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1 day agoTrump Budget Boosts War Spending While Slashing Domestic Programs
The Trump administration's fiscal 2027 budget requests a 43% increase in defense spending and a 10% decrease in non-defense funding.
The tax provides more than $23 billion per year in revenue for federal highway and public transit programs. The federal gas tax has been in place, in one way or another, since 1919 and was last raised in 1993.
As the Federal student aid portfolio soars to nearly $1.7 trillion and with nearly a quarter of student loan borrowers in default, Americans know that the Department of Education has failed to effectively manage and deliver these critical programs. By leveraging Treasury's world-renowned expertise in finance and economic policy, we are confident that American students, borrowers, and taxpayers will finally have functioning programs after decades of mismanagement.
Californians, on average, paid about $29 billion more a year in federal taxes than the state received in return over the past decade. That's the largest imbalance in the nation. By contrast, there are about 30 states that receive more money from the federal government each year than their residents pay the IRS.
The TMF modernized the U.S. Department of Agriculture's specialty crops inspection system that ensures safe food reaches school lunches and military rations, eliminating paper-based processes and saving $1.72 million annually while inspectors now use tablets instead of clipboards to process over 60 billion pounds of produce.
If we want to bring down the cost of housing, we've got to build a lot more. And what I love about this bill is that it has more than 40 different provisions in it, all of which aim in the same direction, which is to give a push toward building more housing.
Investment in active transportation infrastructure - such as sidewalks, bike lanes and trail networks - increases mobility choices; improves safety; creates strong, connected communities; provides economic opportunities and job creation; and saves money from health benefits and low-cost travel.
The Portland Housing Bureau has found additional unspent dollars in its coffers, adding to the previous $21 million it found through an audit last year. It is unclear exactly how much money is in the fund, but Council President Jamie Dunphy called councilors over the weekend to tell them they would soon learn of the specifics of what was found in the Housing Investment Fund. He told the Mercury February 2 that he did not yet know how much total funding was available.
The interchamber tensions between Democrats are becoming a regular feature of funding fights in the second Trump term. Lawmakers, strategists and voters alike exploded in anger last March when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of colleagues allowed a spending package to move forward amid the Elon Musk-led DOGE assault on federal agencies. In November, tempers again flared when a handful of Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to end a record 43-day shutdown.
These new restrictions-which can be found throughout the appropriations bill for the Department of Education and other sections of the 11-part funding package that was signed into law last week-are part of what policy experts describe as a bipartisan attempt to rebuke the Trump administration's budget proposal and restore Congress's power of the purse. Historically, the language of these budget bills has largely stayed the same, serving as little more than a template into which lawmakers plug that year's dollar amounts and policy riders.
Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been "lawless," "destructive, and "authoritarian" in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill - a vote that progressive critics say exposes the fecklessness and hypocrisy of what claims to be an opposition party.
The U.S. government publishes volumes of detailed data on the money it spends, but searching through it and finding information can be challenging. Complex search functions and poor user interfaces on government reporting sites can hamper an investigation, as can inconsistent company profiles and complex corporate ownership structures. This week, EFF and the Heinrich Boell Foundation released an update to our database of vendors providing technology to components of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
The White House of 2036 will have a mammoth task on its hands: It will need to rustle up more than $2 trillion a year to pay the interest on its national debt burden, approximately 5% of the nation's entire economy. According to the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the U.S. government will continue to run a sizeable and growing deficit over the next decade.
Democrats want to mandate that immigration officers make arrests with a judicial warrant, NPR's Ximena Bustillo tells Up First. They argue that DHS-issued administrative warrants, which are not signed by a judge, raise questions about violations of people's constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. While some Republicans are interested in negotiating, others, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, have already discouraged it. Lawmakers also disagree on whether agents should wear face coverings.