"It's never been easy for House Republicans to raise the debt limit." With that opening sentence, Jake Sherman and Steven Sloan of Politico provided air cover for the GOP's unprecedented--and dangerously irresponsible--debt ceiling hostage-taking. After all, Republicans in both houses of Congress had no problem raising the debt limit until Democrat Barack Obama became President. […]

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 […]

This week, the New England Journal of Medicine published a major study of Medicaid in Oregon which has rapidly emerged of a Rorschach test of sorts. That is, partisans on either side of the political divide tend to see what they want to see in its results. While conservatives claim Medicaid expansion has been debunked […]

"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 […]

In the run-up to today's celebration at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, America's 43rd President declared that "history will ultimately judge" his tenure in the White House. And that is precisely the problem for the custodians of Bush's legacy. After all, the slaughter of 3,000 people on 9/11, the catastrophic and unnecessary war in […]

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 […]

During his first run for the White House, Mitt Romney briefly crowed that "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." But two days later, he was forced to amend that pander to the NRA by clarifying, "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will." Now his new hometown […]

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. […]