“I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” – Barack Obama 9/12/08
The Democratic co-chairman of the bipartisan debt-reduction commission that President [...]
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These days in the Senate, if a Democrat wants to see legislation pass, he or she needs a Republican BFF. Yesterday, the NYT announced the launching of a new maritime joint venture between Max Baucus — who did as much as anyone else to throttle healthcare reform in its crib, including any Republican — [...]
The city of Colorado Springs — the second largest city in Colorado — has bravely decided to sacrifice itself in order to put on an object lesson for the rest of the country on what happens when a stubborn refusal to raise taxes collides head-on with the decline in tax revenue resulting from the Republican-voodoo-economics [...]
Scott Brown was duly sworn in yesterday, and hit the ground running. That is to say, he started talking out of his ass as if to the manner born:
Newly-sworn Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown says the last economic stimulus bill did not create even one new job, a claim that most economists would dispute.
Brown made [...]
President Obama’s so-called three-year freeze on discretionary spending is going to elicit a huge collective groan from liberal bloggers, and much detailed analysis today.
So I’m going to restrict myself to one paragraph from the NYT story which may not receive much attention in the detailed analyses:
But one administration official said that limiting the [...]
I alluded to this briefly yesterday, but it deserves a post of its own. As he trampled the economy for eight years, George Bush left some pretty messy footprints.
The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin compares the economy in the 2000s to previous decades, and concludes that “according to a wide range of data,” the last [...]
In the time of Bush, Republicans were recklessly profligate with new spending, and blithely unconcerned with financing that spending. That’s why one of the most enduring footprints Bush left for posterity as he trampled the economy is the slew of records he set with the national debt. Records like “Largest increase in a [...]
House Democrats discard larger debt limit – WaPo (12/14/09)
House Democratic leaders, bowing to their party’s deficit hawks, will move the year’s final must-pass piece of legislation without a long-term increase to the national debt and without a large boost in infrastructure funding that was aimed at creating jobs.
It’s like Democrats want to end up in [...]
You know that old saw about death and taxes being the two great inevitables? Republican Representative Louie Gohmert doesn’t seem to agree.
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Here he is, holding forth on the iniquities of the estate tax:
Now, after someone dies and someone comes in and steals from them, we consider that in most society (sic) [...]
Obama To Focus on Deficit Reduction Next Year – Political Wire (11/13/09):
President Obama “plans to announce in next years State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs,” Politico reports.
“The president’s plan, which the officials [...]
