Earlier this year, 235 GOP House members and 40 Republican Senators voted for the Paul Ryan budget and its plan to ration Medicare. By ending the traditional government insurance program and leaving the elderly with under-funded vouchers to purchase much more expensive coverage from private insurers, Ryan's Republicans would dramatically shift the cost burden to […]

Last year, Republicans successfully waged a scorched-earth campaign to preserve at all costs the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans. Back then, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl defended the Treasury-draining, $70 billion a year windfall for the wealthy by proclaiming, "you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision […]

For Republicans on the warpath against Warren Buffett, President Obama's willing poster child for raising taxes on wealthy Americans, this week has been a very bad one. First, new polling confirmed that Americans overwhelmingly support President Obama's jobs plan in general and his proposed gilded-class tax hikes in particular. (On that second point, Republican voters […]

This week, Vice President Joe Biden inadvertently turned the heat up on his boss - and warmed conservative hearts - when he declared it's "totally legitimate" for the 2012 presidential election to be "a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and state of the economy" because "we're in charge." His candor and willingness […]

The ink isn't yet dry (or even written) on the 11th hour debt deal, but the media are already doing their usual body count of the victors and vanquished. In the Washington Post, conventional wisdom regurgitation machine Chris Cillizza produced the predictable winners and losers list. While the Wall Street Journal and right-wing columnists proclaim […]

Appearing on Face the Nation Sunday, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin warned House Speaker John Boehner about his paternity for the economic catastrophe resulting from a Republican failure to increase the U.S. debt ceiling. "If you break it," Durbin told Boehner, "you own it." But as the New York Times was just the latest to […]

Whatever the resolution to the Republican hostage-taking of the U.S. debt ceiling, it's becoming increasingly clear it will a painful one. Failure to boost the $14.3 trillion limit by August 2nd, as even some of the GOP extortionists are only now beginning to understand, would produce what Speaker John Boehner admitted would be "a financial […]

President Obama Addresses the Nation on the Debt Ceiling* (As Prepared for Delivery, July 1, 2011.) My fellow Americans, I want to speak to you today about a matter of the greatest national urgency. We face a crisis unique in our history. This threat comes not from a foreign foe or bloodthirsty terrorists, but is […]

"Reagan," Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Unless, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. After all, while Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, each Republican was rewarded with a second term in office. But as the Gallup polling data […]

In the aftermath of Friday's budget agreement, it's no longer a question of whether the U.S. is going to slash spending, but where, when and by how much. On the heels of the $38.5 billion in cuts to discretionary, non-defense spending Obama adviser David Plouffe deemed "draconian", President Obama this week will lay out his […]