“Everything in this bill will be paid for,” President Obama promised as he outlined his plan to jump-start the sputtering economy. “Everything.” But Obama isn’t the one charged with deciding how. That task, if the President’s plan ever gets that far, will fall to the members of the joint “supercommittee” on deficit reduction, already charged [...]
John Boehner discovers what’s apparently the only known way to render Joe Biden speechless: talk about golf.
–The number of jobs Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi estimates would be created by President Obama’s new stimulus plan.
Obama’s plan for boosting the economy may seem huge—he proposed $447 billion in tax breaks and spending in his speech on Thursday night—but according to some economists, none of it will work until the problem that caused the economic crisis to begin with is addressed: housing. “The recovery will never turn into an expansion that [...]
It’s hard to remember now, but in the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11, a spirit of religious unity reigned. Shocked political foes gathered together at the Washington National Cathedral for a prayer service that included a Muslim imam who read verses from the Koran. Just a few days later, George W. Bush quoted [...]
If you missed it: Full text and video of Obama’s stimulus speech. Paul Krugman was pleased by parts of the plan and the rhetorical shift from austerity. Conservatives aren’t going to go for it.
A few minutes into his address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night, President Obama posed what sounded like a modest challenge to the U.S. Congress: “The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy.” But [...]
There was no talk of growth projections or unemployment rates, price tags or policy-riders. President Obama’s address Thursday night to a joint session of Congress, billed as the introduction of the White House’s new jobs plan, was not a speech that aimed to explain economic theories or win over legislators. It was an effort by [...]
The legal battle over President Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul has been a messy affair. With two prior rulings at the appellate level, one upholding the Affordable Care Act and another ruling against it on Commerce Clause grounds, Thursday’s opinions delivered by the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, dismissed challenges from state attorney general Ken [...]
The members of the powerful Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, colloquially known as the “supercommittee,” brought first-day-of-school optimism and a veneer of bipartisanship to their inaugural meeting on Thursday morning. Don’t expect it to last. The mantra of the meeting, which consisted of vague opening statements and the approval of a rules package, was [...]
