Karl Marx famously said that historical events occur twice: first as tragedy, then as farce. But when it comes to his debt commission, President Obama is in danger of standing that old chestnut on its head. Unlike President George H.W. Bush's almost comic dismissal of the recommendations of a Congressional debt panel in 1989, Obama […]

"Reagan proved," Vice President Dick Cheney famously said in 2002, "deficits don't matter." Not, that is, when a Republican is sitting in the White House. After all, Republicans were silent as the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. As it turns out, the same hypocrisy of the GOP's […]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. On the eve of midterms elections that could make him House Speaker, John Boehner announced, "This is not a time for compromise." His lieutenant Mike Pence (R-IN) echoed that line, declaring that with a new Republican majority "there will be no compromise" with President Obama […]

This weekend, the New York Times and Washington Post offered almost identical assessments of the 2010 Congressional elections. While the Times announced "GOP poised to seize House, if not Senate," the Post predicted 'historic" losses with "more than 90 Democratic House seats are potentially in play." But lost in the conventional wisdom that Barack Obama […]

During the 2008, the campaign of multimillionaire and multiple home owner John McCain tried and failed to paint Barack Obama as "elitist" and "out of touch." But now that moribund Democrats are showing some signs of life as Election Day nears, the right-wing Obama as Snob meme is back with a vengeance. Over just the […]

On Monday, the New York Times asked, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" As it turns out, that question neatly sums up the sad dynamic at play in the 2010 midterm elections. On the one hand, President Obama and his Democratic allies have utterly failed to tout […]

Somewhere, Wall Street Journal columnist and What's the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank is shaking his head. In 2004, Frank detailed how the GOP successfully turned to divisive social issues and fear-mongering to persuade working class whites in his home state to consistently vote against their own economic self-interest. Now, a new AP-GfK poll […]

Last week, would-be House Speaker John Boehner unveiled the GOP Pledge to America to dismal reviews from, among others, himself. "We can't have that serious conversation [about policy] until we lay out the size of the problem," Boehner said of the Pledge, adding, "Let's not get to the potential solutions." But on one point, Boehner […]

After first considering the issue in April, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) today announced the Bush recession is officially over. But given persistently high levels of unemployment and poverty, more interesting than the NBER's conclusion that "a trough occurred in June 2009" is the parties' reactions to it. While President Obama and the […]

To be sure, the new Census data on poverty and health care in America are grim. At 14.3%, the poverty rate in 2008 jumped to its highest level since 1994. Meanwhile, the number of uninsured catapulted to 50.7 million, as employers shed jobs and insurance benefits during the deep Bush recession. Ominously, median household income […]