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 [...]

While doing my taxes I came to a realization. How would the IRS react if I did my returns the same way Paul Ryan did his “budget,” allowing me to be completely vague and lacking in almost any actual numbers or details where it mattered? So I quickly mocked up what my 1040 would look [...]

Over the past few weeks President Obama has been traveling the country championing his doomed America Jobs Act as his plan to address the jobs crisis. But during the same time Obama has been publicly flogging this dead show bill, his administration was actually implementing policies and pushing legislation through Congress that will destroy tens [...]

For the Republican Party, there seems to be no limit to the amount of beloved personal freedoms they are willing to shred to simply make abortions more inconvenient. The latest example is the GOP’s push to actually increase the power and scope of the IRS. From Mother Jones: Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail [...]

The incredibly rich aren’t like you and me, they don’t need to worry about breaking the law. . . because the I.R.S. is now handing out amnesty like candy. From the New York Times: The Internal Revenue Service said on Monday that it would soon announce a new amnesty program aimed at encouraging wealthy Americans [...]

We can only hope that Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden’s recent shift away from the individual mandate is a sign that the Democratic Party is beginning to acknowledge what a massive political and policy mistake they made.

Health care reform has steadily decreased in popularity since its passage as the Kaiser tracking poll shows; the individual mandate is deeply and extremely unpopular. Using the IRS to force Americans to buy a product from one of the most unpopular industries in America is so clearly a terrible idea that Democratic congressional candidates in contested races should think about suing the White House and their leadership for gross political malpractice. (If only some progressive blog had warned them about how unpopular the individual mandate would be without a public option.)

This health care reform bill passed late last night and soon to be signed into law is a seriously flawed piece of legislation, for it fails to achieve the goals of real health care reform. Now that it is essentially the law of the land, the country needs to work diligently at the federal and [...]

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.

The greatest problem with the Senate health care bill is not that it does “too little” to help people. The problem is that the bill does too many terrible things to help all the bad actors. The Senate bill further entrenches the private health insurance system. It continues the terrible pattern of privatizing our social [...]