When it comes to cutting the federal budget, talk is cheap. But as the New York Times is just the latest to report, across the country Republican candidates are talking tough about spending cuts they can't - or won't - explain. Yet even as they promise another $700 billion Treasury-draining windfall for the wealthy, the […]

On Monday, the New York Times asked, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" As it turns out, that question neatly sums up the sad dynamic at play in the 2010 midterm elections. On the one hand, President Obama and his Democratic allies have utterly failed to tout […]

While today's employment report showed the private sector added jobs for the ninth straight month, those gains were more than offset by the deep cuts by state and local governments. But those layoffs, the biggest in 30 years, didn't have to be this severe. After all, President Obama in June asked Congress for $50 billion […]

In his latest effort to rebrand both the Republican and Democratic parties, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has also rewritten history. Labeling his GOP "the party of paychecks" and Democrats "the party of food stamps" in advance of his upcoming campaign swing, Gingrich declared "we have historically since Ronald Reagan of 1980 been the party […]

Somewhere, Wall Street Journal columnist and What's the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank is shaking his head. In 2004, Frank detailed how the GOP successfully turned to divisive social issues and fear-mongering to persuade working class whites in his home state to consistently vote against their own economic self-interest. Now, a new AP-GfK poll […]

The Republican demand to make the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy permanent is like Jason from the Friday the 13th slasher movies. Incredibly dangerous but once presumed dead, the GOP's perpetual payday for the rich rises again to wreak havoc and ruin lives. And delivering the warning this time is the non-partisan Congressional […]

Over a year before the GOP "Pledge to America" demanded permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans costing $700 billion over the next decade, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) fretted, "We're running out of rich people in this country." But as it turns out, anecdotes and polls alike reveal that the rich themselves support letting the […]

On Sunday, House Minority Leader John Boehner called Democrats' refusal to hold a pre-election vote on extending the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy the "most irresponsible thing that I have seen since I have been in Washington, D.C." And in one sense, he's right. After all, the national debt doubled during Bush's tenure. […]

If Thursday was a test of political courage when it comes to the expiring Bush tax cuts, both parties failed miserably. Despite a raft of polls showing strong public opposition to the GOP's proposed $700 billion, 10-year tax cut windfall for the wealthy, squeamish Democrats in both the House and the Senate decided to push […]

After first considering the issue in April, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) today announced the Bush recession is officially over. But given persistently high levels of unemployment and poverty, more interesting than the NBER's conclusion that "a trough occurred in June 2009" is the parties' reactions to it. While President Obama and the […]