Category Archives: Treasury

Trump Submitted his Budget

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The President officially submitted his budget proposal to Congress today, with a first-ever section on curbing waste, fraud, duplication, and abuse in the federal government.

Trump To Again Propose Slashing Foreign Aid In Budget | 88 ... Senator Schumer is already whining.

The budget calls for eliminating the following programs entirely:

  • National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Education and Research Centers
  • Department of the Interior’s Highlands Conservation Act Grants
  • National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures Grants
  • National Endowment for the Arts Endowment for the Humanities
  • Corporation for National and Community Service (including AmeriCorps)

The administration also identified several categories of government spending in desperate need of additional government oversight, including travel, employee conferences or workshops, subscriptions, marketing, entertainment, office refreshments and end-of-year “Use It or Lose It” spending. The chapter cites expenditures by 67 federal agencies from December 30-31, 2018 which totaled $97 billion and included more than $15 million worth of fine china, lobster, alcohol, recreational, musical, and workout equipment.

Yes, it’s budget day on Capitol Hill as we all return to semi-normalcy after spending the last four months consumed with impeachment. Both the House and Senate have hearings this week to discuss the president’s budget.

President Trump is proposing to balance the federal budget within 15 years, “shrink” the federal government and extend food stamp work requirements to Medicaid and housing programs in a $4.8 trillion spending plan being released Monday.

The plan would reduce spending by $4.4 trillion equally from discretionary and mandatory programs such as Medicare over the next decade.

The plan also includes $2 billion for the border wall, with officials saying the administration is approaching 80% of the money needed to finish the wall.

The president’s budget for fiscal 2021 would cut foreign aid by 21% and reduce the Environmental Protection Agency’s funding by 26% while targeting the Education Department for smaller cuts.

Among the agencies receiving spending increases would be the Department of Homeland Security (up 3%), the Defense Department (up 0.3% to $740.5 billion), NASA (up 12%) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (up 13%).

The Commerce Department budget would be cut by 37%. Officials largely attribute that reduction to completion of the census. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is slated for a cut of 15% in a proposal that includes $2.8 billion for homelessness assistance grants.

Spending for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be cut 9%, and $4.3 billion would be targeted for battling infectious diseases.

Overall, nondefense spending would be cut 5% to $590 billion, below the level the White House and congressional Democrats agreed to in the current two-year budget deal.

Mr. Trump also proposes to make permanent the tax cuts of 2017. Senior administration officials who gave a preview to The Washington Times and other news outlets said the election-year proposal is aimed partly at the perception that Mr. Trump hasn’t tried to curtail federal spending, with annual deficits rising to more than $1 trillion in his first term.

“We’re trying to make the case that the president cares about spending and has cared about spending,” a senior administration official said. “He’s been doing this since his very first budget. This is now the fourth budget. Many of these [spending] reforms have been in each and every one of them. We do need Congress. Congress has not been there.”

The plan also provides a stark contrast with leading Democratic presidential candidates’ campaign priorities, such as “Medicare-for-All” and free college tuition, which would likely require significant tax increases.

“We’re going to have a national election that will hopefully decide that Congress is going to be on the side of the American people along with other taxpayers who balance their family budgets,” the senior official said. “We’re making the argument that deficit reduction is really important.”

The plan to reach a balanced budget relies on an optimistic economic forecast of 3% annual growth, significantly faster than the 2.3% rate in 2019.

Officials said about half of the proposed savings over a decade would come from reforms or from eliminating programs deemed wasteful in entitlements such as Medicaid and Social Security. They said benefits won’t be affected and that the savings would come from cutting waste and from other savings such as lowering prescription drug prices under Medicare ($130 billion).

Savings of $292 billion would come from reforming Medicaid and other safety net programs, for example by eliminating improper payments to people who have died. Spending on Medicare and Medicaid would still increase.

“The president is proposing more mandatory savings and reforms than any other president in history,” an official said. “He does protect Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries in those programs; he totally meets that commitment.”

The president tweeted on Saturday, “We will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget. Only the Democrats will destroy them by destroying our Country’s greatest ever Economy!”

