#National Treasury

[mapsoffun]

Scenes from my walk around the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue, part one. 

[ricisidro]

Your health is the greatest wealth.

#HealthIsWealth #HealthInsurance #UniversalHealthCare #UHC #HealthForAll #Filipinos

The Supreme Court of the Philippines has required respondents House Speaker Martin Romualdez, Senate President Francis Escudero, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and Philippine Health Insurance Corporation President Emmanuel Ledesma, Jr. to comment on the petition against the transfer of P20 billion funds of the state insurer to the National Treasury.

SC spokesperson Atty. Camille Ting said the court en banc made its decision during its August 13 session.

Petitioners Sen. Koko Pimentel, Cielo Magno, Ma. Dominga Cecilia Padilla, Dante Gatmaytan, Ibarra Gutierrez as well as organizations Sentro ng Mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa, Inc., Public Services Labor Independent Confederation Foundation, Inc., and Philippine Medical Association have asked the Supreme Court to order the the return of the P20 billion PhilHealth funds “already taken away by the national government.”

[head-post]

Russia has an unprecedented amount of money in its treasury

A new CREA analysis shows that Russia has entered 2024 with an unprecedented amount of money in state coffers, helped by a record $37 billion in crude oil sales to India last year, CNN reports.

In a new analysis, experts concluded that some of the crude oil was refined by India and then exported to the US in the form of petroleum products worth more than $1 billion.

According to an analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), exclusively provided to CNN, this stream of payments, which ultimately benefits Moscow, is because India has increased its purchases of Russian oil by more than 13 times its pre-war volumes. This is tantamount to New Delhi, a strategic partner of the US, replacing Western buyers with oil purchases reduced due to sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine.

The sale of Russian oil to India is entirely legal and not subject to sanctions, but in examining the shipping route, experts have suggested that this huge volume of shipments may involve a so-called “shadow fleet” of tankers specifically created by Moscow to maximise the Kremlin’s profits.

Read more HERE

[ridenwithbiden]

REPUBLICONS SERVE THEMSELVES

THEY'RE IN IT FOR THE MONEY

PERIOD

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation Wednesday that would require the Pentagon to return a portion of its enormous and ever-growing budget to the Treasury Department if it fails another audit in the coming fiscal year.

The Audit the Pentagon Act, an updated version of legislation first introduced in 2021, comes amid mounting concerns over rampant price gouging by military contractors and other forms of waste and abuse at an agency that's set to receive at least $842 billion for fiscal year 2024.

"The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades. That is absolutely unacceptable," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement as he unveiled the bill alongside Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

"If we are serious about spending taxpayer dollars wisely and effectively," said Sanders, "we have got to end the absurdity of the Pentagon being the only agency in the federal government that has never passed an independent audit."

In December, the Pentagon flunked its fifth consecutive audit, unable to account for more than 60% of its $3.5 trillion in total assets.

But congressional appropriators appear largely unphased as they prepare to raise the agency's budget to record levels, with some working to increase it beyond the topline set by the recently approved debt ceiling agreement. Watchdogs have warned that the deal includes a loophole that hawkish lawmakers could use to further inflate the Pentagon budget under the guise of aiding Ukraine.

Late Wednesday, following a lengthy markup session, the House Armed Services Committee passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which proposes a total military budget of $886 billion. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was the only committee member to vote no.

A huge chunk of the Pentagon's budget for next year is likely to go to profitable private contractors, which make a killing charging the federal government exorbitant sums for weapons and miscellaneous items, from toilet seats to ashtrays to coffee makers.

"Defense contractors are lining their pockets with taxpayer money while the Pentagon fails time and time again to pass an independent audit. It's a broken system," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a co-sponsor of the new bill. "We need to compel the Department of Defense to take fraud and mismanagement seriously—and we need Congress to stop inflating our nation's near-trillion-dollar defense budget."

"Putting the wants of contractors over the needs of our communities," he added, "isn't going to make our country any safer."

