The GOP is fixated on tax cuts even though they increase the deficit and necessitate politically-toxic spending cuts. To a large degree, the 2012 election will hinge on how Republicans resolve that tension.
My dictionary defines “pledge” as a “solemn binding promise to do, give or refrain from doing something.” That same dictionary defines “position” as “a point of view or attitude on a certain question.” The difference is huge: One can change a position with minimal consequence to one’s integrity. But one violates a pledge. Grover Norquist’s [...]
Jared Bernstein, the liberal former economist for Vice President Joe Biden, posted this chart Wednesday morning, which helps to frame the current debate over shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. To explain the current fiscal mess the country now finds itself facing, one must look at both lines.
At a press conference on Monday, President Obama rebuffed congressional leaders for their recalcitrance to make concessions in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, and continued to make his case for an ambitious, all-inclusive deficit reduction deal. But with chances for a grand bargain already nixed by House Republicans, Obama’s appearance seemed more about pressing his [...]
Washington these days feels like a 1960s game show. Our lucky contestants, House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama, are on the stage in front of three doors, listening intently to the audience cheer before they choose which door to open. As the President and congressional leaders meet at the White House Thursday to [...]
The Republican Party, after converting huge surpluses into huge deficits during the Bush era, after opposing deficit-reducing health reforms, student loan reforms and big-bank taxes during the Obama era, after continuing to clamor for trillions of dollars in deficit-expanding tax cuts while gutting House pay-as-you-go rules to make it easier to expand the deficit, has [...]
Buried way back on A17 of the NYT, another reminder of how ugly it is out there: Arizona on Thursday became the first state to eliminate its Children’s Health Insurance Program when Gov. Jan Brewer signed an austere budget that will leave nearly 47,000 low-income children without coverage. The Arizona budget is a vivid reflection [...]