In the past two years, Congress has provided only $2.65 billion for the border wall out of the $18 billion the administration said it needed. Mr. Trump declared a state of emergency in February 2019 to move money from military construction projects and counternarcotics programs to get more money. The administration has shifted $6.7 billion from those programs and plans to divert another $7.2 billion this year.

“We are in a pretty good place with regard to the main, most critical features of the wall being fully resourced as of right now,” a senior official said. “We will ask for another $2 billion just to keep the work going. We’re approaching 80% of the wall that will eventually be built being fully resourced.”

The proposal would save taxpayers $300 billion over 10 years by expanding the 20-hour-per-week work requirement for food stamp recipients to Medicaid and housing programs, plus expanding it in the food stamp program, officials said.

The administration said in a statement that part of the spending plan involves “shrinking the federal government to its proper size” by calling for overall reductions of about 2%.

Deficits have risen each year under Mr. Trump, who came into office criticizing former President Barack Obama for failing to get government borrowing under control and pledging that he would balance the budget himself in eight years.

When Mr. Obama left office, the annual deficit was down to about $585 billion after three consecutive $1 trillion deficits at the start of his presidency.

After Mr. Trump took office, the deficit rose to $665 billion in fiscal 2017. It climbed to $779 billion in fiscal 2018, which was 3.8% of gross domestic product. In 2019, it rose to $984 billion, or 4.6% of GDP.

The trend continued in the wrong direction in the first three months of fiscal 2020 as the deficit widened to $356.6 billion and was on pace to exceed $1 trillion by the end of the year.

The fiscal 2021 budget proposal would trim the deficit to $966 billion next year and eliminate annual deficits by 2035, a senior administration official said.

Mr. Trump threatened to veto a massive spending bill in March 2018 that he said included unnecessary extras added by Democrats. He said he acquiesced because the measure was vital to rebuilding the military, but he warned that he wouldn’t tolerate such wastefulness going forward.

“I will never sign a bill like this again,” Mr. Trump said.

He fought with Democrats into a government shutdown in late 2018 over funding for the border wall. In August, Mr. Trump struck a sweeping two-year spending deal with Democrats that lifted the nation’s borrowing limit through July 2021, raised spending by more than $320 billion and put off the next potential fight over spending until after the November elections.

That deal is projected to add nearly $2 trillion in debt over the next decade.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat whose troops have teamed up with Mr. Trump to increase deficit levels, said the president has no credibility on fiscal responsibility. They point to the 2017 tax cuts that passed with no Democratic votes.

“During the eight years of President Obama’s presidency, he reduced the deficit by $1 trillion,” Mrs. Pelosi said last week. “Instead, this administration … increased the national debt by $2 trillion.”

China Cutting $75B on Tariffs, Desperation

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Soybeans and cars…
China has reached out to the United States to launch an interim trade agreement prior to Phase II beginning February 14.
The virus epidemic in China has taken a substantial toll on the internal economy due to fear. Transportation, vacation travel, corporate production, factory production have take a toll. China is even suggesting the elimination of all tariffs between the two countries.
The economic stability of China is in question and will have affects on bi-lateral trade agreements China has not only with the United States but other nations as well. Since China is a large supporter of North Korea with financial aid, there is some expectation that North Korea could see larger in-country humanitarian spirals downward.

The United States has offered several lanes of assistance to China where most appear to be rejected. As a consequence, our own domestic farmers may be forced to be more patient exporting goods such as pork, cotton, wheat and soybeans due to the fact that Chinese consumption has fallen substantially in recent weeks due to the coronavirus.

It is impossible to determine the actual numbers of deaths due to the virus or those infected and being treated. China is a communist country holding full control of all media placing censorship on stories being published or communications from the mainland to other parts of the world.

So far, there are no indications that the virus is under control or is being managed in such a manner that fears of infection and spread of the illness would ease.

Forever war: US and China struggle to defuse trade conflict

Reuters is reporting in recent hours: – China has achieved “positive” results in its prevention and control efforts in fighting the new coronavirus, President Xi Jinping told Saudi Arabia’s King Salman by telephone, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.

