Just days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pooh-poohed the escalating chaos in the streets of Baghdad, saying with a shrug, "stuff happens." Now six years later, former Vice President Dick Cheney has elevated Rumsfeld's flip response to the level of theory in defending the Bush administration's eight-year record of failure. […]

Two days after Americans learned that U.S. household wealth plummeted by a staggering $11 trillion (an 18% drop) in 2008, the Washington Post featured a critique of President Obama's rhetoric attributing the recession to George W. Bush. But while Obama's statement that "by any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster" is inescapably true, […]

Three weeks after former Texas Senator and UBS vice chairman Phil Gramm took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to reject any blame for the meltdown of the American financial system, Alan Greenspan followed suit. In an op-ed Tuesday, the former Fed Chairman, too, denied paternity for the crisis, refusing to accept that" […]

As Republican ratchet up their cries of "socialism" regarding President Obama's plan to return upper income tax rates to Clinton-era levels beginning in 2011, ABC offered a comic profile of Americans earning over $250,000 a year and their schemes to avoid the higher bills. Of course, lost in this propaganda-fest are two inconvenient truths. First, […]

The last time the top income tax rate was 39%, the United States enjoyed a booming economy, rising incomes, low unemployment and expanding budget surpluses. Unfortunately, that simple truth has been ignored by Republican propagandists and mainstream media alike during the debate over President Obama's stimulus plan and budget proposal. In his budget, Barack Obama […]

No doubt, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's disastrous Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress will go down as one of the more bizarre episodes in American political oratory. But perhaps even more disturbing and dishonest was the charge by the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore that Obama's $787 billion economy recovery package constituted "fiscal […]

During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain's chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin took more positions on the federal budget deficit than Newt Gingrich has had wives. Within a matter of weeks last year, Holtz-Eakin alternately claimed John McCain would balance the budget by either 2013 or 2017, all before announcing in April, "I would like […]

During the height of the battle over judicial nominees in 2005, the Republican Party debuted its short-lived "up or down vote" talking point. Of course, after being reduced to minority status in the 2006 midterms, the GOP was quick to abandon that gambit, instead easily shattering the record for filibusters in the Senate. But in […]

The recession is good for you. At least, according to former Bush speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson. Praising the "recession's hidden virtues," Gerson on Sunday reassured Americans that their financial hardships may be a boon to their physical health and personal morality, all while helping foster cultural renewal. As it turns out, Gerson […]

To the displeasure of many on both sides of aisle, President Obama on Monday will host the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House. While some Democrats question the timing of Obama's expenditure of political capital on Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement reform, obstructionist Republicans are ridiculing the event even as they hype […]