them off. Unless Congress measures in to avoid the increase from going forward.
The challenge has developed into a political talking point. President Obama, who requested congressional action in the State of the Union speech in January, is utilizing the issue to stump for votes.
His Republican rival Mitt Romney says he, too, believes Congress should step up.
On Tuesday, Senate leaders said they are going to undertake a bill within days grant the lowered mortgage rates. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Republicans are prepared to consider the measure provided that we have a solution to invite the extension.
What’s at risk: A lot more than 7 million undergraduates have subsidized school loans, so this means the government absorbs several of the monthly interest for lower- and middle-income families determined by financial need. Continue reading
Business tax breaks booted from payroll deal
The last legislative freight train has left the station, and a set of expired business tax breaks that regularly get extended was left on the platform.
That’s because Congress did not include them in a deal passed Friday that extends the payroll tax cut, the Medicare “doc fix” and emergency unemployment benefits. And now Washington observers expect that will be it for most serious legislation before the Nov. 6 presidential election.
There’s a chance those tax breaks — which include the research and development credit and a deduction that lets businesses accelerate depreciation on their equipment purchases — will eventually get extended for 2012 and be made retroactive to Jan. 1.
But that may not happen until the end of the year, when Congress engages in what’s likely to be an epic fight over extending the Bush tax cuts and cutting spending.
In the meantime, businesses are left wondering whether to go ahead and, say, buy equipment without knowing whether a tax break will be made available later. Continue reading
Social Security, Medicare report card on tap
Critical to reining in the United States’ long-term debt will be finding ways to control the burgeoning costs of Medicare and Social Security, both of which will face serious funding shortfalls over the next two decades.
On Monday, the trustees of those programs will offer their annual update on just when those shortfalls will occur.
Experts said they expect the trustees’ conclusions to be similar to their findings last year.
Then again, “It’s like trying to predict elections. You never know,” said Don Fuerst, senior pension fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries.
Last year, the trustees projected Social Security could pay promised benefits in full through 2036, after which the program could only afford to pay 77% of them.
Social Security has already begun paying out more in benefits than it takes in from workers’ payroll taxes.
But the difference has been made up for with interest paid by the Treasury on the $2.6 trillion that the federal government owes the program. That debt represents the amount of extra revenue paid into the system over the years that Uncle Sam borrowed and spent. Continue reading
Washington’s $5 trillion interest bill
Interest rates on U.S. bonds might be ridiculously low, but i am not saying the country’s future charges on the national debt are going to be.
Uncle Sam will shell out a lot more than $5 trillion in interest payments over the next decade, according to the latest projections through the Congressional Budget Office.
That’s over fifty percent of the projected $11 trillion increase in debt held from the public in that period. Those figures assume that the host of expensive policies including the Bush-era tax cuts are extended.
Within the decade, more(a) 14% of most revenue the us government is projected to collect are going to be sucked up by interest rates.
It really is a fortune that can not be suited for the country’s other priorities. Continue reading
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