The two discussed “efforts to combat and control the novel coronavirus epidemic”, the report said.

China has declared a “people’s war” on the virus and the whole nation is working as one to combat it, Xi said.

“China has a strong mobilisation capacity, rich experience in responding to public health incidents and is confident and capable of winning the battle for epidemic prevention and control,” the report paraphrased him as saying.

China hopes countries respect and understand the World Health Organization’s guidance on travel, Xi said.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade” in trying to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

China will continue to take an open and transparent approach towards dealing with the virus, Xi added.

Have You Met Andrii Telizhenko?

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So, we have the phone call whistle-blower, Eric Ciaramella visiting the Obama White House according to visitor logs an estimated 200 times. What?

Ciaramella held the positions of National Security Council director for Ukraine under Susan Rice and director of Baltic and Eastern European Affairs in the Office of Vice President Joe Biden. Ciaramella was advised by Adam Schiff’s staff to fill out a complaint on the Trump/Zelensky phone call and given the text of the complaint, it is obvious it was drafted by lawyers likely out of Schiff’s office, maybe even Daniel Goldman himself.

Coming from Senator Rand Paul’s Twitter feed is this little gem posted on January 16, 2020.

Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) | Twitterhttps://twitter.comType a message

Anyway, Eric Ciaramella hosted a particular meeting on January 16, 2016 in room 230A at the Obama White House to discuss Ukraine, especially Burisma and the ‘Bidens’. Eric Ciaramella also hosted and chaired a meeting in Room 374 of the Eisenhower Executive Office, which seems to be a planning session to re-open an investigation of Paul Manafort which was to review the information that Alexandra Chalupa had gathered on Manafort and she was paid by the DNC to do so.

Artem Sytnyk, the director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a Soros group. Sytnyk was put on the public register of person who committed corrupt related crimes in Ukraine.

Others at the meeting included:

Jeffrey Cole: Resident Legal Advisor at U.S. Embassy, Ukraine (FBI)

Anna Iemelianova: Special Legal Counsel for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine

Nazar Kholodnitsky: Ukraine’s Chief anti-corruption Prosecutor

Svitlana Pardus: Operations, DoJ, U.S. Embassy, Ukraine

David Sakvarelidze: Deputy General Prosecutor, fired in March of 2016

Andris Razans: Ambassador of Latvia in Belgium (important, read below)

Liz Zentos: National Security Council Director of Eastern Europe

Catherine L. Newcombe: Eurasia legal programs at the DoJ Criminal Division

This meeting was where the Ukraine corruption and the Biden/Burisma plot was launched to protect the infectious relationships.This meeting’s central objective was to tell Ukraine to no longer investigate/probe Burisma and to allow the FBI to take full control. Kiev did not agree and hence later Biden stepped in with his threat to withhold the $1 billion loan guarantees unless Ukraine complied.

Andrii Telizhenko was in that meeting too and has since been cooperating in full with Rudy Giuliani and is essentially a whistleblower.

My Dinner With Andrii | Talking Points Memo Andrii Telizhenko

Telizhenko was previously a political office in the Ukrainian embassy. Ukraine was financially desperate to follow all instructions put forth by the United States during the Obama administration and now is having to do the same with a new administration under President Trump and the new Ukraine president Zelensky for any kind of survival to maintain stability and not fall to Russian aggression or annexation.

Confusing right?

Then it seems the FBI did gain some control and curiously, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Buretta was hired to defend Burisma president Nikolay Zlochevskyi for income tax evasion and money-laundering. The truth be told, Burisma bought justice by agreeing to pay $7.4 million in back taxes and fines. Burisma can hire who they want and did but having Devon Archer and Hunter Biden on the Board did allow for political cover, access and favors.

In 2014, Prime Minister Theresa May held a summit for where leaders from a handful of countries attended to plot out a plan to provide Ukraine with some leadership guidance and financial assistance after the billions stolen by the former Ukraine president Yanukovich and others in the government from the coffers of the Ukrainian treasury and various banks. Over the years, in fact, hundreds of billions had been stolen…you read that right. Those monies traced to various countries and accounts (tax havens) around the world including South East Asia, the Caribbean, Cyprus, London, Latvia, Luxembourg, and even Liechtenstein.

