BusinessInsider.com: on Budget & Economy

Bill Weld: No such thing as government money; only taxpayer's money

Weld: My motto when I was in office was "there's no such thing as government money; there's only taxpayer's money." Boy, has everyone in Washington forgotten about that. There's nobody looking out for the taxpayers there. The Dems want to raise spending by 5% or 10% on social programs. The Republicans want to raise that on military. So they demonize each other until they've both raised enough money to all get reelected. It's a total disgrace.

Q: Do you keep the Trump tax cut?

Weld: Oh, I would keep them. I never met a tax cut I didn't like.

Q: But then where do you cut?

Weld: You cut across the board. You have to zero base the budget and not assume you start with last year's appropriation. You have to measure outcomes instead of inputs. How much money was spent last year--that should be irrelevant. Was it a good program? Increase it. If it wasn't, zero it out. That's how you cut spending, and I did it.

Joe Walsh: Budget deficit is bankrupting future generations

Joe Walsh: Nothing disappoints me more than this. I mean this is why I went to Congress eight years ago because we're bankrupting future generations. We are bankrupting future generations in this country. Both parties do it. When Obama was president, all of us Republicans screamed and howled every day about Obama increasing the debt and the deficits. Trump has actually increased the debt faster than Barack Obama did. Think about that: Trump has increased our deficits faster than Obama has. But all of my former Tea Party colleagues in Congress--what do we hear from them? Not a damn thing. Again, just one more example of the Republican Party now face fealty to Trump and they've forgotten about every issue that they've claimed to believe in.

Wilbur Ross: SEC investigating insider trading "short sale" of oil stock

In October 2017, the Times emailed Ross questions about his investments in Navigator Holdings, a mover of liquefied gases whose major clients included a Russian energy company. Three days later, Ross made the so-called short sale. Ross' short sale was worth between $100,000 and $250,000, the Times reported.

The Securities and Exchange Commission considers insider trading as any transaction on public markets that's based on nonpublic information that can influence prices once it's revealed. "I did not receive any nonpublic information due to my government position, nor did I receive any nonpublic information from a government employee," Ross said in a statement. "Securities laws presume that information known to or provided by a news organization is by definition public information."

Paul Ryan: FactCheck: S&P downgraded U.S. due to Congress, not Obama

"Our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act."

S&P downgraded the US, in part, because of a revised expectation that the Bush tax cuts would remain in place. They assumed this because of Republicans' unwillingness to enact any measures raising revenue, and they completely slammed House Republicans--including Paul Ryan--for doing so.

Paul Ryan: FactCheck: Hometown SUV plant closed in '08,not due to Obama

"I remember Pres. Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he'll keep that plant open," Ryan said, recounting the fact that his high school friends worked at the GM assembly plant. "One more broken promise. We used to build Tahoes and Suburbans. One of the reasons that plant got shut down was $4 gasoline. You see, the president's terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."

In fact, the plant halted production in December 2008, when Pres. Bush was in office.GM cited the low demand for SUVs and high gas prices during the Bush administration as the reason for closing the plant.

Obama did speak at the plant in Feb. 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested.