The Obama campaign came out with a nifty, interactive online graphic Thursday that guides America through the life of Julia, a hypothetical young web designer who appears to have been drawn by Chris Ware or Dan Clowes. She has two paths: One in which she benefits at every stage of her life from the policies of Barack Obama, and one in which she is hurt at every stage of her life by the policies of Mitt Romney. But all is not what it seems.
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.
Clearly, health care reform was a losing political issue for lots of congressional Democrats, especially those who were up for reelection in 2010. The issue helped mobilize Republican voters who managed to unseat enough Democrats to shift the balance of power on Capitol Hill. Democrats lost their Senate super majority and Republicans now hold a [...]
The ubiquitous fact-checking outfit PolitiFact has chosen Democrats’ charge that Paul Ryan’s budget would “end Medicare” as its Lie of the Year. This dubious honor, which follows 2009 and 2010 rulings that both went against the GOP for its health care claims, is a coup for House Republicans, who will no doubt face an onslaught [...]
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.
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 [...]
Sen. Joe Lieberman has found an ally for the middle-of-the-road Medicare reform proposal he laid out a few weeks ago. On Tuesday, the independent Senator from Connecticut and conservative Republican Tom Coburn unveiled a tweaked version of Lieberman’s plan. They hope to build a coalition of support for the proposal, which they say could save [...]
(This post was update at 6:35 p.m.) Yes, we’re back here again already, with at least one Republican claiming this week that Democratic health reform will kill seniors. Sigh. The target of the GOP attack is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a controversial group to be appointed by the president and charged with slowing the [...]
On the campaign trial – especially the presidential campaign trail – nuance rarely breaks through the fog of generalization. Mitt Romney is the frontrunner and a flip-flopper on the issues. Michele Bachmann is the Tea Party favorite and an evangelical Christian. Jon Huntsman worked for Obama, but might have a good shot in a general [...]
Maybe Joe Lieberman was feeling left out of the current debt ceiling and budget fight. That might explain why the independent Ssenator from Connecticut has chosen this moment to offer a new plan to reform Medicare. Lieberman laid out his proposal in a recent Washington Post op-ed. The headline, “How Medicare Can Be Saved,” is [...]
