Last week, the political chattering classes praised Republican Paul Ryan's "serious" budget proposal to slash $4.3 trillion in spending in order to fund yet another round of upper-income tax cuts. But over just the past few days, the New York Times' David Leonhardt, Slate's Annie Lowery and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post offered a […]

Among the $39 billion in spending cuts contained in the budget deal reached last, one stands out as perhaps the most cynical - and counterproductive. Republicans insisted that the Internal Revenue Service receive no additional funding through September, rebuffing President Obama's request for an additional $600 million to crack down on the tax fraud, evasion […]

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 […]

Facing dire budget crises, governors nationwide are waging an economic race to the bottom. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Idaho, the new GOP leadership is pursuing draconian curbs on public employee unions supposedly to rein in compensation and pensions of government workers. Meanwhile, in Florida, Michigan and elsewhere, Republican governors have slashed corporate […]

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 […]

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 […]

This week, two members of Congress offered new plans to overhaul the U.S. tax code. One proposes cutting the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans by 10% and draining the U.S. Treasury by $2 trillion over the next decade. The other calls for higher rates for millionaires and billionaires to reduce the federal budget […]

Three trillion dollars. Once all the costs of the actual fighting, veterans care, expanded baseline defense spending and extra interest on the national debt are factored in, that's the price tag for the still-unfunded American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there's one more reason to institute a post-recession war tax to pay for the […]

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 […]