This week, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Congressional leaders that the federal government will hit its debt ceiling in late February. But just days after House Speaker John Boehner declared Uncle Sam "shouldn't even get close" to the edge of its borrowing limit, his spokesman Michael Steel warned a "'clean' debt-limit increase simply won't pass […]

During the 2012 presidential campaign, GOP nominee Mitt Romney declared that discussion of the nation's record-high income inequality should be left to "quiet rooms." As their casual comparisons of modest tax increases to the Holocaust show, conservatives would do well to heed his advice. After all, before Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins warned that […]

With another government shutdown averted by this week's two-year budget compromise, Republican leaders are once again threatening to hold the debt ceiling hostage if their demands aren't met. So what if they don't know yet what those demands will be? House budget chief Paul Ryan insisted, "We as a caucus -- along with our Senate […]

That was quick. Just two days after he joined House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in lashing out against right-wing extremists who threatened to trigger another government shutdown by blocking his compromise budget, Rep. Paul Ryan on Sunday promised to support the Tea Party's other favorite act of national economic blackmail. Despite the fact that both […]

It would be fair to say the Ryan-Murray compromise budget announced Tuesday hasn't exactly produced rejoicing in the nation's capital. Democrats generally lament the entrenchment of austerity spending levels for discretionary outlays, including $8 billion in cuts to food stamps and the exclusion of $23 billion in funding to extend long-term unemployment insurance next year […]

For three years, "tax reform" has been the centerpiece of the Republican Party's program for the American economy. Ever since taking control of the House, GOP leaders have promised that "lowering rates" while "broadening the base" would produce "revenue-neutral" tax reform. In 2011, 2012 and again in 2013, 95 percent of Congressional Republicans voted for […]

Six years after the start of the Great Recession, there should be little disagreement what America's number one domestic priority should be. With unemployment still stuck around 7 percent four plus years after that recession was declared "over," creating jobs has to be Job #1. That urgency is underscored by the new analyses warning that […]

The Affordable Care Act, Republicans and their right-wing water carriers warn, is the worst thing to happen to America since slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act. But for Congressional Republicans in general and Paul Ryan in particular, Obamacare also happens to be the love that dare not speak its name. After all, Ryan's dangerous and […]

On April 7, 2009--less than three months after Barack Obama first took the oath of office--the Daily Show's Jon Stewart perfectly summed up the red-hot, right-wing rage that hasn't cooled since. "I think," Stewart explained to frothing at the mouth Tea Party supporters, "you might be confusing tyranny with losing." Nevertheless, just days later thousands […]

This most miserable of weeks for the Tea Party did offer one ray of sunshine for the GOP's hardest of the hardliners. They rejoiced at the findings of an analysis by Yale professor Dan Kahan which revealed that Tea Baggers "appear to be slightly, but solidly more scientifically literate than non-tea party members." Unfortunately, basic […]