Uncle Sam runs $114 billion surplus in April- CNN.com

In April a $114 increase was booked by the U.S Treasury Department, this is the biggest increase in money this month has seen since 2008, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Overall spending has decreased 2%. The drop is due to lower than expected interest payments and other spending, including defense.

Unemployment benefits went down 31%. Federal spending on unemployment insurance: Annual outlays increased from an average of $33 billion from 2004 through 2007 to $119 billion in 2009 and $155 billion in 2010; they dropped to $93 billion in 2012 and are expected to decline further over the next few years. Out of all the areas to reduce spending this is a great one to do so. Unemployment effects a small amount of people compared to the other areas of spending.

The trend in higher tax receipts and lower overall spending has been in effect for awhile. Although people might not like higher taxes I definitely think it is for the better of the country. In order to decrease the debt deficit it is essential to decrease spending and increase taxes, reasonably. 

What surprised me was the decrease in spending by 5%. Military spending is greater than Medicare ($529 billion), Medicaid ($331 billion), or the interest payment on the debt ($251). It's also more than the three next largest departments combined: Health and Human Services ($73.1 billion), Education ($68.6 billion) and Housing and Urban Development ($32.6 billion). With defense being the main concern in this country I did not expect for spending to decrease that much. I thought it would stay relatively steady. But because military spending is so expensive a 5% decrease is a lot of money. I do think it was a good decision to decrease spending on military.  

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/07/news/economy/april-budget-surplus-cbo/index.html?iid=SF_BN_Lead

Budget Office Raises Deficit Estimate for Fiscal Year to $506 Billion - New York Times

The federal deficit is expected to reach 506 billion dollars this current fiscal year. In April the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit would only reach 492 billion dollars.The Congressional Budget Office projected Monday that the 2014 shortfall will decline to 2.8% of GDP  or $492 billion. That's about $23 billion below what the CBO forecast just a few months ago. And it's well below the 4.1% or $680 billion recorded last year.

The Congressional Budget Office was completely off with their estimation of being only 492 billion dollars in debt. One of the reasons why they were so incorrect was because of the lower than expected corporate income tax. With the corporate tax rate up to 35% you would think America's corporate income tax would be high, but that is not the case.

Many large American corporations like Pfizer, a pharmaceutical corporation headquartered in New York City, are considering moving their headquarters elsewhere to avoid the country's large corporate income tax. Pfizer will likely move they're headquarters to England where the corporate income tax is as low as 20%. I think America needs to do something about these large corporations that generate huge amounts of income for this country. I don't think lowering the tax on these corporations is the answer. There needs to be an initiative for the corporations to stay put.

Up until recently companies that moved out of the country were kicked out of American stock's index. Because of this companies were forced to move to smaller firms which lowered the share price hurting the company. In order to gain revenue for this country I think its important for the big corporations to stay. So going back to the way things were would be a great idea in my opinion.


 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/us/politics/budget-office-raises-deficit-estimate-for-fiscal-year-to-506-billion.html?ref=business&_r=0