Friday's news that U.S. second quarter economic growth slipped to 2.4% produced shared concern across the political spectrum about the sluggish pace of the recovery. But among economists if not politicians, there is also an overwhelming consensus that without the Obama stimulus program, things would have been much, much worse. Now, a new analysis from […]

Despite his turtle-like appearance and seeming Ambien-induced demeanor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can tell a gripping tale. And yesterday on the Senate floor, he told some tall ones. Republicans, it turns out, supported unemployment benefits for the victims of the Bush recession all along. And just days after he joined the Republican Tax Cut […]

Vice President Joe Biden, backed by the overwhelming consensus of economists, is right that the $787 billion Obama stimulus package has succeeded as designed. But as many warned - and the sluggish recovery now sadly seems to confirm - the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) should have been larger. But in blaming the Republicans […]

Long before he became what Politico deemed "Barack Obama's biggest critic," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer was a Democrat. Dr. Krauthammer left his psychiatric practice to work for Jimmy Carter and write speeches for Walter Mondale. But that was before he fell - hard - for Ronald Reagan. And now in his latest assault on […]

So it comes down to this. Republicans believe they can turn bullshit into gold. Despite the inescapable conclusion of history, theory and empirical evidence to the contrary, Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, John Boehner, Tom Coburn, John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison and other Republican alchemists continue to insist that cutting taxes increases government revenue and thereby […]

Last fall, John Judis warned that like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton before him, first term President Barack Obama would see his disapproval ratings rise - and fall - along with unemployment. This week, new polls from the Washington Post, CBS News and PPP confirmed the toll the sluggish recovery is taking on Obama's popularity. […]

When it comes to tax cuts and deficits, Republicans have gone from the ridiculous to the insane. A month ago, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) comically insisted that the Bush tax cuts did not contribute the America's exploding national debt. Now Jon Kyl, the number two Republican in the Senate, the man almost single-handedly […]

Last month, Florida Republican Senator George Lemieux summed up the impact of his party's successful effort to kill the estate tax in 2010. "The joke is don't go hunting with your children because right now there's no estate tax in this country this year." But the billions lost to the U.S. Treasury so that the […]

In June, an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities confirmed that gap between rich and poor in the United States reached levels not seen since 1929. Between 1979 and 2007, the yawning chasm separating the after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of Americans from the middle and poorest fifths of the […]

While Republicans continue to block jobless benefits for those they deem undeserving, a different morality play is at work in the nation's foreclosure crisis. As the New York Times reported this morning, the biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich. Even as U.S. income inequality hit levels not seen since 1929, wealthier Americans, whose recovery […]