Despite their trumpeting of its latest budget report, it's no secret that Republicans hate the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In 2011, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) denounced the CBO's forecast that the Affordable Care Act will reduce--not increase--the U.S. national debt, calling its projections "budget gimmickry." That November, momentary GOP presidential frontrunner Newt […]

Income inequality is not a disease, but rather a symptom of a disease. For over four decades, the United States has suffered from an atrophying of the great American middle class. The decline of post-World War II American economic dominance, the rise of new international competitors, the withering (and the smothering) of trade unions and […]

It would be fair to say the Ryan-Murray compromise budget announced Tuesday hasn't exactly produced rejoicing in the nation's capital. Democrats generally lament the entrenchment of austerity spending levels for discretionary outlays, including $8 billion in cuts to food stamps and the exclusion of $23 billion in funding to extend long-term unemployment insurance next year […]

This weekend, NBC News offered viewers a heartwarming portrait of Alice Walton and the Crystal Bridges art museum she opened two years ago in Bentonville, Arkansas. Heartwarming, that is, until you recall more about the woman behind the $1.2 billion complex and its $500 million collection of American art. After all, the $20 billion Alice […]

This most miserable of weeks for the Tea Party did offer one ray of sunshine for the GOP's hardest of the hardliners. They rejoiced at the findings of an analysis by Yale professor Dan Kahan which revealed that Tea Baggers "appear to be slightly, but solidly more scientifically literate than non-tea party members." Unfortunately, basic […]

After first threatening to destroy the American economy if Obamacare wasn't defunded or delayed, desperate House Republicans have sent the President a new ransom note. Now, the GOP will grant a six-week extension to the debt ceiling and reopen the government if President Obama, among other things, accepts cuts to mandatory spending programs including Medicare […]

In its latest forecast, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) once again confirmed that the United States does not face a near-term debt problem. Over the next few years, annual budget deficits will continue to fall in both dollar terms and as a percentage of the U.S. economy. Over the next decade, the debt will remain […]

This week, House Speaker John Boehner turned to a new sleight of hand trick in his latest effort to extract draconian spending cuts as the Republicans' price for raising the U.S. debt ceiling. Citing five examples from the past, the Speaker's "Fact Sheet" claimed that "Coupling efforts to reduce America's debt and deficit with increases […]

For months, Republicans have been waging a new war on the IRS. Echoing their successful gutting of the Internal Revenue Service back in the 1990's, GOP leaders have been calling the agency "the new Gestapo" and demanding its budget be slashed by a quarter. But with a "tax gap" already nearing $500 billion a year […]

The bad news keeps coming for the Republicans promising to shut down the federal government to prevent funding for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). First, former South Carolina Senator turned Heritage Foundation President Jim Demint followed in the footsteps of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney by telling a "Defund Obamacare" town hall meeting that […]