When George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office, Republican majorities in Congress voted seven times to increase the U.S. debt ceiling. That recent history, combined with the inconvenient truth that the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under Bush, may have prompted then Minority Leader John Boehner to warn his GOP […]

In the aftermath of Friday's budget agreement, it's no longer a question of whether the U.S. is going to slash spending, but where, when and by how much. On the heels of the $38.5 billion in cuts to discretionary, non-defense spending Obama adviser David Plouffe deemed "draconian", President Obama this week will lay out his […]

The national debt of the United States tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP Congress cut taxes during wartime, a first in modern American history. During his presidency, Republicans voted seven times to increase the debt ceiling. As Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2009 described Republican orthodoxy […]

In October 2001, President Bush's Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed 35 years of White House practice regarding Freedom of Information Act requests. For the first time since the passage of the Act, disclosure became the exception to the rule. As Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, 22 million "missing" Bush administration emails and Karl Rove's […]

And now for today's quiz. You are a member of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells you that as a percentage of American gross domestic product, total taxes in the U.S. are at their lowest level since 1950. The nation is fighting two wars (and now, arguably a third), conflicts which were not only […]

For Republicans, a funny thing happened on the way to privatizing Medicare. Hoping to transform the wildly popular, low-overhead government program for 46 million American seniors into a voucher system for purchasing private insurance, Paul Ryan and his GOP allies inadvertently made a strong case for the Affordable Care Act for everyone else. A little […]

If nothing else, the Republican Party is a machine for generating talking points - and irony. While Senators Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions insisted President Obama's $3.73 trillion budget proposal wasn't "serious," over in the Speaker House John Boehner and his lieutenant Paul Ryan claimed Obama "punted" on the deficit. Sadly, those sound bites came […]

George W. Bush was the first modern president to cut taxes during wartime. Now, the unpaid $2 trillion bill for the wars he fought - and chose to fight - is long overdue. While President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress jockey to position their budget cutting plans, it's time for both parties - […]

This weekend's Reagan centennial predictably produced paeans to the great tax cutter who never was. After all, in the wake of the his budget-busting 1981 tax cuts which ultimately tripled the national debt, Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years in office and 11 times overall. As it turns out, the Great Tax Cutter […]

While the Obama administration is grappling to find the right path forward in Egypt, Republicans are deeply divided. Fearful of the Muslim Brotherhood and fearful for Israel, some like John Bolton and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter have urged support for the authoritarian "devil we know." Others, like Bill Kristol and Max Boot, called for the President […]