Bankrupting America Weekly Recap

Hi there,

Happy Saturday! While you savor that don't-have-to-be-anywhere feeling, enjoy our recap of the past week's big events:

1) Congress skipped out. Congress decided doing their jobs was getting a little difficult and went on recess last week. President Obama headed to Palm Beach for a little R&R as well, leaving many Americans wondering if anyone in Washington had noticed that now might be a good time to fix the forthcoming budget sequester that has been causing such an uproar lately.

2) Simpson-Bowles 2.0. Early last week, Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson took a second shot at long term debt reduction and released a new spending plan. The merits of the plan are up for debate, but all can agree it represents a serious attempt to fix our fiscal problems.

3) The sequester looms. The automatic spending cuts scheduled to go into effect on March 1 have caused much uproar in Washington, but are still set to go ahead as planned.

4) The stimulus had a birthday party. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (more commonly called simply the 2009 "stimulus" bill) turned four years old, with its success or failure still a topic of dispute. The legislation represented one of the largest spending items on record. Was it worth the price tag? Check out our analysis.

5) Washington's penny-pinching problem. Despite protests that offsetting or preventing the sequester are "impossible," Washington would actually only need to cut about three cents from every dollar of spending to counteract the much-maligned automatic cuts. Many ask why Washington has such a problem with making such a small and prudent cutback if it would mean offsetting the damage the sequester is feared to cause.