The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

Deficits are a major issue in this year's presidential campaign, but USA TODAY has calculated federal finances under accounting rules since 2004 and found no correlation between fluctuations in the deficit and which party ran Congress or the White House.

Key findings:

•Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That's $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.

•Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.

•Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.

"By law, the federal government can't tell the truth," says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting.

Jim Horney, a former Senate budget staff expert now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says retirement programs should not count as part of the deficit because, unlike a business, Congress can change what it owes by cutting benefits or lifting taxes.

"It's not easy, but it can be done. Retirement programs are not legal obligations," he says.

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Read more at USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/federal-deficit-accounting/55179748/1

(CNSNews.com) – Discouraged workers are continuing to exit the labor force after giving up hope of finding a job, driving down the unemployment rate as they exit a new Gallup unemployment survey found.

The survey, conducted midway through the month of May, found that the unemployment rate – as measured by Gallup – declined from 8.3 percent in April to 8.2 percent in mid-May.

Gallup’s survey is different from the official unemployment rate compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in that the Gallup survey is a 30-day tracking survey conducted from mid-April to mid-May. In contrast, BLS conducts its survey over one week in mid-May.

The Gallup survey found that unemployment – slightly higher than the official rate of 8.1 percent – declined slightly. However, Gallup also found that the workforce participation rate – the percentage of eligible people working or actively looking for work – also declined slightly from 67.8 percent to 67.5 percent.

Recent declines in the official unemployment rate have been due in large part to similar declines in the workforce as discouraged workers gave up looking for work.

The official unemployment rate has steadily fallen from its post-recession high of 10 percent nearly a year and a half ago, to 8.1 percent today. However, job creation has been at or below 250,000 jobs per month for much of that time.

As job creation has continued to be so low – barely enough to keep up with the natural growth in the working-age population – the declines in the unemployment rate have largely come instead from discouraged workers leaving the workforce.

Gallup’s mid-month survey suggests that this months-long trend of discouraged workers fleeing the workforce is continuing in May.

“Much of this decline may be due to a decline in the workforce participation rate – Americans 18 years or older who have a job or are actively looking for work – which fell to 67.5 percent in mid-May from 67.8 percent in March. As people get discouraged and drop out of the workforce, the unemployment rate tends to decline,” Gallup said in a May 17 news release accompanying the poll.

Gallup found other results that could point to discouraged workers still leaving the workforce – among them a smaller decline in the unemployment rate than a year ago and a decline in the under-employment rate.

Under-employment – unemployed persons and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time work – fell from 18.2 percent in April to 18 percent in mid-May, Gallup found.

Gallup also found that the decrease in the unemployment rate – typical for this time of year – was not nearly as large as last year’s decrease, suggesting that employers may not be hiring as much this spring as they did last spring due to the sluggish pace of the recovery.

“[C]ompanies tend to increase their hiring during April and May. However, this year's slow economic growth and some extra hiring earlier this year may have employers holding back to some degree from their normal hiring increases.”

Gallup noted that its findings – while usually in sync with the BLS figures – now show significantly higher unemployment and underemployment than the official figures. Gallup said the official figures were “inconsistent” with the state of the economy.

“Gallup's unemployment measurements now and in April stand in sharp contrast to those the government provided,” Gallup said. “The BLS reported an April unadjusted unemployment rate of 7.7% and an adjusted unemployment rate of 8.1%. These findings were generally seen as inconsistent with the state of the economy and the findings of the BLS payroll survey.

“There were not enough jobs created last month – even after the size of the workforce declined – to lower the unemployment rate as much as the government reported,” Gallup added.

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Read more at CNSNews.com: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/discouraged-workers-still-giving-driving-down-work-force-poll-finds

As women who have had to balance our families’ checkbooks, we believe we have a unique perspective on how the policies being made in Washington, D.C., will eventually affect average pocketbooks across America. Unfortunately, Washington is broken and only making life harder for families who are already struggling to make ends meet.

A prime example is the Democrats’ government takeover of health care, and the emerging picture should deeply concern any woman who wants to ensure they have quality health care for themselves and their family. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently called this big-government behemoth the “crown jewel” of the Democrats’ agenda, so it is certainly worth examining how it would affect our families.

President Barack Obama promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” but the facts now say otherwise. With the government takeover of health care beginning to take effect, it now seems millions of families will be forced to find health care elsewhere when the big-government law applies its mandates and fees. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many as 20 million people will be forced from their health insurance plans as the 2010 law takes full effect. This represents an enormous broken promise and a significant intrusion on millions of families and their ability to make their own health care decisions free from government interference.

For the family pocketbook, the law is contributing to rising health care premiums that are hurting many in these difficult times. Last year, health insurance premiums on average climbed 12.3 percent, and that number isn’t likely to change soon. It should be no surprise that government mandates and $500 billion in new taxes will make health care more expensive, and this is having a devastating effect on family finances that are already stretched thin. Instead of focusing on creating jobs and fixing the economy, the Democrats’ “crown jewel” since they took control of Washington is actively making life harder for families and small businesses across the country.

For the next generation, the government takeover of health care is proving to be a ticking deficit time bomb and hardly revenue-neutral as Democrats claimed when they passed it. The latest estimates show Obamacare could add up to half a trillion dollars to the deficit, and this is on top of the largest spending spree in history already happening in Washington. Democrats passed their government health care takeover, and both you and your children as future taxpayers will be forced to sacrifice down the line to pick up the tab.

