That didn't take long. As the battle over health care reform reached a fever pitch in the fall of 2009, the Republican National Committee rolled out a "Seniors' Bill of Rights." But with the midterms safely won, the GOP has predictably turned its back on its pledge of "no cuts to Medicare to pay for […]

As Tax Day 2011 arrives, the distance between the tax debate and tax reality has perhaps never been larger. New data from the IRS revealed that over since the mid-1990's, the richest 400 taxpayers saw their incomes double and their tax rates halved. Overall, the gilded-class has seen its effective tax rates plummet. Meanwhile, prosecutions […]

It is often said that historical events occur twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. But sometimes, as with the predictable GOP opposition to small tax increases for wealthy Americans, the farce is double. After all, every single Republican in the House and Senate voted against Bill Clinton's 1993 upper-income tax hikes, calling it […]

In a telling moment during the run-up to the midterm elections last fall, Congressman Paul Ryan declared of his proposed Roadmap for America's Future, "My plan is not the Republican Party's platform and was never intended to be." Not, it turned out, until after Election Day. Because while 235 House Republicans with Speaker John Boehner's […]

If nothing else, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has unfortunate timing. On April Fool's Day 2009, Ryan rolled out the first incarnation of his Roadmap for America's Future, the document which served as the basis for the 2012 GOP budget proposal. Now on Tax Day 2011, House Republicans will pass that blueprint designed to […]

Over the past few days, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl has become a national laughingstock. Not because of his 30-fold error in claiming on the Senate floor that "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does" is related to abortion, but because he later insisted his lie was "not intended to be a factual statement." […]

Last week, the political chattering classes praised Republican Paul Ryan's "serious" budget proposal to slash $4.3 trillion in spending in order to fund yet another round of upper-income tax cuts. But over just the past few days, the New York Times' David Leonhardt, Slate's Annie Lowery and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post offered a […]

Among the $39 billion in spending cuts contained in the budget deal reached last, one stands out as perhaps the most cynical - and counterproductive. Republicans insisted that the Internal Revenue Service receive no additional funding through September, rebuffing President Obama's request for an additional $600 million to crack down on the tax fraud, evasion […]

When George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office, Republican majorities in Congress voted seven times to increase the U.S. debt ceiling. That recent history, combined with the inconvenient truth that the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under Bush, may have prompted then Minority Leader John Boehner to warn his GOP […]

In the aftermath of Friday's budget agreement, it's no longer a question of whether the U.S. is going to slash spending, but where, when and by how much. On the heels of the $38.5 billion in cuts to discretionary, non-defense spending Obama adviser David Plouffe deemed "draconian", President Obama this week will lay out his […]