With the Affordable Care Act having passed constitutional muster, Republicans are once again targeting the Internal Revenue Service in order to deny funding for the ACA's implementation. Hoping to repeat the GOP's successful 1990's war on the agency, Republicans like Maine Governor Paul LePage are resurrecting terms like "the new Gestapo" to slander the IRS. […]

Back in 2010, Republicans swept to power in no small part by scaring the bejesus out of elderly voters over supposed Democratic cuts to Medicare. But now that the Supreme Court has preserved the Affordable Care Act, Mitt Romney and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill are once again darkly warning that "Obamacare cuts Medicare […]

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, the greatest threat to enabling health insurance for 30 million uninsured Americans may come not from Republicans in Congress, but in the states. With the Court's ruling that the federal government cannot penalize states who refuse to accept the expansion of Medicaid, Republican […]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That is, according the U.S. media, July 2012 was an excellent opportunity for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to showcase his human side at his $8 million lakeside estate in New Hampshire. But when then-Senator Barack Obama took time from the campaign in […]

Few battle cries rally Republicans more than the demand for "states' rights." But for today's Party of Lincoln, that ideological bludgeon once used to deny millions of Americans their freedom for the first century of the Republic and ignore their rights in the second has a new purpose. When it comes to helping Americans realize […]

In recent weeks, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has tried to redefine the calendar by inserting the new milestone "AB"--or "After Bain"-- into the timeline of human history. Defending its man from damaging reports that he profited when Bain Capital invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas, extracted massive dividends and fees from firms that later […]

Congressional Republicans on Thursday dispatched some of their best and brightest to the Supreme Court in heady anticipation of the GOP triumph that never came. But when Chief Justice Roberts announced the decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch "folded his arms across his chest, his mouth slightly agape." His slack-jawed response […]

In the wake of this week's Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, Republican governors are talking tough about turning down expanded federal Medicaid spending that would enable insurance coverage for millions of their residents. Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, who warned the "frightening" Court decision could lead to penalties for those who "refuse to eat […]

In February 2009, President Obama delivered what Steve Benen rightly described as the largest two-year tax cut in American history. Nevertheless, the New York Times asked in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" What happened, of course, was the Democrats' drubbing […]

Within days of the passage of President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell declared, "I think [our] slogan will be 'repeal and replace', 'repeal and replace.'" But now that the Supreme Court has largely upheld the dreaded Obamacare, Republicans have yet to decide what to replace it with. While […]