All of Washington seems to be in cardiac arrest over news reports late last week that Donald Trump is planning a budget featuring $10 trillion in cuts over the next decade. We can only hope and pray that the reports are accurate. This is an enterprise that has been borrowing $1 trillion a year for the past decade and is expected to continue to do so for years and decades to come. The national indebtedness will soon exceed $20 trillion, and everyone in Washington is in denial about this metastasizing cancer cell when they should be ordering radiation therapy before it kills off the economy. Yes, even in Washington, $10 trillion is a whole lot of money. It's roughly equal to the entire amount of debt that was accumulated by Barack Obama in eight years. The scaremongers say that cuts of this magnitude would have devastating effects on social programs and vital federal services. Wrong. Even with this overdue downsizing, the federal government would still grow in size over the next decade. It just wouldn't grow nearly as quickly as it is projected to if nothing at all is done.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul recently raised eyebrows when, in a op-ed for Time, he wrote that he would vote against a budget resolution that includes instructions to repeal ObamaCare through reconciliation if it does not balance.

Back in early 2015 oil and gas company Conoco-Phillips requested a permit from the Obama administration to launch an oil drilling project in Alaska. The energy project, called the Greater Moose’s Tooth Development, is located within the National Petroleum Reserve and would create thousands of jobs in an economically depressed area of the state. The project has the full approval of the local community, and poses little threat to the environment in a sparsely populated region.