In the future, historians and political scientists will speak of the "Ryan Gap." That moniker will be used to measure the yawning chasm between the shining image a politician manufactures for him or herself and the brutal truth of their failed ideas and meager accomplishments. Of course, the inspiration for that damning delta between perception […]

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has lied about almost everything in this election. But among his most insidious falsehoods is this. Hillary Clinton, Trump declared in Florida two weeks ago, "is going to cut your Social Security and your Medicare." As he put it a rally in Pennsylvania last month: She wants to knock the […]

This was the week that some Republicans finally responded to their wake up call about Donald Trump. Or perhaps more accurately, found themselves like the married man at 3 AM who discovers himself naked in a seedy hotel room bed, with his face covered in cocaine and a dead hooker laying motionless by his side, […]

If nothing else, Republicans used their convention in Cleveland to get their hate on. The delegates who cheered Chris Christie's ersatz prosecution of Hillary Clinton had already made "lock her up" the event's lasting sound bite. Offstage, Trump surrogates accused Clinton of "treason" and called for her execution by hanging or firing squad. The foaming […]

On April 15th, Congressional Republicans missed their deadline for the fiscal year 2016 budget resolution. Nevertheless, and despite their differences on defense spending and the voucherization of Medicare (absent from the Senate bill), the GOP conferees aim to balance the budget in 10 years by slashing over $5 trillion in social programs and safety net […]

Conservatives, the joke goes, believe life begins at conception and ends at birth. Now, anti-abortion forces and their Republican allies in Ohio are doing their best to show that jest is true. As the Columbus Dispatch reported Tuesday, a group of Republican state legislators is suing to prevent GOP Governor John Kasich's move to accept […]

The United States may have serious longer-term fiscal problems, but Social Security is not chief among them. After all, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion surplus and will continue to grow until 2021. Even though the population of Americans over 65 will grow by a third over the next decade, by 2035 […]

As Washington's stalemated debate over avoiding the so-called "fiscal cliff" continues to fester, Social Security is once again in the cross-hairs of would-be deficit hawks across the political spectrum. This week, the New York Times profiled Maya MacGuineas, who "has spent years warning about threats to the solvency of Social Security and to the rating […]

If Mitt Romney carries the always hotly contested state of Florida, his smokescreen about a mythical Obama "raid on Medicare" will have a lot to do with it. A new Kaiser survey shows the Republican ticket has narrowed President Obama's edge on Medicare from 16 to just five points over the last month. As TPM […]

During the 2010 campaign, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell falsely charged that with the Affordable Care Act President Obama was "sticking it to seniors." McConnell's GOP was rewarded for that fiction, as a 21 point margin among voters 65 and older propelled the Republicans to an overwhelmingly victory in the midterms. Now just two years […]