Among the truisms of American politics is this: the side decrying "class war" is the one winning it. So it is with the ongoing Republican hostage-taking drama over the debt ceiling and upper-income tax increases. Facing overwhelming pressure from his own party, Speaker John Boehner retreated from the "grand bargain" on deficit reduction he supported […]

During the debate over the stimulus program in early 2009, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed, "If the money were lent rather than just granted, states would, I think, spend it wisely and the states that didn't need it at all wouldn't take any." Now would be a good time to take him up […]

As the South teetered on the edge of calamity near the end of the Civil War, the Confederate Congress refused pleas to arm the slaves. "If the Confederacy fails," CSA President Jefferson Davis lamented, "there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory." Almost 150 years later and with Davis' political heirs having […]

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" […]