Scott Lilly

Unforeseen emergencies are a big problem for budget setters and Congress is no exception. If Congress attempts to factor in the possibility of a foreign invasion, large-scale natural disasters or a severe economic downturn into its spending targets then it is likely to set spending targets that in most years...

Americans are being bombarded today by two very different messages. One is that federal government borrowing is ruining our economy and costing us jobs. The other is that if the government does not borrow in the near-term to create jobs our economy will languish and the Great Recession could return...

Ludicrous! No I am not talking about the rapper. I am talking about the eight politicians who wasted two hours of my time last night during the Republican presidential debate arguing over which one had created the most jobs. Even more ludicrous was the national press corps that seemed to...

One great irony in the current debate over cutting federal spending is the label House Republicans have placed on the tiny sliver of federal spending they've targeted for cuts in their budget proposal for the remainder of fiscal year 2011: "nonsecurity discretionary programs." Despite that label many of the cuts...

There are two things the leaders of the new majority in the House of Representatives have made clear since they began to assume the reins of power three months ago. They would:

• Cut spending

• Eliminate earmarks

Those two frequently repeated objectives are being translated into legislation in a 359-page bill...

This article was originally posted at AmericanProgress.org.

Less than a week after the House Appropriations Committee sorted out its final staff assignments, their new chairman, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), gave his subcommittees one week to find the $44 billion in cuts in current year spending...

The incoming leadership and committee chairmen of the U.S. House of Representatives have been boasting about their ambitious, time-consuming plans to conduct intensive oversight and ferret out waste, fraud and abuse throughout the federal government. Yet the new House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), recently unveiled his calendar for...

Dick Cheney's famous statement "deficits don't matter" is generally associated with the Bush administration's philosophy on taxation. A strong case can be made, however, that this view of budget policy also influenced that administration's spending policies. Between 2000 and 2008 federal outlays grew at an average rate of nearly seven...

It is obvious that some number of Republican pollsters have come up with the notion that attacking the federal workforce provides a golden political opening in a period when the public is deeply distressed by unemployment, the federal deficit and the lack sensible leadership in Washington. They are proposing as...

This article was first posted at AmericanProgress.org.

I am sure that Jonathan Alter's recent column in Newsweek, "How Congress Keeps Screwing Up Education -- President Obama's school-reform programs are falling victim to the teachers' unions," is as funny to the lobbyists of teacher unions as it...

It is always risky to attempt to give a history lesson to an old history professor, but Newt Gingrich's column in this morning's Washington Post, requires that someone try. His attempt to attach the label of "secular socialist machine" to the Obama administration by placing it in a "historical" context...

This article was first posted at AmericanProgress.org.

People who are opposed to health care reform are raising a real ruckus over a possible parliamentary maneuver being considered by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). She is thinking of asking the full House to vote on a package...

House Republicans will meet today to announce that they are renouncing the use of earmarks. Given that Democrats announced the day before that they were banning the earmarking of federal dollars to for-profit businesses, the only opportunity for one-ups-manship by Republican's was a complete ban. But the Republicans seem to...

This article was first posted at AmericanProgress.org.

Twenty years ago I was the staff director of the Democratic Study Group, an organization that among other things provided research to members of the House of Representatives. By 1990 we had expanded our subscriber base to more than 30 House...

This article first appeared at AmericanProgress.org.

The federal budget is big and perplexing. Sometimes it seems like nothing more than a sea of random numbers. But it is not; it is a decision-making document that profoundly affects the lives of ordinary people in countless ways every day.

If you want to understand the extraordinary events taking place in the fight over health care reform, you should take Deep Throat's advice to Bob Woodward many years ago during Woodward's coverage of the Watergate story: follow the money. Massive amounts of cash are flowing into all types of activities...

Read the entire report at AmericanProgress.org.

The current economic relationship between the United States and China is perilous for both countries. The nature of that peril is quite different than is commonly perceived.

China's large and rapidly growing stash of U.S. treasuries is only part of much larger debt...

Imagine yourself as president of the United States. Acting in the wake of a massive hurricane, you reach out to develop a bipartisan plan for disaster relief. When you approached the opposition, they say that they would be happy to participate, so long as you agree to focus the relief...

Nearly all of the criticism of the stimulus legislation pending before Congress is directed at a small number of programs that make up a tiny percentage of the total spending in the package. One of the favorite targets of these critics is $50 million in funding for the National Endowment...

What do Amity Shales, George F. Will, Mark Levey, Harold L. Cole, Lee E. Ohanian, Tyler Cowen, Andrew B. Wilson, Greg Gutfeld, and Jeff Jacoby all have in common? They have all published articles in recent months opposing the President's economic stimulus package and all for exactly the same reason:...