One account held in a London bank belonged to Mykola Zlochevsky who at the time was not only the Ukraine Resource Minister but the CEO of Burisma. All the while, Russia had officially annexed Crimea and had immediate plans to do the same with Ukraine. Ukraine had no money to fight a war and needed immediate financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and guidance from the United States, hence then President Obama assigned the Ukraine portfolio to Vice President Biden. Various banks around the world that could be attributed to belonging to Ukraine, or by corrupt oligarchs were frozen. This was to stop the bleeding and begin a full and comprehensive investigation by various financial fraud experts of Western nations.

It is no wonder that big print and cable news media is attacking Rudy Giuliani as he as Trump’s personally attorney and former prosecutor has been investigating all of this for a very long time and has a cache of tangible evidence. To complicate matters even more, we have Andrii Derkach who initiated the criminal case of the interference in the U.S. elections.

In part from a long Guardian article published on April 12, 2017:

On 19 January, the day before Trump’s inauguration, Zlochevsky’s gas company announced it was becoming a funder of the Atlantic Council, a prominent Washington thinktank. The Atlantic Council declined to say exactly how much money the tycoon had offered, only that his donation had been between $100,000 and $249,000. A month later, Burisma hired a new director. Joseph Cofer Black does not appear to have any more experience of Ukraine than his colleague Hunter Biden but – as an ex-ambassador and a former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism centre under George W Bush – he is likely to have lots of useful contacts in Washington.

Zlochevsky’s last public appearance was in June 2016 at a Burisma-organised alternative energy forum, co-hosted in Monaco by Prince Albert II, who made the keynote speech. Photographs of the event showed Hunter Biden posing with various comfortably retired ex-politicians, wearing a blue suit twinned with highly-polished brown shoes. Zlochevsky was tanned and healthy in an open-necked shirt, while a more formally dressed Prince Albert placed a solicitous hand on his back.

Perhaps there should be witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial in the Senate, in fact there should be 200-300 of them and not only should Hunter Biden and the whistleblower be among the witness list, but Eric Holder needs to be on the hot seat too.

Complicated…right?

 

About that GAO Report that Trump Broke the Law

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So, it has reported that President Trump ordered the Office of Management and Budget to hold the funds for Ukraine which was in the NDAA passed by Congress. There was a stopgap provision in the NDAA that the funds would remain available until after September 30, which was after the end of the U.S. fiscal accounting period. The money was released on September 11. President Trump questioned what other countries are stepping up with financial and military support of Ukraine. It is unclear if the White House ever got a succinct report on that question. In fact, a few days before the Zelensky phone call, the OMB the aid was withheld, not after the call. Furthermore, Zelensky was a newly elected President and a new government, an unknown quantity.

The call between President Trump and President Zelensky was the genesis of the whistle-blower complaint. Countless people were on the call which is a procedural condition for all international foreign policy national security calls. Each call between the United States and a foreign entity are outlined, reviewed and prepped in full by those to be on the call.

The OMB is under the Executive Office of the President and it is responsible for measuring the quality of agency programs, policies and procedures. The agency also ensures that reports, rules, testimony and proposed legislation is consistent with administration policies, meaning evaluations and inter-agency reviews.

OMB’s Office of General Counsel provides legal advice and counsel to the Director and the OMB components and staff. In addition, the General Counsel’s Office manages the Executive Order and Presidential Memoranda process for OMB and the Administration; reviews and clears all legal and constitutional comments by the Department of Justice and other agencies on proposed legislation before such comments are conveyed to Congress; participates in the drafting of bill signing statements for the President; reviews all proposed legislative text comprising the President’s Budget and for all budget-related legislative proposals; evaluates legal issues in proposed regulations; convenes meetings of all agency general counsels and coordinates legal issues across agencies; and ensures OMB’s compliance with ethics laws, the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Records Act, and other statutory requirements.

