Friday's news that U.S. gross domestic product grew by only 2.5 percent came as a disappointment. After all, that performance not only fell short of the consensus expectation of three percent GDP growth, but was aided by a one-time bump for inventory expansion deferred from the last quarter of 2012. And while the strengthening housing […]

In the run-up to today's celebration at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, America's 43rd President declared that "history will ultimately judge" his tenure in the White House. And that is precisely the problem for the custodians of Bush's legacy. After all, the slaughter of 3,000 people on 9/11, the catastrophic and unnecessary war in […]

Thanks to graduate student Thomas Herndon, economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart are now the stuff of pop culture legend. (Even Stephen Colbert is getting in on the act.) But the epic failure of their Excel spreadsheets is no laughing matter. In the United States and across Europe, austerity advocates have seized on their dubious […]

The Attorney General of the United States branded him a "terrorist," and with good reason. His bombings killed two people and wounded over 150 others. "Radicalized" as a child, his acts of terror were motivated by his extremist religious ideology. Armed and dangerous, he eluded a massive federal manhunt, likely with the support of his […]

Two weeks ago, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his state would forego billions of dollars in expanded federal Medicaid funding that could help provide health insurance for 1.5 million of his lower-income residents. Rejecting an estimated $90 billion over the next decade for his 46th ranked health care system, Perry declared that "Texas will not […]

Just in time for Tax Day, President Obama released his 2012 return to the IRS. And right on cue, conservative commentators blasted the President for paying only 18.4 percent ($112,000) of his $609,000 in income to Uncle Sam. Predictably, while CNN's Erin Burnett slammed Obama's payment to the Treasury as "pretty low and frankly almost […]

The United States may have serious longer-term fiscal problems, but Social Security is not chief among them. After all, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion surplus and will continue to grow until 2021. Even though the population of Americans over 65 will grow by a third over the next decade, by 2035 […]

Despite slashing the national debt by an additional $1.8 trillion over the next decade, President Obama's proposed fiscal year 2014 budget was received with two predictable talking points by Republican leaders. House Majority Eric Cantor, who previously complained about being called a "hostage taker," protested that "we ought to do so without holding [entitlement cuts] […]

At the very start of his political career back in the 1970's, Montana Senator Max Baucus asked New Deal veteran James Rowe Jr., "Do you think I should run as a Republican or a Democrat?" Rowe's uneasy answer--"I sure hope you'll be a Democrat"--has defined Baucus' career ever since. After all, he voted for the […]

During his first run for the White House, Mitt Romney briefly crowed that "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." But two days later, he was forced to amend that pander to the NRA by clarifying, "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will." Now his new hometown […]