U.S. Treasury – USA Gov Policy

A look at recent statistics from the U.S. Treasury Department are truly worrisome.

The federal government ran a budget deficit of $195 billion for the first four months of fiscal year 2015, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates—$12 billion more than the shortfall recorded in the same span last year. Revenues and outlays were both 8 percent higher than they were at this time a year ago. If lawmakers enact no further legislation affecting spending or revenues, the federal government will end fiscal year 2015 with a deficit of $468 billion, or 2.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The deficit occurred even as receipts through January totaled $1,041 billion, CBO estimates—$79 billion more than the amount collected in the same period last year. In January alone, the government had a deficit of approximately $17.5 billion, a dramatic increase from last year’s figure of $10.3 billion.

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The difficult political fact that Washington seems incapable of facing is that the federal government is far too deeply involved in matters better left to the states. Until it re-orients itself to those functions that are constitutionally envisioned for it, the federal government will continue to plunge faster and more unavoidably towards fiscal chaos.

The United States Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service has reported that despite an all-time high revenue intake of $2,663 billion dollars in the first 11 months of Fiscal Year 2014, Washington nevertheless compiled a deficit of $589 billion due to total outlays of $3,253 billion.

It is important to place this in context. Key national endeavors such as defense have been reduced. Federal hiring to run the government is at an all-time low. Investments in the future, such as NASA, are a fraction of what they were decades ago.

According to a prior year’s USNEWS report , “49% of the entire federal budget goes to entitlement programs… Entitlement spending is the highest in American history… The proportion of Americans taking antipoverty funds has soared…”

USNEWS noted that “The growth of entitlement spending has coincided with an unprecedented decline in the number of working adult men over the last several decades…” According to the Heritage Foundation, the 79 means-tested federal welfare programs cost about a trillion dollars annually.
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The Heritage Foundation’s senior research fellow Robert Rector notes that these programs increased during President Obama’s first two years in office at a rate two and a half times larger than at any prior period in American history. It’s clear that Obamacare will add dramatically to that figure.

The problem is more than just spending too much, as serious as that challenge is. It’s the fact that these funds are taken out of the productive economy and placed into programs that will not produce jobs or tax revenue in the future—a true downward spiral. If a family spends thousands on a new home, that’s an investment; if it spends thousands on a luxury vacation, that’s just dollars gone forever.

As the New York Analysis of Policy & Budget noted in a prior report, even comparisons with other periods of major increases in government spending aimed at reducing poverty reveal the harmful nature of poverty spending under the current Administration. FDR’s New Deal programs developed infrastructure and provided job skills in programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps. During the period of 2009 to the present, neither serious employment skills nor infrastructure development resulted from the vast spending increase.

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.