If passed, the Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would force every component of the Defense Department that fails an audit in fiscal year 2024 to return 1% of its budget to the Treasury Department.

A fact sheet released by Sanders' office argues that "the need for this audit is clear," pointing to a Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq report estimating that "$31-60 billion had been lost to fraud and waste."

"Separately, the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported that the Pentagon could not account for $45 billion in funding for reconstruction projects," the fact sheet notes. "A recent Ernst & Young audit of the Defense Logistics Agency found that it could not properly account for some $800 million in construction projects. CBS News recently reported that defense contractors were routinely overcharging the Pentagon—and the American taxpayer—by nearly 40-50%, and sometimes as high as 4,451%."

Further examples of the Pentagon's waste and accounting failures abound.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office released a report concluding that the Pentagon can't account for F-35 parts worth millions of dollars.

Earlier this week, as The Washington Post reported, the Pentagon said it "uncovered a significant accounting error that led it to overvalue the amount of military equipment it sent to Ukraine since Russia's invasion last year—by $6.2 billion."

"The 'valuation errors,' as a Pentagon spokeswoman put it, will allow the Pentagon to send more weapons to Ukraine now before going to Congress to request more money," the Post noted.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a supporter of the Audit the Pentagon Act, said Wednesday that "taxpayers can't keep writing blank checks—they deserve long-overdue transparency from the Pentagon about wasteful defense spending."

"If the Department of Defense cannot conduct a clean audit, as required by law," said Wyden, "Congress should impose tough financial consequences to hold the Pentagon accountable for mismanaging taxpayer money."

[eternalistic]

"The American government’s big pile of IOUs is about to get even bigger.

That was the conclusion of the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, which forecast this week that the US is on track to add $19 trillion to its national debt by 2034, with payments on that debt totalling some $12 trillion as higher interest rates increase the burden of the nation’s borrowing.

‍Serious interest

‍In the latest fiscal year, which ran to the end of September, the federal government raked in more than $4.4 trillion in receipts from individual taxpayers, with nearly half of that sum stemming from individual income taxes ($2.18 trillion). But, as many of us can surely relate to, the government's spending appetite consistently outpaces its income, resulting in a deficit of $1.7 trillion.

The magnitude of the national debt, currently ~$34 trillion in total, means that the government is shelling out nearly $2 billion a day on interest payments (~3% of GDP) just to service the debt. Were the government to somehow magically wipe out its debt — leaving it with no interest to pay — it would have saved a whopping ~$660 billion last year, though that still wouldn't be enough to get the overall federal budget back into the black.

The CBO forecasts have sparked a national conversation about the right level of federal spending, raising questions that beg political answers, rather than definitive economic ones."

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

You wanna know what really fucking bugs me? The only Secretary of the Treasury whose name I know is Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump's corrupt little toady. I know this because every single dollar bill has the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury on it, and while most signatures are illegible caligraphic scrawls, Steve printed his name in block letters like a child. Nine out of ten bills I get as change have his name on them, clear as day, so I am consistently reminded of the nazi regime that destroyed us. I don't know George W. Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, I don't know Barrack Obama's, I don't know Joe Biden's, but I know trump's, and I can't even ignore it when I see it.

These bills will circulate for decades. People are going to collect them in the future. Someone is going to frame one and hang it on their wall as the first dollar they ever earned. It makes me so irrationally angry I could spit.

STeVen T: MNUChin with random capitalization as if he had to sound it out one letter at a time, fuckin ay...

[sapphia]

USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.

Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.

It’s been six months.

