At the very start of his political career back in the 1970's, Montana Senator Max Baucus asked New Deal veteran James Rowe Jr., "Do you think I should run as a Republican or a Democrat?" Rowe's uneasy answer--"I sure hope you'll be a Democrat"--has defined Baucus' career ever since. After all, he voted for the […]

On the federal budget as with so much else, Republicans won't take yes as an answer from President Obama. On Friday, the White House rolled out its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal cutting projected deficits by $1.8 trillion in part by adopting the means testing of Medicare benefits and the "chained CPI" to slow the […]

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 […]

If there is one area where the White House and Congressional Republicans are in some agreement, it concerns corporate tax reform. President Obama has proposed slashing the statutory rate from 35 to 28 percent while recouping lost revenue through the elimination of corporate tax breaks costing the Treasury tens of billions of dollars each year. […]

America's soul-searching to mark the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq went pretty much according to script. While many of its liberal supporters offered their mea culpas for having been so catastrophically mistaken, the Bush administration's architects of the war doubled-down on their epic failure. (Meanwhile, some of their biggest cheerleaders lamented only […]

Republican Senator Rand Paul's 13 hour filibuster this week produced no shortage of spectacle--and irony. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, one of the few Democratic voices questioning the secrecy and legal basis surrounding President Obama's policy of drone strikes against U.S. citizens engaged in terrorist efforts abroad, joined his colleague from across the aisle. But Paul's […]

Back in 2010, Ohio Rep. John Boehner defied recent history and basic math when he comically denied that the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 played any role in producing federal budget deficits ever since. Now in his refusal to countenance any new tax revenue in a last minute compromise to avoid the […]

Nothing focuses the mind, Oscar Wilde famously said, like the sight of the gallows. And so it is with Republican Governors on the brink of losing $6 billion in federal aid thanks to automatic budget cuts currently set to kick in on March 1. But it shouldn't have taken the specter of the sequester's body […]

Ever since the tragic attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, "Benghazi" has been the Republican response to almost every question. Despite receiving the report of the State Department's Accountability Review Board (whose recommendations were immediately endorsed by the Obama administration), hearing the testimony of the […]

Douglas Holtz-Eakin is everywhere. This week, the conservative economist and former director of the Congressional Budget Office co-authored a widely read--and widely panned--prescription for Republican health care reform. And for months, the President of the American Action Forum has used his perch on The Guardian op-ed page to slam President Obama over the U.S. national […]