The best part about Washington’s new obsession with scandals is that it seems to have killed any hopes for a grand bargain in the near future. Congress has only so much bandwidth to deal with issues and it looks like most of that time will be consumed by “investigations.” In addition, while Republican are in [...]

President Obama and Congressional Republicans actually view concerns about the deficit in two different ways and that is what has prevented a deal. Obama for whatever reason actually thinks reducing the long term deficit should be important. He has put forward plans to include spending cuts and tax increases in order to achieve this goal. He [...]

One of the best pieces of news I have seen in awhile is that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is not very optimistic about a grand bargain being reached. He currently puts the odds at less than 50 percent.  From The Hill: The odds of a grand bargain deficit-reduction deal are less than 50-50, Senate Majority [...]

On the tenth anniversary of the war in Iraq it is worth remembering how many people were deeply wrong. Top politicians in both parties, administration officials, reporters, columnists, and even many bloggers. They were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, about the links to Al-Qaeda, and about how quickly the war would end. Over [...]

One of the big reasons that deficit hysteria gripped Washington for years despite dozens of more pressing issues is that Pete Peterson has spent the GDP of a small country propping it up. According to Joshua Green, Peterson spent half a billion on this current deficit push and plans to spend a half billion more. [...]

The way Obama has handled basically every manufactured crisis from the debt ceiling, to the Bush tax cuts expiration, to the sequester has been about trying to force both Democrats and Republicans to embrace his version of a “grand bargain.” While it is clear this has been the driving force behind Obama’s decisions, if you [...]

House Republicans really really really hate new taxes. This is one promise from the GOP I do believe. It seems almost everyone from their base, to their donors, to independent voters believe this. Despite a mountain of evidence the only people who don’t seem to believe this are a small circle of professional grand bargain [...]

The best hope for protecting Social Security and Medicare from benefit cuts during the next round of manufactured crises continues to be the Republican unwillingness to accept any new taxes. Top Republicans are very directly calling for benefit cuts in the next round of possible deals. Just yesterday Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said [...]

Obama could have used this revenue-increasing deal to finally pivot to immigration, education, climate change, gun control or any of a dozen other issues that have been completely neglected while Washington has been overwhelmed with deficit hysteria. There is no shortage of more pressing problems in America that need to be dealt with. Instead Obama seems to be signalling that much of his second term is also going to be consumed with his desire to get a balanced deal to reduce the deficit, and in Washington “balanced deficit reduction” is basically the code word for cutting entitlements.

What I care about as a progressive is the social safety net. We are an extremely rich country and Americans should not want for basic necessities. While there are some other reasons related to income inequality and marginal utility that I support taxing rich people, I primarily want them to pay taxes to fund a [...]