President Obama is focusing heavily on how to make progress with the new Congress on budget and tax issues, but the more logical place for him to seek early bipartisanship is on trade – specifically, on the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. The pact, which Congress must ratify, would be a winner for the president and …
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U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state is one of those tempting silver bullets that upon close examination would produce the opposite of its promised result. Rather than promoting peace, it would likely ignite conflict both within Palestinian society and between Israel and the Palestinians. Never mind that such recognition would undermine the very process of …
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The debates of recent days over extending Bush-era tax cuts and funding government operations for 2011 make clear the contradictions within Republican fiscal policy – lower taxes and lower deficits, simultaneously – that will plague federal policymaking in the coming years. Until they choose the latter, U.S. fiscal problems will only grow worse. Consider the …
Continue reading “GOP Fiscal Fissures will Plague Policymaking”
The strange terminology and arcane ways of Washington often leave Americans bewildered and unsure of who to blame for a particular legislative decision. So we should welcome the occasions when differences between the political parties become crystal clear and there is little doubt about what each will fight for. One such occasion has arrived with …
Any story with the provocative title “Down and Out on $250,000 a Year,” like this week’s piece from The Fiscal Times, is bound to generate reaction. In my case, it’s a mix of sympathy and disdain toward the “down and out” – some shaped by my personal experiences, some by my observations of human behavior, …
President Obama’s hope for positive pay-offs from his deal with Republicans to temporarily extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits rests on questionable political and fiscal assumptions. Regarding his political assumptions, Obama says the polls show the American people support his position to not permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for Americans making more than $250,000 …
Continue reading “For Obama, a Deal of Questionable Assumptions”
You know the old story about Americans who, traveling in a non-English speaking country, try to get the local folk to understand them not by speaking in their native language but, instead, by speaking English louder? That‟s apparently how leading progressives approach the issues of taxes and spending, jobs and health care, housing and the …