OMB’s Office of Legislative Affairs works closely with White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Federal Agency Legislative Affairs offices, and congressional offices on current legislative issues. The office conveys information and strategies to the Director to inform decisions on Administration policies. The office, in turn, disseminates budget materials, descriptions of relevant concerns, and statements to Congress to communicate the Administration’s positions. The Office of Legislative Affairs also advises the OMB Director and the organization on legislative issues and developments, provides expertise on the congressional budget process, supplies daily congressional reports to the Director and the OMB staff, oversees correspondence with the Hill, and manages the clearance and transmittal of the President’s Budget and the Administration’s Statements of Administration Policy.

LAWYERS AND MORE LAWYERS

So, now we have the General Accounting Office that publishes a report that President Trump broke the law by placing the aid on hold. The GAO is the congressional ‘go-to’ department that measures, often with bias the cost(s) of proposed legislation along with legal viability and other realities.

Image result for general accounting office

Now, remember that within the two articles of impeachment, neither allege a violation of law that the General Accounting Office report declared at the behest of Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

So, a deeper look at the GAO shows that it is represented by the AFL-CIO’s International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a PAC that gave 100% of political donations to Democrats…no Republicans.

Now, the GAO is is packed full of lawyers that is assigned to legal, accounting, auditing and other financial/legal duties requested by Congress. GAO engages in audits and investigations, but it has negligible enforcement power. Once a legal determination has been made, GAO has exhausted its regulatory authority. Regardless of the adjudicative outcome, GAO has no authority to exact fines, issue injunctions, or pursue further proceedings, criminal or otherwise. Instead, the Comptroller General reports the determination to Congress, to the president, to the offending agency, and to any other relevant agencies (such as the Department of Justice).

Seems that the GAO plotted with the Pelosi/Schiff operation in the House and likley Schumer/Van Hollen in the Senate…who advised the White House immediately that there could be issues legally or otherwise, if that is really the case regarding placing a hold on the Ukraine aid? No one it seems and procedures were not followed.

As for the accusations of withholding the money to force a Ukraine public statement to investigate all things Biden(s), hold on. On July 14, several days before the infamous phone call, the polls had Trump trailing Biden, Warren and Sanders. Sanders was 1 percentage point at the time behind Biden and Warren was a mere 2 percentage points behind Biden. Kamala Harris was 5 percentage points behind Biden. This was hardly a reason for President Trump to go full attack on Biden as is alleged. On the other hand, there as investigations continue, there are reasons for sure to question those aiding the whistle-blower, the continued corruption timelines of Ukraine and where Hunter Biden and his wide range of associates did some unsavory things still being determined.

Putin to Lead Russia for Life?

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In his annual state-of-the-nation speech on Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shook up the country and its political class by calling for constitutional changes that would give him a new path to holding onto power after his current — and, in theory, last — term ends in 2024.

With that, the entire cabinet, led by a long-serving Putin ally, Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, abruptly resigned. The head of the Federal Tax Service, Mikhail V. Mishustin — a little-known but skilled technocrat — will become the next prime minister.

The spate of moves offers some clues about Mr. Putin’s plans and priorities, but also raises questions about what may lie ahead for the Russian president. Here are answers to some of them.

Mr. Putin with Prime Minister Dmitry A. Medvedev last year. Credit…Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mr. Putin’s hold on power in Russia is unrivaled, built up over the last 20 years in his posts as president and prime minister.

But Russia’s Constitution bars a president from serving more than two consecutive terms. To maintain his grip on power, as he has hinted he intends to do, Mr. Putin needs to find a way to engineer a leadership transition that will allow that to happen.

To that end, it appears, he has proposed changes to the Constitution that would weaken the presidency while increasing the sway of the Parliament and the prime minister.

He said, for example, that the president should in the future be required to accept the prime minister’s cabinet appointments. This and other changes could give Mr. Putin more leeway to find a position in which he can maintain power without violating the Constitution.

That’s not entirely clear.

Mr. Putin could become prime minister again, taking advantage of the position’s expanded influence. Alternatively, some analysts have pointed to a leadership maneuver engineered by Nursultan Nazarbayev, the longtime president of Kazakhstan, another former Soviet republic.

