During his short time in the Holy See, Pope Francis has had two clear messages for his faithful in the United States. Decrying those who "seek selfish profit," Francis in May pleaded with "those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment." And just last month, the Bishop of Rome […]

These are heady days for red state propagandists. After years of leading the nation in poverty, low incomes, poor working conditions, dismal educational performance, awful health care systems, shocking teen birth rates, sky-high divorce rates, bloody gun violence and just about every other measure of social dysfunction, Republican-dominated states finally have some good news to […]

In recent week, a growing consensus of economists, analysts and political leaders has called for an end to U.S. fiscal austerity. Even as the influential Reinhart-Rogoff high-debt/low-growth thesis was being shredded, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) slashed its FY 2013 deficit forecast by $200 billion while Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that failure to […]

Almost everything you need to know about the self-destructive economic policy coming out of Congress was contained in two simple statements this week. While the Federal Reserve warned that "fiscal policy is restraining economic growth," the Republican National Committee released an ad crowing that "the sequester is here to stay." Judging by the April jobs […]

"Reality," Stephen Colbert famously lamented to President Bush in 2006, "has a well-known liberal bias." It is conservatives' perpetual fear that the truth will not set them free that is the driving force behind two House Republican proposals announced this week. For starters, Lamar Smith (R-TX), the GOP chairman of the House Science, Space and […]

If you had any doubts that Republicans believe in government stimulus spending to create jobs, look no further than the Pentagon budget. Two years after House Speaker John Boehner sought $450 million in funding for a second F-35 jet engine that the Defense Secretary and Presidents Bush and Obama opposed, Ohio Senator Rob Portman and […]

Friday's news that U.S. gross domestic product grew by only 2.5 percent came as a disappointment. After all, that performance not only fell short of the consensus expectation of three percent GDP growth, but was aided by a one-time bump for inventory expansion deferred from the last quarter of 2012. And while the strengthening housing […]

Thanks to graduate student Thomas Herndon, economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart are now the stuff of pop culture legend. (Even Stephen Colbert is getting in on the act.) But the epic failure of their Excel spreadsheets is no laughing matter. In the United States and across Europe, austerity advocates have seized on their dubious […]

The Obama administration on Friday lifted the covers on its compromise budget proposal for fiscal year 2014. But despite slashing the national debt by a projected $1.8 trillion over the next decade (bringing the total reductions since 2011 to $4.3 trillion) through painful changes to Social Security and Medicare, Republicans are predictably balking at Obama's […]

Judging by the stories dominating the domestic news, the past couple of weeks have not been kind to that 47 percent of Americans Mitt Romney mocked as takers, freeloaders and self-proclaimed victims. While the Washington Post profiled a Rhode Island town in which a third of the residents are dependent on food stamps, former SNAP […]