When it comes to perpetuating the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have long been the party which cried "uncertainty." ""We're calling for an end to the threat of tax hikes," as Speaker John Boehner put it in one formulation, "to provide certainty to those in our country who create jobs." While the […]

The Republican Party, Tim Pawlenty often lectures, "should be the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club." If so, the GOP White House hopeful miserably failed his own Sam's Club test this week. Unveiling his economic plan draining $7.8 trillion from the U.S. Treasury in order to give millionaires a 41% tax cut, […]

No doubt, Friday's disappointing jobs report was bad news for President Obama. But the Republican response augurs much worse for the American people. After all, while Obama was visiting a Chrysler plant in Ohio to tout his auto industry rescue which ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, Speaker John Boehner took to a podium […]

Bolstered by new polls and fresh off their vote to bar an increase in the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, House Republicans swaggered into the White House for the latest negotiation to end their economic hostage taking. One, Rep. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, refused to attend and be "lectured to by a president whose failed […]

On Thursday, John Boehner and the House Republican leadership team unveiled their "Plan for America's Job Creators." As he repeatedly made clear before the Economic Club of New York and again on CBS Face the Nation, Boehner's "job creators" are the top two percent of income earners whose Bush tax cuts President Obama has proposed […]

While all eyes remain fixed on the Republican debt ceiling hostage drama in Washington, the deficit that really matters has all but disappeared from the American political debate. Even as Vice President Biden confidently predicted his bipartisan group of budget negotiators would slash $1 trillion in spending, forecasters are once again downgrading their estimates for […]

In the least surprising political development in recent years, the leading lights of the Bush administration fanned out across Americans' TV screens to give their old boss credit for the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Ex-chief of staff Andy Card, who famously dressed up George W. Bush in a flight suit to announce "Mission Accomplished" […]

In a nationally televised address to the American people on March 4, 1987, President Ronald Reagan admitted he had traded arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal and declared, "This happened on my watch." Sadly, that may have been the last time a Republican leader took ownership of a disaster by simply acknowledging the calendar. […]

This week, American television screens will be overwhelmed by the news from London. Just not, it turns out, the story that really matters. Because while all eyes sadly remain fixed on the royal wedding, the British government announced that the "flat-lining" UK economy barely grew in first three months of 2011. Nevertheless, Republicans are cheering […]

The USA Patriot Act defines "domestic terrorism" in part as activities intended "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping." By that standard, the current GOP campaign of budgetary hostage-taking over […]