Facing dire budget crises, governors nationwide are waging an economic race to the bottom. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Idaho, the new GOP leadership is pursuing draconian curbs on public employee unions supposedly to rein in compensation and pensions of government workers. Meanwhile, in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere, Republican governors have slashed corporate […]

As was proven once again this weekend, for Republicans nothing succeeds like failure. Across the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages, a legion of GOP luminaries spoke authoritatively on subjects they had frequently - and often catastrophically - bungled in the past. Apparently, no transgression is too serious, no series of mistakes too disastrous and […]

The national debt of the United States tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP Congress cut taxes during wartime, a first in modern American history. During his presidency, Republicans voted seven times to increase the debt ceiling. As Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2009 described Republican orthodoxy […]

And now for today's quiz. You are a member of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells you that as a percentage of American gross domestic product, total taxes in the U.S. are at their lowest level since 1950. The nation is fighting two wars (and now, arguably a third), conflicts which were not only […]

This week, two members of Congress offered new plans to overhaul the U.S. tax code. One proposes cutting the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans by 10% and draining the U.S. Treasury by $2 trillion over the next decade. The other calls for higher rates for millionaires and billionaires to reduce the federal budget […]

As any good free-marketeer will tell you, you've got to spend money to make money. Just not, Republicans insist, when it comes to collecting federal tax revenue. The GOP, after all, gutted the Internal Revenue Service in the late 1990's. And two weeks ago, House Republicans voted to cut $600 million from the agency this […]

Call it the "Seriousness Test." Any so-called deficit hawk that refuses to countenance increasing federal taxes simply isn't serious. After all, as the CBO concluded in January, with tax revenues now below 15%, "levels that low have not been seen since 1950." The two-year tax cut compromise in December made matters worse, adding $400 billion […]

Last summer, Moody's economist and former adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain Mark Zandi authored a study which concluded that combined federal interventions beginning in the fall of 2008 prevented the Great Recession from becoming Depression 2.0. Now in a new report, Zandi warns that the GOP's plan to slash $61 billion in federal […]

Perhaps more than any other factor, the overwhelming Republican midterm triumph was fueled by the elderly. Voters 65 and over, the only age group to support John McCain in 2008, boosted their share of the turnout to 21% from 16% two years earlier. Nationwide, Republicans won seniors by a staggering 59% to 38%. But now, […]

In just the latest front in the perpetual GOP campaign to divide and conquer, Republicans are trying to get Americans to turn on their neighbors who work for government and unions on each other. Of course, the Republican assault on collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin, Ohio,