In figure skating, gymnastics, skateboarding and other sports, performing a720-degree, double-rotation is not for the faint of heart. When it comes to their plan to end the Medicare system of guaranteed insurance for 46 million Americans, Republicans attempting the rare 720 are learning that the hard way. After all, in just two short years, members […]

In recent weeks, polls by CBS and Gallup showed that Americans by a 2-to-1 margin oppose raising the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Among Republicans, the gap is a staggering 70% to 8%. Yet the Ryan GOP budget passed by the House would add $6 trillion in new red ink over the decade and require, […]

The truth will set you free. Just not if you're John Boehner trying to explain the need to raise the U.S. debt ceiling to the Tea Party. Less than three weeks after declaring "there's no daylight between the Tea Party and me," Boehner told shocked Ohio Tea Partiers that the federal government will have to […]

For decades, Republicans have deployed the word "uncertainty" to block action on acid rain, global warming, reproductive rights, the teaching of evolution and just about any other public policy with which they disagreed. On no issue has the Republicans' regurgitation of the uncertainty talking point been more rapid than on taxes. But while GOP leaders […]

On Friday, Medicare's board of trustees announced that the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 has added eight years of solvency to the health care program serving 46 million American seniors. That news capped a week of political irony involving Medicare. After freshmen House Republicans complained to President Obama about the backlash over their vote […]

If you were wondering what impact the Paul Ryan budget passed last month by all but four House Republicans will have on American health care, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute have your answer. If enacted, the GOP repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) combined with the conversion of Medicaid into […]

While all eyes this week were focused on the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, back in Washington Vice President Biden met with Democratic and Republican budget negotiators in search of a compromise to reduce the U.S. national debt. As it turns out, the two events are related. Because almost 10 years after President […]

Back in 2008, Republicans for a fleeting moment held high hopes of making inroads into the monolithic Democratic voting block that is Jewish Americans. Fleeting, it turned out, in no small measure due to the selection of Sarah Palin as the GOP VP choice. Now, the leading lights of the Republican Party are once again […]

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Minnesota Representative and would-be 2012 GOP White House hopeful Michele Bachmann announced she was placing an "asterisk" next to her vote for the Paul Ryan budget plan to end Medicare as we know it. Given her usual hyperbole, such as her warning this week that the federal tax burden now […]

"Reagan," Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Unless, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. After all, while Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, each Republican was rewarded with a second term in office. But as the Gallup polling data […]