Senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse just held a conference call on the proposed Social Security cuts in the debt limit talks. And the takeaway was to inform the White House that they shouldn’t assume that Democrats will simply follow whatever deal they make, particularly if it includes cuts to the safety net. “There’s been [...]

Kent Conrad will present his long-term budget plan today, and you’ll be surprised to know that it shares no meaningful difference with the budget plan Bernie Sanders has been touting of late. Indeed, it includes a 50/50 ratio between tax increases and spending cuts. We’re in a topsy-turvy world when a plan that cuts the [...]

Senate Democrats will put forward their own budget next week, instead of leaving town for the 4th of July weekend. The biggest near-term consequence of this is that there will be no recess appointment of any Presidential nominee, meaning that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will indeed lose powers when it transfers over to the [...]

The President entered the debt talks yesterday, meeting with the leaders of both parties in the Senate. And we’re starting to get some numbers out of the negotiations. The “down payment” of deficit reduction is expected to be anywhere from $2-$2.4 trillion, of which between $500 billion and $1 trillion has been agreed to. So [...]

Sen. Bernie Sanders is about a half-hour into another “filibernie” stemwinder on the floor of the Senate today; the prepared text, which Bernie is likely to embellish, clocked in at over 10,000 words. Sanders has combined this speech, which concerns shared sacrifice, with an action item, a petition to the President that lays out the [...]

Yesterday we learned that Saudi Arabia warned US officials of oil price speculation back in 2007, telling them they had nowhere to sell additional crude even if they produced more. Since January, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has had the authority to stop this rampant speculation, which has returned to the market, by using Dodd-Frank [...]

Republicans are squabbling with themselves over the role of taxes in any “grand bargain” on the budget. A few have dared to say that taxes must be part of the mix, risking ire from the hard-core types. Since the Republican Party principles are more about keeping taxes low than anything to do with the deficit, [...]

Sixty-four Senators, half from each party, expressed their desire to have the President take up tax and entitlement reform this year, as part of budget negotiations. The filibuster-proof majority in favor of these efforts doesn’t mean that a resolution can be worked out – both sides have a very different conception of things – but [...]

The Wall Street Journal thinks Washington has “gotten serious” about budget deficits. The evidence here is thin; all I see is a Washington serious about accepting Tea Party rhetoric about federal spending. Getting serious about budget deficits would require not cutting taxes by $800 billion as recently as December. But they do touch on the [...]

Bernie Sanders has started a Social Security caucus in the US Senate, dedicated to protecting the successful government program. There’s actually been a Social Security caucus in the House since 1982; longtimeRepublican Bill Young (R-FL) founded it, and it’s had a bipartisan membership. We’re in a new era, and I’d be surprised to see much [...]

Bob Herbert’s defense of Social Security, and comparison of the Peterson types to muggers of the elderly, was pitch-perfect. The importance of it comes in pushing these bastards out into the sunlight, so their true aims are known to all. Herbert goes through the familiar arguments – Social Security is not in crisis, the benefit [...]