A former Bush official, who led Bush’s social security privatization effort and now works for the Koch-funded Mercatus Center, made a splash with a new study reported by the Washington Post. He claims Obamacare actually increases the deficit rather than reducing it, as the CBO reported. Anti-Obamacare zealots were quick to seize on his study … Continue Reading →
You’ll recall when the GOP took our economy hostage over raising the debt ceiling and brought it nearly to the brink of default, President Obama offered a $4 trillion grand bargain that would have substantially reduced the deficit, gave them more of what cuts they demanded than they deserved and the only thing they had … Continue Reading →
My conservative friends claim the stimulus spending from the Recovery Act was a failure, thereby proving Keynesian economics wrong but this simply isn’t true. The Keynesian approach is what saved us in the 30s and could have saved us this time, had it been fully embraced. (Yes, I know you hate him but that doesn’t … Continue Reading →
You’ll recall during the payroll tax battle last week, the one big ransom demand Republicans were able to wring out of the process was forcing President Obama to rush a decision on the contentious Keystone XL pipeline which would deliver some of the dirtiest, low grade oil from Canada via a mammoth pipeline over 2000 … Continue Reading →
Before the Occupy movement kicked the conventional narrative back into reality, we spent most of 2011 talking about the imaginary immediate threat of the dreaded deficit. That’s not to say we should never address eliminating it, but as I’ve said about a million times, the time to cut spending is not when the economy is … Continue Reading →
In case you didn’t notice, Republicans held our economy hostage again last week over essential funding to keep our government running. One of their ransom demands in trade for their votes on the omnibus spending bill was over the light bulb law. GOPers are claiming a victory over Democratic regulatory overreach for success in cutting … Continue Reading →
In my ongoing series on the stupidity of austerity cuts to cure deficits, here’s a new analysis that once again proves the point. The lede says it all: Europe’s “no pain no gain” attitude to solving its sovereign crisis risks exacerbating the bloc’s problems, choking off the very growth needed to raise the money to … Continue Reading →