My colleague Fareed Zakaria has a really smart column today about Germany’s role in the Greek debt crisis–and guess what? He’s not bashing the Germans for fiscal austerity. He’s praising them for the compassion they’ve shown, at a stiff cost to German taxpayers, to keep the Greeks afloat. For me, though, the most interesting thing [...]
Budgets
Republicans’ cherubic budget crusader, Paul Ryan, unveiled the latest House GOP budget on Tuesday morning. It won’t become law anytime soon, but it can still tell us a few things about the state of fiscal politics in 2012.
The Obama Administration came to a fork in the road this year on military spending: given the financial pressures facing the nation, it could have fundamentally set U.S. defense policy on a new path. Or it could have kept pretty much everything and just sucked it in as it tightened its belt. It has elected [...]
With a divided Congress still standing at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the annual White House budget isn’t a policy proposal destined for markup in the subcommittee rooms of the Capitol. It’s a statement of principle.
The reactionary socialists over at the Congressional Budget Office have created a fantastic infographic for understanding federal spending, debt and taxation right now in the U.S.:
Hurricane Irene wreaked billions of dollars in damage, inundated cities and towns and killed at least 35. For hundreds of thousands more, it was either a life-changing calamity or a close call. But for politicians, it was also a chance to showcase leadership and promote their vision of government in a moment of peril. President [...]
In a memo to his House Republican caucus released after Obama spoke on Monday afternoon, Majority Leader Eric Cantor doubled down on his insistence that there be no tax increases included in the next round of deficit negotiations. Though this position ignores the fact that taxes are set to go up automatically in 2013 if [...]
After meeting for two hours Thursday, the latest lawmakers to be tasked with solving the budget puzzle emerged from Blair House with Opening Day optimism. Vice President Joe Biden called it a “good, productive” session. “We had a good rapport develop,” said Eric Cantor, the House Majority leader. What did they accomplish? Apart from announcing [...]
Democrats and Republicans managed to work out a controversial tax-cut deal in December. Then they managed to work out a controversial spending-cut deal in April. Now they just need to work out a deal to raise the debt limit, something both sides agree needs to be done to avoid a national calamity. No problem, right? [...]
Ahh, the children and grandchildren. Politicians love to describe how big-bad Washington is robbing them blind. “Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” then Sen. Barack Obama declared in 2006, when he voted against raising the debt ceiling. “Passing on ever-increasing debt to our children [...]
