Treasury officials confirmed the Aug. 2 deadline in a monthly update that assesses the nation’s borrowing situation. The United States reached the $14.3 trillion limit in May. Higher revenue and accounting maneuvers have allowed the government to keep paying its bills in the interim.
Air Force and Navy aircraft are still flying hundreds of strike missions over Libya despite the Obama administration’s claim that American forces are playing only a limited support role in the NATO operation.
The Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it’s all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.
In the past, teachers and other staff at Kaukauna were required to pay 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance coverage and none of their pension costs. Now, they’ll pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their coverage (still well below rates in much of the private sector) and also contribute 5.8 percent of salary to their pensions. The changes will save the school board an estimated $1.2 million this year, according to board President Todd Arnoldussen.
Charles Schumer, the Senate’s No. 3 Democratic leader, accused Republicans of seeking to slow the U.S. economy for political gain in the debate over cutting budget deficits. He insisted Democrats have the “upper hand” in the negotiations.
Raising the rhetorical stakes while party leaders are far apart over a plan to cut the deficit and increase the U.S. debt limit, Schumer said Republican leaders are seeking deep spending cuts as part of an effort to slow U.S. growth and hurt President Barack Obama’s chances of winning re-election next year.
“It is becoming clear that insisting on a slash-and-burn approach may be part of this plan,” Schumer said today at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “It has a double benefit for Republicans: It is ideologically tidy and it undermines the economic recovery, which they think only helps them in 2012.”
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I think, little man, your therapist should have warned you about projection
So, while the debt limit is being approached and Obama REFUSES for WHATEVER REASON to sit down with the republicans, we are spending billions bombing Libya for no reason of national importance or security, and the entire BELIEF SYSTEM of the progressive left, Obama and his entire FRINGE, is UTTERLY vanquished by the facts of the physics of the laws of nature in the Wisconsin School system, and because the disaster of this economy which is so destroyed is CANNOT PRODUCE JOBS is UNDENIABLE, Schumer is leading the dems to BLAME REPUBLICANS FOR TANKING THE NATION?
Is that really the way the progressives want to go?
John Malcolm beckons.