And yet the Democrats refuse to listen to the objections of American families. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) insists that the health care takeover is becoming more and more popular as more provisions of the law come into effect, but polls show the complete opposite is happening. A solid majority of American voters — 53 percent to 39 percent according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll — opposes their failed big-government experiment, and opinions of the law are at all-time lows with no end in sight.

But instead of recognizing this fact, out-of-touch Democratic leaders in Washington remain blissfully ignorant to the outrage voters across the country feel. In fact, Democrats are vowing to make this a key issue in their re-election campaigns, even though the law has only grown more unpopular. 

What we and millions of families across the country are left with is a string of broken promises that will continue to unravel and make life even harder for families already struggling with the stagnant economy.

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and the Democrats’ government takeover of health care is a reminder that this is all too common in Washington.

The stark reality of the law — families forced off their current health insurance plans, rising monthly premiums and soaring costs for taxpayers — should be more than enough to demonstrate why Obamacare must be repealed and replaced with a patient-centered approach instead.

Pelosi famously said, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” We now know what’s in it, and we’ve had enough.

Maggie Brooks is a Republican House candidate in New York’s 25th district. Kim Vann is a Republican House candidate in California’s 3rd district. Jackie Walorski is a Republican House candidate in Indiana’s 2nd district.

How many times have we heard that this was the worst recession since the Great Depression? That may be true—although the double-dip recession of the early 1980s was about comparable. Less publicized is that our current recovery pales in comparison with most other recoveries, including the one following the Great Depression.

The Great Depression started with major economic contractions in 1930, '31, '32 and '33. In the three following years, the economy rebounded strongly with growth rates of 11%, 9% and 13%, respectively.

The current recovery began in the second half of 2009, but economic growth has been weak. Growth in 2010 was 3% and in 2011 it was 1.7%. Who knows what 2012 will bring, but the current growth rate looks to be about 2%, according to the consensus of economists recently polled by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Sadly, we have never really recovered from the recession. The economy has not even returned to its long-term growth rate and is certainly not making up for lost ground. No doubt, there are favorable economic numbers to be found, but overall we continue to struggle.

During the postwar period up to the current recession (1947-2007), the average annual growth rate for the U.S. was 3.4%. The last three decades have experienced somewhat slower growth than the earlier periods, but even in the period 1977-2007, the average growth rate was 3%. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recovery began in the second half of 2009. Since that time, the economy has grown at 2.4%, below our long-term trend by either measure. At this point, the economy is 12% smaller than it would have been had we stayed on trend growth since 2007.

Worse, the gap is growing over time. Today, the economy is four percentage points further from the trend line than it was the first quarter of 2009 when this administration's nearly $900 billion fiscal stimulus efforts began. If forecasts of around 2% growth turn out to be accurate, we will add to that gap this year.

Contrast this weak growth with the recovery that followed the other large recession of recent decades. In the early 1980s, the economy experienced a double-dip recession, with contractions in both 1980 and '82. But growth rates in the subsequent two years averaged almost 6%. The high growth that persisted throughout the 1980s brought the economy quickly back to the trend line. Unlike the current period, from 1983 on, the economy was in rapid catch-up mode and eventually regained all that had been lost during the early '80s.

Indeed, that was the expectation. As economist Victor Zarnowitz of the University of Chicago argued many years ago, the strength of the recovery is related to the depth of the recession. Big recessions are followed by robust recoveries, presumably because more idle resources are available to be tapped. Unfortunately, the current post-recession period has not followed the pattern.

The 2007-09 recession was induced by a financial crisis and some, most notably economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (authors of "This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly"), argue that financial crises pose more difficult recovery problems than do policy-induced recessions.

The early '80s recession could be viewed as induced by the Federal Reserve's tight monetary policy (i.e., raising interest rates), which was designed to rein in inflation. Growth returns more rapidly, they argue, when the policy hindering it changes (i.e., the Fed lowers interest rates) than when the economy is struggling after a severe credit crisis like the one we experienced after the 2008 collapse of Bear Stearns.

But some, Stanford economist John Taylor being their leading spokesman, argue that the current recession was caused by Fed policy as well—rates remained too low for too long in the lead up to the subprime mortgage fiasco. The Great Depression also began with a financial crisis but saw high growth rates following contractionary years, and the output lost in negative years was eventually regained through higher subsequent growth.

Are there other factors that may have contributed to the slow recovery that we are experiencing? It would be difficult to argue that government polices over the past three years have enhanced confidence in the U.S. business environment. Threats of higher taxes, the constantly increasing regulatory burden, the failure to pursue an aggressive trade policy that will open markets to U.S. exports, and the enormous increase in government spending all are growth impediments. Policies have focused on short-run changes and gimmicks—recall cash for clunkers and first-time home buyer credits—rather than on creating conditions that are favorable to investment that raise productivity and wages.

There are some positive developments. The labor market is improving, albeit slowly. Profits remain high and the stock market has enjoyed some recent success. We can hope that these indicate better times and higher growth ahead. But unless we move to a set of economic policies that are aimed at growing the economy rather than at promoting social agendas, this may be the first "recovery" in history that fails to see us return to long-term average growth.

Mr. Lazear, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-2009, is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a Hoover Institution fellow.

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Read more at The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577311470997904292.html