This week's GOP presidential debate was notable both for what the candidates said and for what they didn't say. Noting that Presidents Obama and Clinton had added 107,000 and 240,000 jobs a month compared to George W. Bush's anemic 13,000, Fox Business moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Carly Fiorino, "How are you going to respond to […]

During Wednesday's GOP debate on the economy hosted by CNBC, Ohio Governor John Kasich offered a rare moment of truth. Referring to his Republican rivals' tax plans as "fantasy," Kasich mocked the notion that any of them had a prayer of reducing the national debt, let alone balancing the federal budget: "You can't do it […]

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned that the federal government will run out of cash on November unless Congress raises the debt ceiling to increase Uncle Sam's borrowing authority. Under pressure from hard liners in his own party, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is returning to his role as hostage-taker, threatening to block the […]

Former neurosurgeon-turned-2016 GOP White House hopeful Ben Carson raised some eyebrows last week with his declaration that gun control enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler and the annihilation of European Jewry in the Holocaust. But no one who has followed "the biggest fan of Nazi metaphors in politics" should have been surprised by Carson's grotesque […]

Of all of the myths Republicans have generated for American voters, the fiction that "tax cuts pay for themselves" is the Uber Lie. After all, almost four decades of U.S history and a mountain of incontrovertible evidence show the only certain outcomes of GOP tax-cutting plans are skyrocketing national debt and ever-widening income inequality. It's […]

On Monday, Donald Trump became just the latest Republican White House hopeful to propose a Treasury draining, tax cut windfall for the richest Americans. But while Trump calls for slashing the top marginal income tax rates at a time of record income inequality, a new study from the Brookings Institution argues that hiking those same […]

Some things never change. With some constants in life, like the invariable force of gravity or the sun rising in the east, that persistence is good news. (Imagine your morning coffee without them.) The bad news is that some myths, no matter how dangerous or thoroughly debunked, never seem to die. This week, the greatest […]

While all eyes have been focused on the worldwide stock market plunge, a recent survey of economists by the Wall Street Journal identified a different threat to the vitality of the U.S. economy. But it's not the instability of Chinese stock prices, the devaluation of its currency, the Eurozone's Greek tragedy or even a premature […]

For the past five years, Republicans determined to gut federal spending have been warning that "we look a lot like Greece." A preposterous claim then, the charge is even more ridiculous now. Unlike Greece, the United States controls its own currency and has enjoyed economic growth even as Washington's national debt as a share of […]

On April 15th, Congressional Republicans missed their deadline for the fiscal year 2016 budget resolution. Nevertheless, and despite their differences on defense spending and the voucherization of Medicare (absent from the Senate bill), the GOP conferees aim to balance the budget in 10 years by slashing over $5 trillion in social programs and safety net […]