[jobskenyaplace]

PROVISION OF SECURITY SERVICES AT THE NATIONAL TREASURY BUILDINGS 2024 - THE NATIONAL TREASURY

THE NATIONAL TREASURY TENDER AUGUST 2024  INVITATION TO TENDER PROVISION OF SECURITY SERVICES AT THE NATIONAL TREASURY BUILDING, BIMA HOUSE, HERUFI HOUSE, NATIONAL BANK BUILDING (17TH AND 18TH FLOORS), RE-INSURANCE PLAZA (5TH, 6TH AND 7TH FLOORS), ANNIVERSARY TOWERS (7TH FLOOR) AND CBK PENSION TOWERS (3RD FLOOR) TENDER NO: TNT/ONT/SECURITY/005/2024-2025 1. The National Treasury invites sealed…

[david-deactivated69420]

one day my brain will break in two and i’ll devote the rest of my life to chronicling american politics from 2015 to 2022ish.

[satireinfo]

President Biden Announces Plan to Cut National Debt by Turning It into an NFT

President Biden Announces Plan to Cut National Debt U.S. Treasury Embraces Crypto with New Debt NFTs Citizen Investors and Virtual Repo Men: A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility In a groundbreaking move that merges economics with the latest digital trends, President Biden has announced an innovative plan to cut the national debt: by turning it into a Non-Fungible Token (NFT). This bold strategy…

[notayesmanseconomics]

There are warning signs about the US fiscal position and the national debt

Today a story which was all the rage around 6 months ago has come back to the surface as the Financial Times has led with this. The US faces a Liz Truss-style market shock if the government ignores the country’s ballooning federal debt, the head of Congress’s independent fiscal watchdog has warned. To be fair to the head of the Congressional Budget Office he knew how to trigger the Financial…

[party-at-jacurutu]

i will continue to mildly deface government property 'til the day i die

[head-post]

UN opens an account in a Russian bank to carry out transactions in roubles

The United Nations has opened a bank account with a non-sanctioned Russian lender for ruble-denominated transactions, Reuters reports.

Sovcombank, one of 13 “systemically important” credit institutions in Russia, has applied to the US Treasury for a licence to make membership payments to the UN climate finance programme while its operations are blocked by US sanctions.

UN officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2022, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed Sovcombank on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, effectively removing it from the US financial system, freezing its US assets and banning it from trading with Americans.

Read more HERE

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #24

June 21-28 2024

The US Surgeon General declared for the first time ever, firearm violence a public health crisis. The nation's top doctor recommended the banning of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, the introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict their use in public spaces and penalize people who fail to safely store their weapons. President Trump dismissed Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in 2017 in part for his criticism of guns before his time in government, he was renominated for his post by President Biden in 2021. While the Surgeon General's reconstructions aren't binding a similar report on the risks of smoking in 1964 was the start of a national shift toward regulation of tobacco.

Vice-President Harris announced the first grants to be awarded through a ground breaking program to remove barriers to building more housing. Under President Biden more housing units are under construction than at any time in the last 50 years. Vice President Harris was announcing 85 million dollars in grants giving to communities in 21 states through the  Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO) program. The administration plans another 100 million in PRO grants at the end of the summer and has requested 100 million more for next year. The Treasury also announced it'll moved 100 million of left over Covid funds toward housing. All of this is part of plans to build 2 million affordable housing units and invest $258 billion in housing overall.

President Biden pardoned all former US service members convicted under the US Military's ban on gay sex. The pardon is believed to cover 2,000 veterans convicted of "consensual sodomy". Consensual sodomy was banned and a felony offense under the Uniform Code of Justice from 1951 till 2013. The Pardon will wipe clean those felony records and allow veterans to apply to change their discharge status.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.8 Billion in new infrastructure building across all 50 states, 4 territories and Washington DC. The program focuses on smaller, often community-oriented projects that span jurisdictions. This award saw a number of projects focused on climate and energy, like $25 million to help repair damage caused by permafrost melting amid higher temperatures in Alaska, or $23 million to help electrify the Downeast bus fleet in Maine.

The Department of Energy announced $2.7 billion to support domestic sources of nuclear fuel. The Biden administration hopes to build up America's domestic nuclear fuel to allow for greater stability and lower costs. Currently Russia is the world's top exporter of enriched uranium, supplying 24% of US nuclear fuel.

