I like that only now, after nearly two years of deficit fearmongering, does the New York Times bother to mention that doing nothing on the deficit will reduce the deficit far more than any deal. The latest Congressional failure to agree on a plan for balancing the government’s books could yield a surprising result: a [...]

Budget expert Stan Collender backs up my contention that we will still see a major fight on the FY2012 budget over spending cuts, regardless of the caps in this debt deal. In fact, it’s highly likely that tea party types believe the caps are too damn high. Fiscal 2011 ends Sept. 30 and, given the [...]

Washington was buzzing yesterday about a Washington Post story about the cost of the war in Afghanistan, and how that may be a constraint on continuing the war. First of all, I don’t really believe this.

Under Dodd-Frank, companies designated as a systemic risk to the economy are subject to greater regulation. And the Oversight Board designed to monitor systemic risk has come up with a novel way to determine those firms, allowing them to argue their way out of it! Financial companies under consideration for Federal Reserve oversight will get [...]

Later today, President Obama will deliver his speech on long-term deficit reduction. This was not planned. At the beginning of the year, the White House didn’t lay out a strategy to just touch on the deficit in the State of the Union, allow Paul Ryan to propose his ideological budget plan, and then scramble to [...]

I feel like I’ve been dodging trial balloons for almost the whole of the Obama presidency, but here we go again. We know that the President is giving a speech tomorrow at George Washington University that will deliver a broad outline for deficit reduction. There’s some question over what that speech will entail. Before we [...]

Everyone has April 8 on their calendars as the day when the government will go into shutdown. Flip ahead three months, and you can place July 8 there as well: Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said that even if he uses “extraordinary measures” to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations, lawmakers will [...]

There’s no question that Joe Manchin will be a thorn in the side of the White House and national Democrats for the next two years and possibly longer. He won his election running away from the Democratic Party – even though he received more help from liberal writers, who did much to define his opponent [...]

It wasn’t looking good for the boys in blue states as of last night. Their gentlemen’s agreement on filibusters had officially collapsed. Then Republicans reversed course, allowing votes today on competing budget plans, after they arm-twisted all their members into supporting the Republican version. Joe Manchin (D-sort of) blasted the leadership for failing to show, [...]

We already knew plenty about Warner-Chambliss, the move by two Senators to revive the cat food commission and push through the Bowles-Simpson report. Bowles and Simpson are giving them a hand with that with something called the “Moment of Truth Project,” in conjunction with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Pete Peterson outfit [...]

The strategy by Republicans to force the President to take a position on deficit cuts, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is more transparent than one of Lady Gaga’s outfits. Tom Coburn, supposedly a personal friend of the President, describes it as a leadership deficit. Because the only person who is able to lead on these [...]