George W. Bush was the first modern president to cut taxes during wartime. Now, the unpaid $2 trillion bill for the wars he fought - and chose to fight - is long overdue. While President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress jockey to position their budget cutting plans, it's time for both parties - […]

This weekend's Reagan centennial predictably produced paeans to the great tax cutter who never was. After all, in the wake of the his budget-busting 1981 tax cuts which ultimately tripled the national debt, Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years in office and 11 times overall. As it turns out, the Great Tax Cutter […]

On Sunday, Americans will mark the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan. But for the conservative movement, the now-decades long hagiography project is reaching a crescendo. While the Gipper's former speechwriter Peggy Noonan today lauded his goodness in the Wall Street Journal Friday, Sarah Palin will kick-off the Young Americans for Freedom three day extravaganza at […]

In the run-up to November's midterm elections, David Leonhardt of the New York Times presciently warned, "In their Pledge to America, Congressional Republicans have used the old trick of promising specific tax cuts and vague spending cuts," adding, "It's the politically easy approach, and it is likely to be as bad for the budget as […]

For years, Republicans have deployed the word "uncertainty" to stymie any public policy with which they disagreed. A decade after President Bush declared "scientific uncertainties remain" about global warming, virtually the entire Congressional Republican caucus has proudly joined the deniers' camp. Last month, GOP leaders revved up the uncertainty myth over taxes, falsely claiming that […]

Turning to the Republican Party for lessons on fiscal discipline is a lot like taking advice on abstinence from Bristol Palin. But unlike Ms. Palin's one known failure to practice what she now preaches, Republicans are repeat offenders. After all, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, only to double again under George W. Bush. […]

A new study purports to show that the conservative brain has an overly large fear center, while the anterior cingulate associated with courage is smaller than average. That might explain the continued cowardice of Republican leaders when it comes to offering specifics on the spending cuts they claim to support in the face of mounting […]

Move over, welfare queens, IRS agents and trial lawyers. The Republican Party has a new bogeyman: the public employee. With a sluggish U.S. economy, cash-strapped states and under-funded pension programs, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and other leading lights of the GOP are scape-goating government workers and their unions for the nation's woes. Of course, there's […]

Fresh off her pronouncements on the Fed's "quantitative easing" and federal aid to the states, Sarah Palin this week added the deficit and Medicare to her Potemkin façade of policy expertise. A year after she first endorsed converting Medicare into a voucher program, Palin took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to endorse […]

As Ronald Reagan's budget chief almost thirty years ago, a frustrated David Stockman famously lamented that when it comes to spending discipline, "there are no real conservatives in Congress." Now, three decades after he concluded "the supply-siders have gone too far," Stockman called the Republican demand for another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the […]