Budget
Fiscal Scolds: The Next Generation
Cash prizes, a date with Bill Clinton: Pete Peterson recruits collegiate centrists
Young Republicans and College Democrats have their perks—the occasional trip to a state party convention, maybe—but they can’t hope to compete with young centrists. When a dozen college students came to St. Louis recently as part of a competition funded by the 85-year-old billionaire deficit hawk Pete Peterson, they were put up in the Ritz-Carlton, while the hundreds of other students attending the same conference stayed in humbler quarters. READ MORE >>
Turbulence Ahead
Flight delays are forcing Republicans to face the facts on sequestration
Denial, then anger. No, I’m not talking about the well-known stages of grief. I’m talking about the way conservatives are reacting to budget sequestration, now that its automatic cuts have hit the Federal Aviation Administration. The reaction says a lot about conservative values, their grasp of policy reality, or maybe both. READ MORE >>
Want to know whether bipartisan compromise on the budget has a future? Then watch very clearly over the next few days, to see whether Republican leaders distance themselves from Republican Congressman Greg Walden—and whether Walden himself walks back some rhetoric from yesterday. READ MORE >>
A Budget to Shortchange Our Future
Obama's plan doesn't do enough to shrink entitlement growth
President Obama’s proposed budget for FY 2014 represents an important contribution to a desperately needed national discussion about our long-term fiscal future. As such, it deserves a careful examination—not the reflexive chorus of cheers and boos (mostly the latter) that it has received so far. READ MORE >>
President Barack Obama’s new budget will call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, according to the New York Times. This is a huge, shocking development—except for the fact that Obama called for these things already. READ MORE >>
Did you know that the federal government spends more money on welfare than it does on Social Security, or Medicare, or the military? Me neither, perhaps because it isn’t true. It’s the kind of hooey that the crankier, less-informed sort of conservative is all too ready to believe. Yet the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee has lately been spreading this meme, and a variation is included in Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed budget. READ MORE >>
Paul Ryan Has Learned Nothing From His Loss
His new 'Path to Prosperity' budget looks a lot like the last one
Paul Ryan has released his new budget proposal, "The Path to Prosperity." It looks almost exactly like his old budget proposal. READ MORE >>
Washington's preferred legislative tool, the manufactured crisis, is based on the idea that when Democrats and Republicans are forced to choose between catastrophe and compromise, they'll choose the latter. READ MORE >>
The GOP's Budget Denialism
The federal budget is going to increase, whether Republicans like it or not.
President Obama on Tuesday appeared alongside police officers and firefighters, warning that the automatic spending cuts set to take place on March 1 would cause local and state governments to lay off first responders. Get used to this sort of thing. As the cuts of “budget sequestration” approach, both sides of the debate will be talking about the dire consequences that worry them most. READ MORE >>
Two Roads Diverge
The budget fight will determine the fate of the Republican makeover
Republicans are clearly in the early stages of what will be an extended and difficult effort to redefine their party. But they will soon have to make some fundamental choices about the direction of that evolution. And the terrain for those fateful choices, it's increasingly clear, will be this year's battle over the federal budget. READ MORE >>
