I have to agree with Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center on this one. And I’ve noticed this tension among politicians for a while. On the one hand they want to say that they favor a “simpler” tax code, and they like to talk about how many thousands of pages the tax code is [...]

One part of the State of the Union I forgot to mention is that the President formally backed legislation that wold ban insider trading among members of Congress. If the Administration has been serious about anything related to financial fraud, it has been insider trading, where they have engaged in multiple criminal prosecutions. And the [...]

Let’s briefly go through a few of the other proposals in last night’s State of the Union Address, none of which will come to pass this year if they include an act of Congress, but which offer some insights regardless: • The broader mortgage refi plan: HARP 2 is already operative, and Fannie and Freddie [...]

I’ll pepper in my thoughts on the State of the Union Address throughout the day, but I would be remiss if I didn’t start with the announcement of a Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses (UMOSA) to investigate bank practices during the financial crisis. The unit will be co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman, the New [...]

Tonight at 9pm ET, the President will deliver the State of the Union Address at the beginning of his run for re-election. Unlike Obama’s other addresses to joint sessions of Congress I wouldn’t expect this one to produce much in the way of a legislative blueprint. It’s an election year and most of the major [...]

Small hints have been dribbled out to journalists ahead of tonight’s State of the Union Address, which in an election year invariably signals an attempt by an incumbent running for re-election to set the terms of the debate, to state what they will campaign on throughout the year. And this year is no different. For [...]

With the two-month stopgap put to bed, all eyes turn to the next round on the fight to extend a payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. Once this law is signed, lawmakers will have until the end of February to reach agreement on what they claim to want, a year-long extension on the above two [...]

I think Michael Grunwald basically gets this right. The White House is generally pretty pleased with what they’ve done, they don’t think they’re likely to get anything additional from Congress – which they’re right about, but that assumes that the executive branch has no authority of its own – and they’re going to just engage [...]

While I don’t agree with the whole piece, Steven Pearlstein was right today on Republicans’ quick rejection of public investment of the kind that the President proposed in the State of the Union. But Republicans could find themselves alone on at least one plank of that investment strategy. In a rare joint statement, Rich Trumka [...]

In addition to the lack of discussion of the economic crisis, particularly the forgotten foreclosure crisis, one thing that struck many observers of the State of the Union address was no mention of gun safety, just a couple weeks after the Tucson shooting rampage and the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (who has thankfully [...]

The reason the President will get a boost from the State of the Union address is due to the comparison with dour Paul Ryan and simply nutty Michele Bachmann. Both of them were relentlessly negative as the President was positive. Both of them also said things that were manifestly untrue, things that they get away [...]