In 2018, Mr. Nazarbayev increased the power of Kazakhstan’s Security Council and made himself its chairman for life. When he resigned from the presidency last year in favor of a handpicked successor, his position at the helm of the Security Council allowed him to hold on to key levers of power.

On Wednesday, offering few details, Mr. Putin dangled the possibility of a similar move in Russia. The State Council — currently an advisory body made up of the governors of Russia’s regions — should have its “status and role” fixed in the Constitution, he said.

That quickly raised speculation among Russian political analysts that a revamped State Council could become a vehicle for Mr. Putin to maintain power if he relinquishes the presidency, particularly over the military and foreign policy.

Despite Mr. Putin’s immense sway, he’d be taking a risk if he simply declared himself president for life.

Mr. Putin served two consecutive presidential terms from 2000 to 2008, and then became prime minister. His announcement in 2011 that he would seek the presidency again, followed by parliamentary elections widely seen as rigged, helped trigger Russia’s biggest street protests since the 1990s.

This time around, Mr. Putin looks determined to orchestrate his next move in a slow-motion fashion that’s less likely to produce a backlash. The changes to the Constitution he called for give him several options to hold on to power — while affording him as much as four years’ time to set his course.

“Our society is clearly calling for change.” Mr. Putin said at the beginning of his speech on Wednesday.

Indeed, over the last year, Russia has seen its most vigorous street protests since the anti-Putin rallies of 2011 and 2012.

Polls show that Russians increasingly distrust pro-Kremlin TV channels and are getting their news on the internet, which remains largely uncensored.

And the Kremlin’s appeal to patriotism — so effective after Mr. Putin’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 — has lost its visceral power, overshadowed by Russia’s economic problems.

All of this means that the Kremlin is likely to portray the resignation on Wednesday of Mr. Medvedev and every cabinet minister as a sign that Mr. Putin has heard Russians’ demand for change.

While Russians do increasingly blame Mr. Putin for their ills, many more blame the bureaucrats below him. Mr. Putin’s approval rating has fallen to 68 percent from 82 percent in April 2018, an independent pollster, Levada, says. But Mr. Medvedev is in far worse shape, with an approval rating of 38 percent.

Mr. Putin’s choice of Mr. Mishustin seems to reflect his concerns about Russia’s declining standard of living, which has contributed to spasms of unrest over the last year.

Mr. Mishustin is widely seen as one of Russia’s most effective technocrats. He has headed Russia’s Federal Tax Service since 2010, modernizing a notoriously ineffective and corrupt tax-collecting system. The Financial Times dubbed the computerized, real-time approach to taxation he developed as “the taxman of the future.”

In his early years as president, Mr. Putin built his popularity on soaring living standards, which coincided with a period of rising oil prices. But with lower oil prices and Western sanctions, those steady improvements are now a thing of the past. Disposable incomes are still effectively below what they were in 2013.

Mr. Putin also used his state-of-the-nation speech to make a raft of pledges to improve Russians’ daily lives. For example: free hot meals for all elementary school students from grades one through four.

Unlike Russia’s more prominent economic reformers, the 53-year-old Mr. Mishustin has no political base of his own, reducing the likelihood that he might use the powers of his new office to chip away at Mr. Putin’s authority.

Not at all.

In theory, at least, Russia’s system of governance echoes that of France — a powerful presidency checked by an independent judiciary, by parliament and by a cabinet of ministers headed by a prime minister with his own locus of authority.

But Mr. Putin has steadily subsumed the authority of all those institutions, often justifying crackdowns on political pluralism as necessary in the face of external threats. He reprised that language in his speech on Wednesday, signaling that no political thaw is in the offing.

“Russia can be and can remain Russia only as a sovereign state,” he said.

That was an allusion to Mr. Putin’s frequent charge the West is fomenting political opposition to undermine Russian sovereignty.

To drive home the point, Mr. Putin proposed a constitutional amendment that offered the day’s clearest statement of how he views his successor: Russia’s future president, Mr. Putin said, may not ever have had citizenship or permanent residency in another country.