Senator Tom Harkin and Representative George Miller have introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10. READ MORE >>
The sequestration impasse is so obviously the Republicans' fault that the punditocracy, which can't abide an obvious and unchanging story line, is trying hard to invent a new one that blames President Obama. READ MORE >>
Jonathan Chait has a good post up about how Republicans don't really care about tax reform. I'd go further and say they aren't all that interested in deficit reduction, either. Let's review the contours of the current dispute between President Obama and House Republicans over ending the sequester. Here is what the president has put on the table: READ MORE >>
The Six-Month Recovery
For the typical American, the economic rebound ended in May 2012
On the eve of the sequester, there's more bad news about the economy. Just last month, Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez reported that during the first two years of the recovery (2009-2011) average market income for the top one percent in the income distribution grew by 11.2 percent while it shrank by 0.4 percent for everyone else. Saez didn't yet have distribution data for 2012 (and likely won't for many months). READ MORE >>
The Lindbergh-Baby Economy
The sequester wasn't some sneaky Obama ruse. It was ransom.
On March 1 (i.e., this Friday) $85 billion will be sliced, more or less indiscriminately, from the discretionary portion of the federal budget. Everybody agrees this is a bad idea, which it is. But whose bad idea is it? READ MORE >>
Cancel the Sequester—or Virginia Gets It!
Congressional Republicans have done a pretty good job pretending not to care that the planned March 1 sequestration will cut $43 billion out of this year’s defense budget. Sure, it’s an “ugly and dangerous way” to cut spending, says House Speaker John Boehner. READ MORE >>
Simpson-Bowles Is Back—With More Bad Ideas
You may have heard that Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, matinee idols of the Austerity Über Alles movement, have devised a new budget-slimming plan. That’s not quite right. They’ve produced a very rough outline that’s deliberately short on details because, Bowles says, they want to run the numbers by some think tanks. READ MORE >>
The current debate over gun control is one of several signs that liberalism is back, sort of. President Barack Obama gave a second inaugural speech forthrightly celebrating liberal principles (equality, environmental stewardship, collective action) and didn’t get impeached. More Americans now support gay marriage than oppose it. READ MORE >>
President Obama said two words in the 2013 State of the Union speech that can’t be found in any of his previous four State of the Union speeches: “minimum wage.”Here is what Obama said: READ MORE >>
The One Percent Gobbled Up the Recovery, Too
In fact, it put the 99 percent back in recession
President Obama's State of the Union speech will reportedly address the problems of the middle class, which has not fared well in this economy. Practically the only people who have fared well are the notorious one percent. To paraphrase the late New York City Mayor Ed Koch: How are they doin'? READ MORE >>
