Word that Speaker John Boehner will bring a "clean" debt ceiling bill up for a vote in the House On Tuesday brought a sigh of relief to Washington and global financial markets. After all, a U.S. default arising from a refusal to pay the bills Uncle Sam has already incurred would have meant, as Boehner […]

And now for today's math quiz. Let's say you decide to work 2 percent fewer hours this year. At the end of the year, your total compensation is 1 percent lower. Does that mean you got a pay cut? If you answered "yes," you might want to reread the question. Or, you might be Marc […]

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus made a startling statement. The President, Priebus charged, "stole $700 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare," adding, "If any person in this entire debate has blood on their hands in regard to Medicare, it's Barack Obama." That was a pretty remarkable claim for the […]

Despite their trumpeting of its latest budget report, it's no secret that Republicans hate the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In 2011, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) denounced the CBO's forecast that the Affordable Care Act will reduce--not increase--the U.S. national debt, calling its projections "budget gimmickry." That November, momentary GOP presidential frontrunner Newt […]

Days after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest projections House Republicans on Friday announced their latest ransom demand for raising the debt ceiling. John Boehner's minions will vote to avoid a U.S. default and a global economic calamity if the Medicare "doc" fix is patched for nine months and cuts to veterans' […]

Until the GOP took over the House of Representatives in 2011, raising the U.S. debt ceiling was a routine, uncontroversial legislative activity. Almost always supported by the party in power in the House and Senate, increases in Uncle Sam's borrowing authority were usually linked to new major new spending laws. Otherwise, Congress would send the […]

The Middle East peace process being led by Secretary of State John Kerry is reaching crunch time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While his coalition partners to his left will likely walk if he abandons the process, many in his own Likud Party and among its hard-right allies will rebel if he consummates a […]

Income inequality is not a disease, but rather a symptom of a disease. For over four decades, the United States has suffered from an atrophying of the great American middle class. The decline of post-World War II American economic dominance, the rise of new international competitors, the withering (and the smothering) of trade unions and […]

Long before he became America's preeminent conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer was a practicing physician in Boston. Now, the psychiatrist turned commentator is offering a prescription for his Republican Party suffering from the blowback of its war on women. The antidote to the yawning gender gap expanded by GOP proclamations about "legitimate rape" and other "gifts […]

Along with his fellow GOP Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC), Utah's Orrin Hatch this week unveiled a new Republican plan to replace Obamacare. Due to its lack of a health insurance mandate, less generous tax credits to purchase coverage and stricter eligibility for Medicaid, the Hatch plan yet to be scored by […]