Reports circulate that President Obama may agree to a massive all cuts debt ceiling package, creating a lot of anger and a sense of betrayal because Obama will fold on his demand that any debt ceiling package contain at least a small amount of new revenue. I can’t understand the amount of anger though because [...]

Obama is no deficit hawk or policy wonk, he is a big deal hawk. He seems to wants to get big bipartisan deals for the sake of getting big deals. He fights for a bipartisan deal even with getting a deal is totally unnecessary to achieving his stated policy goals.

The negotiation table is like the poker table, you don’t get a seat unless you have chips to pay with. By failing to prove she actually has the will and/or power to say no, Pelosi has shown the president she has no leverage, so doesn’t deserve a seat.

It seems not only the President of the United States but a large bipartisan group of senators have developed a love for the comically unserious idea of automatic budget triggers. From Bloomberg: Proposals being circulated among the bipartisan “Gang of Six” Senate negotiators, and about 20 other lawmakers in both chambers, would set deficit-cutting targets, [...]

The deficit reduction plan President Obama vaguely outlined yesterday lacks basic credibility. The problem isn’t that the math doesn’t add up–it is at least a dramatic improvement over Republican Paul Ryan’s plan, which literally defies logic and basic math. This issue is that many of the reductions President Obama promised yesterday come from actions that [...]

We, as a country, don’t have a budget deficit problem as Daily Show pointed out last night and David Leonhardt explained this morning. From Leonhardt: A trick question: If Congress takes no action in coming years, what will happen to the budget deficit? It will shrink — and shrink a lot. This simple fact may [...]

There is justifiably a lot of angry attention drawn to the fact that Wisconsin didn’t really have a budget problem until Republican Governor Scott Walker artificially created one by rushing through a series of business tax cuts. Now, in a classic shock doctrine fashion, he is using this manufactured “crisis” to justify his push to [...]

The worst part is not that President Obama has recently forfeited the rhetorical war with Republicans by adopting their tired trope–like regular families are tightening their belts during this recession, the federal budget needs to, as well–but that the analogy is horribly wrong. Their are probably no two entities that technically have budgets that are [...]

This recent fight over extending the George W. Bush tax cuts is a reminder that, from a long-term policy perspective, hyper-partisan legislative overreach is extremely effective. Instead of trying to create a great bipartisan concession before doing something, you are often more likely to get broad consensus post facto once you force the system to [...]

Either Sen. Mitch McConnell is a dramatically better negotiator than President Obama or Obama lied about not wanting to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy. McConnell’s superior skills of negotiation appear even more impressive given that he only controls a small minority in the Senate.