Republican craziness has stopped a deal from happening on the fiscal slope, and really nothing else. Because here’s Nancy Pelosi yesterday on chained CPI, a benefit cut to Social Security recipients that happens to be regressive and more painful as people age: Q: Members of your Caucus are organizing against the chained CPI that the [...]

Poor people don’t vote. At least, they don’t vote in proportion with their share of the population. And they certainly don’t “vote” in the sense that politicians would notice, by attending thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners and contributing to their campaigns.

The Senate passed, by a 90-1 count, an “Iran containment” resolution that creates that “red line” Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded for recently. And, it puts the red line for Iran’s nuclear program at a nuclear capability rather than a nuclear weapon, a shift from current Presidential policy.

The House Ways and Means Committee passed a resolution today that would overturn the Administration’s new welfare waiver policy under an oversight law called the Congressional Review Act. Another vote is expected in the House Education and the Workforce Committee later today, at which point the resolution could head to the floor of the House. [...]

The Government Accountability Office has issued a ruling on the Obama Administration’s offer of waivers on the welfare program, which Republicans have falsely claimed would “end the work requirement for welfare.” The GAO ruling could lead to a Congressional up-or-down vote on the rule change, and may even force President Obama into an uncomfortable position [...]

Last night, I considered firing up my Commodore 64 (yes, that’s what I use, what else is out there?) and documenting all the lies in Paul Ryan’s RNC convention speech. I could join TPM and The New Republic and The Daily Beast and Huffington Post and Wonkbook and probably half a dozen more. I could [...]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Lots of people are talking about Chris Matthews teeing off on Reince Priebus today, accusing the GOP of “playing the race card” against the President. Mitt Romney’s birther joke, their blatantly false ad accusing the President of removing the work requirement from welfare [...]

This welfare dustup in the Presidential election, as I said earlier in the week, generates a lot of heat as an argument while being irrelevant to the actual issue. Newt Gingrich, the architect of welfare reform in the 1990s who has been employed by the Romney campaign as a spokesman, admitted last night that there’s [...]

The issue of welfare reform has been germinating on the right for a few weeks now, ever since the Obama Administration granted waivers that conservatives claim would subvert the work requirements under the program. Now this has spilled into the Presidential race, as Mitt Romney (who I thought was planning on running a laser-focused campaign [...]

Hundreds of thousands of food stamp recipients will lose at least $90 a month in benefits, after an amendment to the farm bill failed badly in the Senate. The Senate overwhelmingly rejected a bid to preserve some $4.5 billion in food stamps funding, as part of the massive farm bill, on Tuesday. The amendment to [...]

Before I get to Ezra Klein’s review of the Pete Peterson Fiscal Summit, let’s marvel for a second at just how much influence Peterson has, that he can get pretty much everyone in Washington to kiss the hem of his garment. Former President Bill Clinton, House Speaker John Boehner, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and what [...]