Earlier this year, 235 GOP House members and 40 Republican Senators voted for the Paul Ryan budget and its plan to ration Medicare. By ending the traditional government insurance program and leaving the elderly with under-funded vouchers to purchase much more expensive coverage from private insurers, Ryan's Republicans would dramatically shift the cost burden to […]

During his presidency and after, George W. Bush was often criticized as the "nobody could have predicted president." After all, from 9/11 and the post-invasion chaos in Iraq to Hurricane Katrina's drowning of New Orleans, the economic calamity of 2008 and so much more, Bush and his team repeatedly claimed "I don't think anybody could […]

With the rise of the Occupy movement and confirmation from the nonpartisan CBO that the U.S. income gap is at its highest level since 1929, defensive conservatives by necessity spawned a thriving if laughable cottage industry in income inequality denialism. Now with word from the New York Times that the share of income for the […]

So the GOP's petulance has come to this. Opposition by House Republicans to any payroll tax cut extension began to fade last week only after President Obama issued a veto threat against a GOP bill tying the continued relief for working Americans to approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project. The difference, Rep, Jeff […]

What's the difference between Newt Gingrich and God? God doesn't think he's Newt Gingrich. In a Republican presidential contest in which most of the major contenders, including Gingrich, claimed God "called" them to run, Newt alone worships at his own alter. Even after burning through three religions and three wives, Gingrich's self-proclaimed mission on earth […]

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 […]