"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and that's our target market." That perversion of Abraham Lincoln's timeless adage might as well be the slogan of the modern Republican Party, especially when the topic is taxes. After all, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Joint Committee on Taxation, (JCT), the Wharton […]

In recent years, "red state socialism" has become the hallmark of American federalism. That is, even as supposed GOP budget hawks loudly (and wrongly) decry "out of control" spending by Uncle Sam, less well-off Republican-controlled states generally benefit from a one-way flow of federal tax dollars made possible by wealthier blue states usually dominated by […]

To say that the slogan "America First" has a checkered past in the United States is an understatement of epic proportions. Launched in the spring of 1940 on the eve of Hitler's conquest of France, Belgium and Holland, the America First Committee was an isolationist crusade which grew to 800,000 members who sought the keep […]

In his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, former Vice President Al Gore warned about what he saw as a dire threat to American democracy. "The 'well-informed citizenry,'" Gore fretted, "is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience.'" In a presentation on Super Tuesday 2008 ("That's Entertainment: Politics as Theater in Campaign '08"), I elaborated […]

It's not often that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a trending topic on Twitter. But with Director Keith Hall's budget scorekeeper about to weigh in on the coverage, cost and deficit impacts of the Republicans' so-called "replacement" of the Affordable Care Act, all eyes are on the CBO. And given its consistent record […]

If nothing else, during their eight years in the White House George W. Bush and company became experts at deflecting blame. After all, the likes of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush himself all chanted that "nobody could have predicted" the Sept. 11 attacks, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and so many other disasters that […]

For much of the past week, President-elect Donald Trump boasted about saving 1,000 jobs at the Carrier air conditioning plant in Indianapolis, Indiana. Representing only about half of the positions candidate Trump promised to protect from relocation to Mexico, the murky Carrier deal appears to be a one-off bargain combining the carrot of state tax […]

Speaking a shale industry conference in Pittsburgh last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a bold promise. "My entire economic plan," Trump boasted, "will create 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years, assuming an average growth rate of 3.5 percent, and I believe we can reach beyond actually 4 percent growth." Leaving […]

In late 2007 and 2008, the United States and the global economy were devastated by the subprime crisis. That financial calamity was so named due to the hundreds of thousands of foreclosed upon homeowners who were unqualified for the loans they received from mortgage originators around the country. The disaster did not result from the […]

In Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump delivered a blistering attack on U.S. trade policy. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong week to proclaim, "We Are Going To Make America Great Again For Everyone--Greater Than Ever Before." Just the day before, the deficit-hawks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB) offered […]