This week, former President Bill Clinton urged calm in the face of Washington's stand-off over the so-called fiscal cliff. "They are moving toward a deal," Clinton assured Americans, suggesting that the current posturing by both parties is "just a Kabuki dance." Unfortunately, Republicans have called President Obama's $4 trillion debt reduction plan something else: a […]
Category: Congress
For the second time in as many weeks, an analysis by a nonpartisan agency of Congress has demolished the GOP myth of upper-income taxes and so-called "job creators." Just days before voters headed to the polls, the Congressional Research Service documented that for decades tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were not correlated to economic […]
In the aftermath of Barack Obama's reelection victory, voices across the political spectrum were quick to deny that the President had earned a mandate from voters. In the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus warned that a Democratic claim to a mandate was a "delusion." The National Journal's Ron Fournier agreed, adding that the absence of a […]
As the 2012 presidential campaign heads into its final days, some truly pathetic and sadly revealing storylines are coming to the fore. While Alec MacGillis pondered whether Mitt Romney will get away with his unprecedented secrecy, David Weigel documented how Romney's gymnastic flip-flopping came to be seen as a virtue by many of the nation's […]
The truth will set you free. Unless, that is, you're a Republican and the subject in taxes. As the New York Times reported on Thursday, "The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economy theory, after Senate Republicans […]
Mitt Romney has a national defense problem. Or more accurately, a series of problems. After all, the same man who five years ago said that "it's not worth moving heaven and earth" to get Osama Bin Laden forgot to mention America's war in Afghanistan and the men and women still fighting it during his RNC […]
In the week since Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate, both Democrats and Republicans have claimed theirs is the party which will save and protect Medicare, the federal health insurance program for nearly 50 million seniors. But Americans have good reason to believe one side is lying to them. After all, the […]
This week, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted for the 33rd time in 18 months to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But even if that act of political theater is over for now, Republicans will keep repeating their favorite parts of the right-wing script well past Election Day in November. That their tried and untrue […]
The GOP response to the President's call for higher tax rates on upper income Americans came fast and furious. His proposal, Republicans warned, was "class warfare" and a "job killer" which will "kill the current recovery and put us back in a recession" and still "not give you deficit reduction." As it turns out, the […]
Back in 2010, Republicans swept to power in no small part by scaring the bejesus out of elderly voters over supposed Democratic cuts to Medicare. But now that the Supreme Court has preserved the Affordable Care Act, Mitt Romney and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill are once again darkly warning that "Obamacare cuts Medicare […]