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 […]

To be sure, the new Census data on poverty and health care in America are grim. At 14.3%, the poverty rate in 2008 jumped to its highest level since 1994. Meanwhile, the number of uninsured catapulted to 50.7 million, as employers shed jobs and insurance benefits during the deep Bush recession. Ominously, median household income […]

In August, the New Republic, the New York Times and others warned that the 2010 campaign would feature a new Republican bogeyman. The Times announced, "There's a class war coming to the world of government pensions," while TNR's Jonathan Cohn explained the latest GOP hatefest in "Why Public Employees are the New Welfare Queens." Of […]

As promised, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) this week introduced legislation proposing to make the budget-busting 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts permanent. The so-called Tax Hike Prevention Act wouldn't merely drain $3.9 trillion from the U.S. Treasury over the next decade. At a time of record income inequality, the Republicans' $700 billion windfall […]