This week, American television screens will be overwhelmed by the news from London. Just not, it turns out, the story that really matters. Because while all eyes sadly remain fixed on the royal wedding, the British government announced that the "flat-lining" UK economy barely grew in first three months of 2011. Nevertheless, Republicans are cheering […]

The United States was slowly recovering from economic catastrophe. Its military forces were deployed worldwide in a global conflict to defeat what even the President's political opponents deemed an existential threat. U.S. national debt would soon top 100% of the nation's entire economic output. And the top marginal income tax rate was 94%. The year […]

The USA Patriot Act defines "domestic terrorism" in part as activities intended "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping." By that standard, the current GOP campaign of budgetary hostage-taking over […]

With the deadline on raising the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling fast approaching, grandstanding Republicans are threatening national economic suicide. If it comes, the means of death will have been a fatal dose of hypocrisy. After all, GOP majorities in Congress didn't merely vote seven times to boost the ceiling - and double the national […]

Nothing focuses the mind, it is said, like the sight of the gallows. So it is for the American business community as the clock ticks down on the looming deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. Over the past few days, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street executives, the National Association of Manufacturers and […]

That didn't take long. As the battle over health care reform reached a fever pitch in the fall of 2009, the Republican National Committee rolled out a "Seniors' Bill of Rights." But with the midterms safely won, the GOP has predictably turned its back on its pledge of "no cuts to Medicare to pay for […]

As Tax Day 2011 arrives, the distance between the tax debate and tax reality has perhaps never been larger. New data from the IRS revealed that over since the mid-1990's, the richest 400 taxpayers saw their incomes double and their tax rates halved. Overall, the gilded-class has seen its effective tax rates plummet. Meanwhile, prosecutions […]

In a telling moment during the run-up to the midterm elections last fall, Congressman Paul Ryan declared of his proposed Roadmap for America's Future, "My plan is not the Republican Party's platform and was never intended to be." Not, it turned out, until after Election Day. Because while 235 House Republicans with Speaker John Boehner's […]

Last week, the political chattering classes praised Republican Paul Ryan's "serious" budget proposal to slash $4.3 trillion in spending in order to fund yet another round of upper-income tax cuts. But over just the past few days, the New York Times' David Leonhardt, Slate's Annie Lowery and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post offered a […]

Among the $39 billion in spending cuts contained in the budget deal reached last, one stands out as perhaps the most cynical - and counterproductive. Republicans insisted that the Internal Revenue Service receive no additional funding through September, rebuffing President Obama's request for an additional $600 million to crack down on the tax fraud, evasion […]