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 [...]

Responding to the Obama Administration’s apparent decision to cut Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funding, Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute says that progressives “are losing the argument at a higher level” about the budget in general, putting all programs and services at risk. The fundamental problem, Mishel says, is a spending [...]

Richard Shelby came out yesterday and said that we should raise the retirement age “every several years,” which is a great way to eliminate both Social Security and people who have to work into their 70s and 80s. I know that in Shelby’s mind we’re all days away from becoming cyborgs who can resist any [...]

If there’s a defense to be mounted against cuts to Social Security, the lead political ally in that fight would have to be the Senate Majority Leader. The House is in Republican hands, and nobody really knows what President Obama is up to. So Harry Reid will have to shoulder a lot of responsibility. Here’s [...]

We’ve officially gone around the bend. OFA, the organizing arm of the DNC, originally began its life as an organization trying to get someone elected on the platform of hope, change, and progressive policies. You had a public option in health care, cap and trade, a more progressive tax system, diplomacy abroad, and a belief [...]

The freak show has come to staid, pedestrian Delaware, in the form of Christine O’Donnell and her litany of crazy. But while the national media and late-night comics focus on condoms, masturbation and witchcraft, the man who is likely to become the next Senator from the state has quietly gone about his business. Chris Coons [...]

Ben Nelson has come out for extending all the Bush tax cuts “until Nebraska’s and the nation’s economy is in better shape, and perhaps longer, because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery.” It’s funny that he throws Nebraska in there, which is sitting on 5%. It’s also funny that he calls the [...]

In a speech on the economy in Cleveland, Ohio today, President Obama spoke of his own family’s personal story and the economic hardships of his predecessors, with a real defense of an America where the middle class is strong and a foundation for investment in the future gets prioritized over short-term laissez-faire faith in corporate [...]

Via the Hill, Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, gave an interview to AgWired where he assured that the estate tax would get resolved before the end of the year. Q: Anything else kinda going on in DC right now that-? Grassley: Estate tax. Q: Yeah, that’s a great one [...]

Henry Blodget links to a disturbing story about S&P, the credit rating agency, threatening to downgrade US debt if it doesn’t deal with the budget deficit: The United States government needs to take steps to preserve its top AAA-rating, a Standard & Poor’s Ratings (S&P) official told Dow Jones newswire in an interview published on [...]

The CBO released their budget estimates for the next ten years today, under current law. It shows that this year’s deficit is estimated at $1.342 trillion dollars, certainly a very high number and almost entirely attributable to the low tax receipts and high automatic stabilizers of the Great Recession. But by 2014, the deficit actually [...]