With friends like these…. The debt-reduction package emerging in talks between the White House and congressional leaders would not “fundamentally change” the alarming rate of growth in the national debt, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said Tuesday. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said the goal of slicing more than $2 trillion from the federal [...]

Kent Conrad has decided to shelve his budget while high-level talks continue on a long-term deficit reduction solution tied to the debt limit. Conrad’s plan got mixed reviews initially from within the caucus, but he altered it to capture the votes of Democrats on the Budget Committee, including Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The latest reports claimed [...]

Sarah Babbage wonders if the budget debate in Washington has moved to the left. So far this week, Sens. Pat Toomey and Kent Conrad have both released budgets, although Conrad’s has yet to go public. What they both show is a response to the backlash to Paul Ryan’s budget and the GOP’s current budget strategy. [...]

As we get more clarity on the menu of options in the upcoming budget debate, we’re seeing a narrowing of differences between the two parties. The Republicans may not want to admit it, but they’ve given up on changing the structure of Medicare. You can be sure of this by looking at the proposal of [...]

The House has a vote today on HR 1230, a bill to expand offshore drilling and speed leases to completion. House Democrats are taking the opportunity to offer a motion to recommit that would repeal subsidies for Big Oil. This will put House Republicans on the record on the contentious issue. On Thursday, when the [...]

The Gang of Six was always going to be a dicey proposition. I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on a whole lot. So getting a mini-version of the Senate to agree to $4 trillion in spending cuts and revenue increases looked impossible. And guess what, it [...]

A lot of people bash the retiring Kent Conrad, and I happily join them. But I will say this – the guy occasionally acts like a true believer. Sure, he’ll vote for budget-busting tax cuts and then call for reduction to the deficit. You can look under any rock on Capitol Hill and find a [...]

The Obama Administration called for a 5-year spending freeze in the State of the Union. Republicans have advanced rollbacks to 2008 levels in their early budget projections. And there are outliers like Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann as well. But now, Democrats are threatening to tip the balance over to the side of austerity by [...]

The deficit frauds may have had a plan all along. Kent Conrad and his pals are using the new deficit figures from CBO, the increase of which was caused almost entirely by extending the Bush tax cuts, to re-introduce the Bowles-Simpson cat food commission report. Alarmed by new deficit estimates, the Senate Budget Committee signaled [...]

Kent Conrad, the long-serving North Dakota Senator and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, plans to announce his retirement today, according to Chris Cillizza. North Dakota Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad plans to announce his retirement today, according to two informed Democratic sources, creating a potentially prime pickup opportunity for Republicans in a GOP-leaning state. Conrad, [...]

Many progressive advocates have said that Social Security is under a greater threat now than it was in 2005 with President Bush’s privatization scheme. Why? Because they have to now fend off attacks from both parties. It’s completely normal for the likes of Mitch Daniels to claim that young people will live to be more [...]