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 […]

Having won one class war, Republicans are starting a second. To perpetuate record levels of income inequality not seen since before the Great Depression, conservatives are agitating for middle class Americans to wage a civil war on each other. Their latest divide-and-conquer tactic is to portray government workers as "takers" and "parasites" somehow responsible for […]

Facing dire budget crises, governors nationwide are waging an economic race to the bottom. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Idaho, the new GOP leadership is pursuing draconian curbs on public employee unions supposedly to rein in compensation and pensions of government workers. Meanwhile, in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere, Republican governors have slashed corporate […]

As was proven once again this weekend, for Republicans nothing succeeds like failure. Across the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages, a legion of GOP luminaries spoke authoritatively on subjects they had frequently - and often catastrophically - bungled in the past. Apparently, no transgression is too serious, no series of mistakes too disastrous and […]

CNBC host, National Review contributor and former Reagan adviser Lawrence Kudlow has long embodied the gin-and-tonic-sipping, anyone-for-tennis, let-them-eat-cake laissez faire Republican attitude towards the suffering of the American people. Even still, his jaw-dropping reaction to the devastation in Japan that "the human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we […]

Republicans have seen the future and it's in Mississippi. On the same day Wisconsin Republicans turned to unprecedented and possibly illegal maneuvers to strip public workers of collective bargaining rights, the Michigan legislature blessed emergency powers for Governor Rick Snyder to terminate municipal contracts across the state. And while Idaho joined Tennessee in seeking to […]

Call it the "Seriousness Test." Any so-called deficit hawk that refuses to countenance increasing federal taxes simply isn't serious. After all, as the CBO concluded in January, with tax revenues now below 15%, "levels that low have not been seen since 1950." The two-year tax cut compromise in December made matters worse, adding $400 billion […]

Ten years ago, George W. Bush was sworn in as America's first MBA President. Now, Mitt Romney wants to be the second. Two years after President Bush completed the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover, Romney the perpetual White House hopeful declared, "I spent my career in the private sector. I know how jobs are […]

Just days after his sneering "so be it" at the prospect of massive job losses which could result from GOP budget policies, House Speaker John Boehner declared public employees have a "machine gun" pointed "at the heads of local officials." That makes Boehner just the latest Republican leader respond to a $175 billion shortfall in […]

Last summer, Moody's economist and former adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain Mark Zandi authored a study which concluded that combined federal interventions beginning in the fall of 2008 prevented the Great Recession from becoming Depression 2.0. Now in a new report, Zandi warns that the GOP's plan to slash $61 billion in federal […]