On Sunday, Americans will mark the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan. But for the conservative movement, the now-decades long hagiography project is reaching a crescendo. While the Gipper's former speechwriter Peggy Noonan today lauded his goodness in the Wall Street Journal Friday, Sarah Palin will kick-off the Young Americans for Freedom three day extravaganza at […]

On Friday, the House approved the $801 billion "compromise" tax bill, sending it on to the White House for President Obama's signature. Over the next two years, that budget-busting, gilded class giveaway will cost the Treasury $70 billion in revenue lost from the top 2% of taxpayers and another $25 billion uncollected from the richest […]

One day before the House Democratic caucus voiced its opposition to President Obama's tax cut deal with Senate Republicans, Speaker Nancy Pelosi focused on the estate tax as adding insult to injury. But Pelosi isn't alone in shining a spotlight on an estate tax proposal that would drain the U.S. Treasury of billions of dollars. […]

It is sadly ironic that President Obama held a Pearl Harbor Day press conference to defend his surrender to Republicans over the extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. At a time when the United States is fighting two still-unpaid-for wars, facing staggering budget deficits and struggling to emerge from its deepest economic crisis […]

Perhaps the worst part of President Obama's very bad deal on taxes concerns the estate tax. After all, what Ezra Klein deemed "noxious" is a $7 billion annual giveaway to the heirs of the largest fortunes in America. It is estimated that only 0.11% of estates and just 40 family farms and businesses nationwide would […]

Back in 2006, billionaire Warren Buffett lamented, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Now with President Obama's capitulation imminent on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, average Americans will once again be the big losers. After all, while the Bush years […]

In their scorched-earth effort to deliver another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have fittingly appropriated their favorite global warming talking point: "uncertainty." Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and John Boehner are just of the GOP leaders claiming "Congress ought to act today to stop all the tax hikes" because "it […]

Watching Barack Obama and John McCain over the past week has left pundits and armchair psychologists alike scratching their heads. While the two foes from the 2008 presidential election couldn't be more different, their puzzling performances over tax cuts for the wealthy and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell have the Washington commentariat paging […]

Despite a decade of Bush tax cut windfalls for the wealthy pushing income inequality to levels not seen since 1929, Republicans are calling for another $700 billion, 10-year payday for the richest Americans. So it should come as no surprise that as corporate profits reached an all-time record in the third quarter, leading voices in […]

In a rare moment of candor last week, the third-ranking Republican in the House admitted the failure of the Bush tax cuts. "You know, I think it's fair to say, if the current tax rates were enough to create jobs and generate economic growth we'd have a growing economy," Mike Pence acknowledged, adding, "It's not […]