With proposals from both President Obama and GOP leaders to broaden the tax base, it seems likely that some cherished income tax deductions may be reduced or even eliminated, and one leading candidate for the chopping block is the deduction for mortgage interest.
When some new members of Congress recently said they oppose raising the U.S. debt limit, it triggered warnings of "catastrophic consequences." Indeed, the result wouldn't be pretty. But here's what's at stake as the country's debt burden swells every year.
President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform couldn't get enough of its members to approve its own recommendations or to find the 14 votes needed to send its proposal to Congress. But don't count out deficit reduction yet.
President Obama's blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel proposed today perhaps the most sweeping spending cuts in U.S. history to prevent the federal budget from careening off a fiscal cliff into never-ending debt. Here's the commission's hit list.
The new plan to reduce the national deficit, expected to be released Wednesday, includes many of the highly controversial proposals from the previous version, including increasing the Social Security age and reducing benefits from the program.
The U.S. must act to rein in its massive budget deficits or face the risk of a bond market crisis, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said Sunday. If deficits begin to frighten the bond market, interest rates will rise, undermining the recovery, and possibly causing a double-dip recession.