On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the nonprofit group which officially marks the birth and death of economic downturns, announced that the Bush Recession which commenced in December 2007 isn't over, at least not yet. Despite the promising signs of economic growth, job creation and a bull market, the NBER arbiters of […]

Back in the 1980's, President Ronald Reagan hailed the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress." But as Tax Day approaches, conservatives have forsaken their patron saint, decrying the "redistribution of wealth" for working families provided by […]

As FactCheck documented in detail, the Republicans' "scary claim" that the IRS will hire 16,500 new agents to enforce the new health care law "simply lacks any foundation in fact." But for a Republican Party which spent much of the 1990's successfully waging war on the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of the richest Americans, […]

Back in 2007, former House Majority Leader Tom Delay explained the Republican emergency room health care plan to a British audience. "There's no one denied health care in America," he announced to laughter, "there are 47 million people who don't have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America." Which makes Tom […]

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," Reagan Revolutionary Grover Norquist boasted, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Now, a generation after Norquist launched his crusade, Republican White House hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty are leading a new charge to "starve […]

With its estimate Tuesday that the $787 billion Obama stimulus package created up to 2.1 million jobs in the last quarter of 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) joined in the near-unanimous chorus of voices proclaiming the package's success. Of course, it wasn't just the overwhelming consensus of economists which concurred that the stimulus saved […]

On Monday, the daughter of Austin IRS suicide pilot Joseph Stack proclaimed her father a "hero." By joining the anti-government agitators, white supremacists, militia groups and other right-wing extremists in lauding him for standing up to the "injustice" of "the system," she like them dishonored true heroes like Vietnam veteran Vernon Hunter killed in Stack's […]

For Democrats wavering in their resolve to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, shocking new data from the IRS should hopefully stiffen their backbones. Between 2001 and 2007, the 400 richest taxpayers doubled their annual incomes to an average of $345 million, while their effective tax rate plummeted to only 16.6% from […]

Back in January, a CNN poll revealed that "nearly three out of four Americans think that at least half of the money spent in the federal stimulus plan has been wasted." But one year after the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed into law, the numbers - and the overwhelming consensus […]