Days after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest projections House Republicans on Friday announced their latest ransom demand for raising the debt ceiling. John Boehner's minions will vote to avoid a U.S. default and a global economic calamity if the Medicare "doc" fix is patched for nine months and cuts to veterans' […]

There is little question that President Obama will address the Affordable Care Act in his 2014 State of the Union address. Given its troubled rollout and the neverending Republican effort to sabotage his signature domestic policy achievement, silence on Obamacare isn't an option. Nor should it be. After all, with as many 13.5 million Americans […]

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 […]

The Senate on Tuesday morning voted 60-37 to advance a bill extending long-term unemployment benefits for three months. Despite the support from six Republican Senators, its fate in both Houses is still uncertain. To secure final passage, Susan Collins (R-ME) told President Obama he'd have to "help us find an offset" for the $6.4 billion […]

With the Affordable Care Act now in full effect, the conservative propaganda factory is working overtime to produce and publicize Obamacare horror stories, real or imagined. So with the federal government, the states, private insurers, hospitals, doctors and pharmacies scrambling to assist the six million newly insured so far, the GOP's media water carriers are […]

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 […]

With the deadlines looming for Americans to enroll in health insurance plans for 2014, conservatives are shocked--shocked!--that the Obama administration is "strongly urging" insurance companies to start coverage on January 1 even in advance of receiving new subscribers' premium payments. For the Wall Street Journal and Forbes' Avik Roy, these and other HHS contingency measures […]

On Monday, the federal government announced it had sold off the remaining shares from its $49.5 billion bailout of General Motors in 2009. But the $10.5 billion loss on paper obscures the massive total return on investment for the U.S. economy overall and American taxpayers in particular. As a new analysis from the Center for […]

If any American public figure has completely disqualified himself from weighing in on President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, it is former Vice President Dick Cheney. After all, as a quick look back at his statements about the Iraq war shows ("Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass […]

While Republicans and their media echo chamber have been quick to pronounce the Affordable Care Act "dead on arrival" and its troubled launch "Obama's Katrina," polling suggests the American people have reached no such conclusion. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted last weekend found that 41 percent of respondents approve of the ACA, little changed from a […]