Since 2011, the federal government has slashed $2.5 trillion from the projected national debt over the next decade. Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reduced its annual deficit forecast for the federal government to $642 billion, about half of the amount it projected when Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, […]

On Tuesday night, CNN Out Front host Erin Burnett officially joined the ranks of Barack Obama's inquisitors with her special, "The Truth about Benghazi." But for two years, she's been serving as the network's fear-monger about the U.S. national debt. "It has been 730 days since the U.S. lost its top credit rating," Burnett complained […]

Florida Senator and obvious 2016 GOP White House hopeful Marco Rubio used a Fox News op-ed last Thursday to publish one of the most comical acts of budgetary extortion in recent memory. Demanding that Congress shutter the federal government rather than pay for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in its next short term […]

During the 2012 campaign, Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan proposed what might be called "tax cuts for cowards." That is, Romney/Ryan proposed slashing tax rates for the wealthy and corporations, partially offsetting the trillions in lost revenue by promising to close some of the hundreds of loopholes and tax breaks that cost Uncle Sam […]

When the dust-up over the IRS' treatment of non-profit "social welfare organizations" first erupted in early May, I predicted that whatever the findings of looming Internal Revenue Service probes, "the GOP will play politics with the IRS budget regardless. And the certain result will be tens of billions in less revenue annually for Uncle Sam--and […]

As has been thoroughly documented, until 2011 no political party had both the votes and the intent to block an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling and thereby trigger both a U.S. default and a global economic catastrophe. Now, despite plummeting annual federal budget deficits, a stabilization of the debt as a percentage of the […]

In a campaign email to supporters Tuesday, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced he would reveal "exciting future plans" next Monday in San Antonio. But if Governor Perry is planning to pass up a fourth term in order to wage a second campaign for President, he will find he already has plenty of company from inside […]

In recent week, a growing consensus of economists, analysts and political leaders has called for an end to U.S. fiscal austerity. Even as the influential Reinhart-Rogoff high-debt/low-growth thesis was being shredded, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) slashed its FY 2013 deficit forecast by $200 billion while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that failure to […]

Until Republicans captured their House majority in January 2011, no political party ever had both the intent and the votes to block an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling. While figures in both parties have cast symbolic votes against raising Uncle Sam's borrowing authority (Senator Barack Obama among them), until 2011 neither Democrats nor Republicans […]

On January 7, 200--two weeks before Barack Obama took the oath of office--the Congressional Budget Office forecast the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 at $1.2 trillion. Now, the CBO is projecting the deficit will be only $642 billion for FY 2013, $200 billion less than the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper estimated as recently as […]