In case you were wondering what all those retiring and defeated lawmakers do with themselves once banished from Capitol Hill, I have a simple answer for you: they get paid. Take Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. In September, Mr. Blair was called to Claridge’s hotel in London to mediate a renegotiation of the [...]

I think this pull by Digby from a post by Steve Benen says about everything you need to say about the longtime party of Austerity, the Democrats: To add a little historical context to this, over the last four decades, only two presidents have reduced the deficit this much, this quickly: Bill Clinton and Barack [...]

The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence index shot up today, rising from 61.3 in August to 70.3 in September. This typically correlates with a brighter outlook for the economy, and could lead to stronger consumer spending. However, it may be worthwhile to ignore the Conference Board’s index in the last couple months of an election cycle. [...]

Before I get my head chopped off, let me start with the caveat that a speech is not reliable, and that I stand behind this entire post about the platform debacle as a metaphor (nobody will give a damn about the platform when they finish breaking down the stage of the Time Warner Center in [...]

The flip side to the fact that deficit spending in a recession is responsible is that the story of the 1990s, the story of prosperity through surpluses, was actually deeply irresponsible, laying the conditions for the current crisis. Joe Weisenthal has a masterful article out, drawing on the work of UMKC professor and MMT theorist [...]

One problem with talking about the “Bush tax cuts” is that they incorporate much more than just the individual income tax marginal rates. Among other things, you have the changes to the estate tax. And so today, House Democrats plan to introduce an estate tax measure that would freeze the tax at 2009 levels. In [...]

The recall election in Wisconsin between Gov. Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett finally reached the level of attention you would expect from the biggest campaign in the country in 2012, save the Presidential race. A high-profile debate on Thursday led to the powerful exchange above, with the signature line from Barrett, “I have [...]

Honeywell CEO David Cote said yesterday – when his goons weren’t yanking the microphone away from a labor reporter asking a question – that the ideal corporate tax rate should be zero percent: SORKIN: David, I have a tax question for you. What do you think the ultimate effective tax rate should be on corporations? [...]

President Bill Clinton will campaign tomorrow in Milwaukee for Tom Barrett in his recall fight against Scott Walker. Greg Sargent writes that this was a late-game decision that involved heavy lobbying from leaders in the Democratic Party. People like to extrapolate from last-minute campaign events like this about the state of races. I’ve heard others [...]

The President has a speech at this hour where he will call for the consolidation of several federal agencies to shrink the federal bureaucracy and save money, a return to the “age of austerity” Obama that has faded of late as the election nears and populism returns to the fore. Obama will propose combining the [...]

The “We Can’t Wait” series of executive orders and announcements has strayed away from the economy in recent weeks and toward perfunctory things like improving executive branch performance, and also counter-productive budget cutting under the guise of eliminating “waste.” But this latest effort, which involves former President Clinton, actually sounds like a pretty good piece [...]