The Department of Interior awarded $127 million to 6 states to help clean up legacy pollution from orphaned oil and gas wells. The funding will help cap 600 wells in Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, New York and Ohio. So far thanks to administration efforts over 7,000 orphaned wells across the country have been capped, reduced approximately 11,530 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions

HUD announced $469 million to help remove dangerous lead from older homes. This program will focus on helping homeowners particularly low income ones remove lead paint and replace lead pipes in homes built before 1978. This represents one of the largest investments by the federal government to help private homeowners deal with a health and safety hazard.

Bonus: President Biden's efforts to forgive more student debt through his administration's SAVE plan hit a snag this week when federal courts in Kansas and Missouri blocked elements the Administration also suffered a set back at the Supreme Court as its efforts to regular smog causing pollution was rejected by the conservative majority in a 5-4 ruling that saw Amy Coney Barrett join the 3 liberals against the conservatives. This week's legal setbacks underline the importance of courts and the ability to nominate judges and Justices over the next 4 years.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A number of Senate Republicans on Tuesday rejected the idea of lifting the debt ceiling temporarily to buy Congress more time to negotiate a larger measure with the White House that would prevent a default.

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the deadline to prevent a default on the nation's debt could be as early as June 1, four days before her previous prediction. The U.S. hit the statutory borrowing limit in January and has been using “extraordinary measures” to pay the bills.

Several GOP lawmakers said that pushing back the deadline will only shift negotiations into the future because Washington is known for addressing these crises at the last minute.

"If she [Yellen] would have said June 15, it would have been done closer to June 15," said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. "If she would have said July 1, it would have been done closer to July 1. This will always go down to the wire when you have divided government."

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., agreed it's a "silly" idea, telling reporters: "We all work around deadlines here. If we do a short-term extension, it means we won’t get into negotiations in earnest until three or four weeks before whatever the new extension is. That’s how this place works."

"We’ve been kicking the can down the road for four and a half years since I’ve been here," said Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind. "We need to at least agree to something without delaying it."

Asked if he would be open to a short-term debt ceiling increase, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said, "No, absolutely not. That's just a bunch of gimmicks."

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., also said that it's a "mistake" because it brings "more uncertainty."

Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., also poured cold water over a short-term extension, saying it isn’t a good idea and cast doubt on whether it’d even have the votes.

“I would prefer that we get this done the first time. That always gets dicey. And, frankly, I don’t even know if there’d be the votes for that,” Thune told reporters. “I think there’s going to have to be a really earnest effort made to try and negotiate something that can get passed by the deadline.”

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., meanwhile, said he was open to a 30-day extension to lift the debt limit.

While members of Congress are not actively pursuing a short-term extension at the moment, Congress has passed such measures in recent debacles over the debt ceiling to allow more time for talks.

Senate Democratic leaders are keen on sticking to the White House's demand to pass a clean debt ceiling increase.

"Our position remains the same," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Tuesday. "Both parties should do what we have done in the past, the last three times default faced us. Both parties should pass a clean bipartisan bill to avoid default together."

Schumer lashed out at House Republicans and specifically Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., for the debt limit bill they passed last week in the lower chamber. Schumer said McCarthy "caved to extremists" in agreeing to the legislation that would slash federal spending.

McCarthy, in a statement responding to Yellen's letter, said Monday that "House Republicans did their job." He also criticized President Joe Biden, saying he "has refused to do his job."

McCarthy did, however, accept Biden's invitation to meet with him and other top congressional leaders at the White House on May 9 to discuss the debt ceiling, a source familiar with the call confirmed.

House Democrats are also preparing a plan to pass a clean debt ceiling bill through a special rule, which could be brought to the floor without support from GOP leadership. It would, however, need all Democratic House members to vote for it — as well as a handful of Republicans — and at least 60 Senators to defeat a filibuster in the Senate.