When the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase $45 billion a month of Treasury bonds to support the economy, it probably anticipated there’d be plenty to buy. After all, the Fed made its December announcement just a few months after...
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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, speaks on television in New York.
Shrinking Deficit Likely to Help Fed Reduce Bond Buys
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Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), speaks during a news conference on April 10, 2013.
Bloomberg by the Numbers: $1.1 Trillion
That’s how much President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would trim federal budget deficits over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Obama’s budget would produce deficits of $5.2 trillion between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2023, compared with $6.3...
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Copies of the Obama Administration's proposed FY 2014 federal budget at the Government Printing Office Book Store on April 10, 2013 in Washington, DC.
Bloomberg by the Numbers: $642 Bln
That’s the projected budget deficit for fiscal 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That projection is about $200 billion below the $845 billion estimate that CBO released in February. The decrease is “mostly as a result of higher-than-expected revenues...
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Reporters, researchers and other members of the general public buy copies of the Obama Administration's proposed FY 2014 federal budget at the Government Printing Office Book Store April 10, 2013 in Washington, DC.
Bloomberg by the Numbers: 4.4%
That’s the share of the economy represented by the $744 billion federal budget deficit the Obama administration forecasts for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The administration, which released its fiscal 2014 budget proposal yesterday, estimates that the deficit...
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Senate Budget Committee staff members hand out copies of the Obama Administration's proposed FY 2014 federal budget in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2013 in Washington, DC.
Obama: ‘Not a Lot of Smoke and Mirrors’
The 2014 budget that President Barack Obama proposed today is all about creating jobs and boosting the economy, the president said today. His budget, he said, replaces the cuts of sequetration with “smarter ones.” It builds new roads and bridges,...
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Speaker of the House John Boehner speaks during a press briefing March 14, 2013 at the Capitol in Washington, DC.
Boehner: Tax Talk ‘Over’
Updated at 11:30 am EDT House Speaker John Boehner has given at the office. And he’s not giving any more on taxes, he reasserted today. The Ohio Republican, in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz airing on “This Week”...
Read more »Obama: Debt No ‘Immediate Crisis’ — CBO: ‘Serious Consequences’
“We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,” President Barack Obama said, during a discussion of the federal deficit and budget talks with Congress in an interview aired today by ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”’ “In fact,” the president...
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Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, holds a copy of the Fiscal Year 2013 Budget while chairing a House Budget Committee hearing in Washington in this Feb. 16, 2012 file photo.
Washington Daybook: Ryan’s Savings
The Treasury Department will update the size and scope of the federal budget problem when it reports on February’s deficit, with economists surveyed by Bloomberg saying it could be more than $200 billion. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a...
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Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks during a news conference following a vote at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 23, 2013.
Paul Ryan’s 34% Medicare Plan
Paul Ryan is getting ready to release another budget. Like the first one the House Budget chairman introduced two years ago, it will contain a provision to move people from Medicare to a voucher for private health care, starting with...
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A hull section of a U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) sits in a paint booth during a facility tour in Marinette, Wisconsin, on Feb. 11, 2013.
The Math Behind the Sequester
From Bloomberg Government’s Congress Tracker blog How much is “brutal”? Lawmakers agree that the automatic spending cuts slated to begin March 1 will be big and painful — President Barack Obama yesterday called them “brutal” — though exactly how big...
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