The Obama administration has declared victory with the new tax deal. They believe they got 85 percent of what they wanted on taxes and more importantly the administration claims they finally broke the back of the Republican party’s opposition to raising taxes. President Obama said, “Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, [...]

Corporate America and the GOP have been playing a very dangerous game, throwing enormous amounts of money behind PR campaigns demagoguing the very deficit that their radical manipulation of the political system created in the first place. They thought they could hide their true intentions under the cloak of fiscal responsibility and good governance. The fact that the very tool they virtually invented to captivate the democratic process finally turned around and bit them in the ass is almost Shakespearean in its irony.

Regardless of whether or not you think it is a good idea, our Constitution was designed with multiple veto points meant to create a bias toward status quo. The basic idea is that if you want to make large changes, you either need broad concessions or to definitively win the support of the public in [...]

As last week drew to a close, the Republicans that control only the House of Representatives clearly bested President Obama and the Democrats that control the Senate in the budget fight.  Speaker John Boehner, despite controlling only one third of the relevant institutions in the budget fight, was able to get the President to agree [...]

Last week, after crazies like Jim DeMint, Pete Hoekstra and Michelle Bachmann started the REPEALgasm, a group of slightly less crazy Republicans, including John Cornyn, Jon Kyl and Newt Gingrich, began to backpedal. Now, Lamar Smith (R-TX), who himself signed on to the repealgasm, admits REPEAL! is all just kabuki.

Both Republicans and Democrats offered amendments to the health care bill today in the Rules Committee. They have no chance of getting a vote on the floor, but looking at the Republican amendments can provide some insights into the upcoming GOP campaign against the bill in the midterm.

I was reading Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future,” and the section on health care reform made me sad on many levels. Remarkably, for dealing with the uninsured below the age of 65, Ryan’s plan is very similar in general outline to the Senate health care bill. In both plans, people will [...]

President Obama wants to have a fight with the Republican who will run on repealing the whole health care bill. While I’m sure some Republicans in the deep red districts will run on that platform, I doubt the bulk of the Republican party will. I don’t think Obama will get the fight he claims to [...]

I don’t know who thought that penalizing people 2% of their income if they refuse to buy the product of private insurance companies was a good idea. Maybe the same guy who thought NAFTA would be a winner for the Democrats in 1994.

Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner released his party’s health care reform “alternative” on Tuesday. The bill is a cruel sick joke. It does not ban insurance companies from refusing to cover pre-existing conditions. It guts state health insurance regulations, and lets insurance companies charge sicker people more. Now the CBO is out with their analysis. [...]