January 27, 2014
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE SURPLUS?:
States Weigh New Plans for Revenue Windfalls (MARK PETERS, Jan. 26, 2014, WSJ)
Governors across the U.S. are proposing tax cuts, increases in school spending and college-tuition freezes as growing revenue and mounting surpluses have states putting the recession behind them.
How spending has fallen under Obama (Jeanne Sahadi, 1/27/14, CNNMoney)
As a share of the economy, spending on domestic and defense programs has been on the decline since 2010, and is on track to reach the lowest level in more than 50 years by 2023.At its height in 2010, "discretionary spending" under Obama reached 9.1% of GDP. That was largely due to the stimulus law intended to dig the country out of a deep recession. But even at that high level, it wasn't that much higher than the 40-year average of 8.4% and was still below the 40-year peak of 10% reached in 1983.Today, levels are well below the long-term average. And the Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2023 discretionary spending will fall to 5.3% of GDP, the lowest since 1962.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2014 5:17 PM
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