JUNEAU – Wednesday, Senator Scott Kawasaki (D-Fairbanks) introduced SB 102 to implement a temporary, voluntary retirement incentive program to increase state savings by allowing public employees to retire early. Longer-serving public employees are usually higher paid in the state. In many cases, pensions paid to retired employees cost the state less money than their […]
With the passage of deep tax cuts late last year, annual U.S. budget deficits are expected to balloon over the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday. The independent financial scorekeeper said that the long-term U.S. debt, now more than $21 trillion, could soar to more than $33 trillion by 2028, with increasing […]
Juneau – A recent report from the Department of Revenue shows the state is losing more than a half billion dollars in annual revenue by not enacting the modest 25% tax on oil company profits passed by the House last year. Today, Representative Les Gara (D-Anchorage) released the following statement regarding the role oil taxes […]
Back in September I wrote about our “ethically challenged” democratic system. I said, “We are caught in a downward, self-destructive [debt] spiral.” If you doubted me then, those doubts should have been exploded last week. Congressional leaders agreed to increase federal spending by nearly $300 billion above the already-rising limits stipulated by the Budget Control Act of […]