When House Speaker John Boehner denounced Democratic proposals to fund a payroll tax cut extension through a surtax on millionaires as a "job-killing tax hike on small businesses," he might have wanted to check with some first. As NPR revealed yesterday, the Congressional Republicans they consulted, including in the House and Senate leadership, "were unable […]

If nothing else, former House Speaker and new GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich is all about keeping his options open. After all, Newt has gone through three religions and three wives. As it turns out, when it comes to Medicare, Social Security and the tax code, President Gingrich wants Americans to have options as well. In […]

When President Obama on Tuesday declared that decades of Republican trickle-down economics "never worked," conservatives were predictably apoplectic. But for all of their protests of "class warfare", "socialism" and worse, Obama was being kind to the Republican ideologues. After all, as the historical record shows, from economic growth and job creation to stock market performance […]

He called for rationing Medicare, replacing it with an underfunded voucher system that would dramatically shift costs to elderly Americans. He proposed repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing Medicaid by $1.4 trillion over the next decade and turning what's left over to the states as block grants. By 2021, his budget would leave up to […]

By almost any measure, the 2006 universal care law Governor Mitt Romney championed in Massachusetts has been a clear success. A bipartisan bill which Ted Kennedy worked closely with Romney to pass, the law has reduced the ranks of the uninsured from 10 percent to a national low of two percent. Massachusetts residents overwhelmingly favor […]

The Republican presidential contest is a lot like The Wizard of Oz: no brain, no heart and a whole lot of cowardly lyin'. And perhaps on no issue is the GOP's field's misguided cruelty and duplicity more profound than illegal immigration. After all, while Michele Bachmann wants to deport all 11 million current illegal aliens […]

A devastating new DNC ad this week has once again highlighted Mitt Romney's gymnastic flip-flops on the issue of abortion. Rushing to his defense, conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker claimed his opportunism was instead deeply principled, declaring "Romney's own change of heart evolved not from personal experience but rather from a purposeful course of […]

Last year, Republicans successfully waged a scorched-earth campaign to preserve at all costs the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans. Back then, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl defended the Treasury-draining, $70 billion a year windfall for the wealthy by proclaiming, "you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision […]

For weeks, rumors have been swirling that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing his cabinet towards a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. In the U.S., such a move enjoys the backing not only of the usual neoconservative suspects, but virtually all of the Republican presidential candidates. But while would-be GOP President Mitt Romney […]

When Newt Gingrich proposed his 15 percent flat-tax scheme in October, the plan like the former House Speaker himself was viewed as an afterthought in the GOP presidential race. But now that Gingrich is the new Republican frontrunner, his tax cut proposal is finally getting the scrutiny it deserves. Because like fellow flat-taxers Herman Cain […]