It’s time for someone in the White House to hire a teacher to give everyone in the administration a lesson in remedial negotiation 101 . The actual budget issues aside, this statement from a press briefing with Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling is some of the most pathetic public negotiating I’ve seen. [...]

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 [...]

In case it wasn’t clear to everyone after watching two years of politically driven lockstep obstructionism in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, fresh on the heels of Tuesday’s big Republican victory, has again directly stated that his top goal is to make sure Obama loses in 2012. From The Hill: “Over the past week, [...]

Recently, there has been some inside-the-beltway chatter about a value added tax. The policy reason behind it is basically that it could raise a lot of money. The foolish political logic behind it is that liberals won’t like it because it is very regressive, but in desperation, to increase revenue, they will somehow convince conservatives [...]