Arthur Vandenberg, the former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman who worked closely with President Truman to architect the free world in the late 1940s, died 65 years ago on Monday. His legacy offers two important lessons for us during our current time of turmoil at home and abroad. First, we have benefited greatly from the …
Continue reading “Robust Foreign Policy Possible, Even in Partisan Times”
The Republican struggle to reconcile House and Senate versions of a 2006 budget resolution reflects a much larger reality: When it comes to fiscal policy, the GOP is facing its moment of truth — and it’s blinking. For years, Republicans vowed that, if they controlled the White House and Congress at the same time, they …
Continue reading “On Fiscal Policy, the Republican Jig Is Up”
With a new Congress in place, talk of serious change abounds. “I earned capital on the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” President Bush said after his re-election — and a strengthened majority on Capitol Hill plans to help him. At the same time, a demoralized Democratic Party finds itself largely …
Continue reading “The Republicans Face Big Obstacles to Enacting Big Changes”
The pre-adjournment wrangling in Congress over health care, energy and other legislation is shaped, at least in part, by a basic piece of conventional wisdom: Get it done now, for the built-in realities of any election year will make it impossible for Congress to do much legislatively in 2004. You hear it all over town …
Continue reading “2004 Has 50-50 Chance of Being a Productive Year for Congress”
The upcoming elections will do more than determine the makeup of Congress, statehouses and city councils. They surely will generate another round of hand-wringing about low voter turnout and, in turn, the sorry state of American democracy. In fact, the hand-wringing has already begun. A recent op-ed in The Boston Globe by Thomas Patterson, a …
Continue reading “Voting Isn’t the Be-All, End-All of American Democracy”
With Congress engaged in partisan warfare over whether to raise the federal debt limit, jeopardizing the government’s ability to pay its bills in the coming days, lawmakers should take a much bolder step: Scrap the debt limit altogether. The debt limit is worse than useless. It’s dangerous. It creates the risk that Washington will default …