News & Comment

Thank God the Congressional Super Committee failed to reach an agreement. It was a bad idea in the first place, and Obama and the Democrats should never have pushed it. It focused too much attention on deficits, which aren’t the biggest problem we’re facing right now. High unemployment is the real crisis, and the more obsessed we all are with deficits, the less room there is to address unemployment. The Super Committee also was a bad idea procedurally as it bypassed the usual way Congress makes laws. In this sense, it was an end around democracy. read more »

I'll just let Bernie Sanders explain it to Wolf Blitzer, who appears to be extremely confused by the fact that someone might have liberal principles. In fairness, it's not something he hears every day. Usually, it's a Democrat explaining that he or she is more than willing to drive the social safety net over the cliff but the other side is refusing to kick in gas money. This is very different: read more »

The bipartisan super committee will probably fail to meet the self-imposed November 23rd deadline to enact $1.2trillion of cuts over the next ten years. That failure, as Paul Krugman notes in the New York Times, is a good thing: “Any deal reached now would almost surely end up worsening the economic slump. Slashing spending while the economy is depressed destroys jobs, and it’s probably even counterproductive in terms of deficit reduction, since it leads to lower revenue both now and in the future.” The economics of the super committee, indeed that of virtually all of the mainstream Washington policy establishment, is still predicated on the economic equivalent of Medieval blood-letting. Continuing to “draw blood” from the US economy via ongoing cuts in government expenditure at a time of high unemployment and underused resources will ensure the patient’s death, not recovery. read more »

Days after the tents were ripped out of Zucotti Park in New York, hundreds of Americans brought the fight for the 99% to the nation’s capital on Thursday with a “Wake-Up Congress” rally calling for the Super Committee to support “Jobs, Not Cuts” to key social programs. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) fittingly called it “#OccupyThe SuperCommittee.” read more »

In a packed hearing room at the U.S. Senate, participants in a “Jobs, Not Cuts!” rally keynoted by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), erupted into the chant that has come to identify the Occupy movement: “We are the 99 percent!”  Most of the chanters bore little resemblance to the stereotyped image of an Occupy protester–many were senior citizens, and the young people in the audience bore a distinctly clean-cut look. It all served to prove Sanders’ point that mainsteram American wants the wealthiest Americans to pay more taxes, and they want Congress not to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicate. read more »

What if the Congressional Progressive Caucus invited the supercommittee to an ad hoc hearing on job creation, and the supercommittee didn't show up? Yesterday, I found out. On Wednesday morning, the Congressional Progressive Caucus held a hearing on what ought to be the top agenda item in Washington: jobs, jobs, jobs. One by one, the speakers issued a wake-up call that resonates with millions of Americans — America needs jobs, not cuts. Americans — from students graduating with mountains of debt, into the worst job market in decades, to aging baby boomers for whom retirement is suddenly further out of reach, and Patriotic Millionaires ready to do their part — demand jobs, not cuts. OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage underscored the urgent need for action on jobs, and seize the agenda from the "supercommittee" before it takes America down the road to ruin. read more »

Ezra Klein's "Wonkbook" is invaluable for anyone trying to follow the Washington policymaking process. Each day it offers its readers everything from the latest CBO analyses to the newest latest adorable animal videos. read more »

Suddenly the Occupy movement is under siege everywhere. There's been a wave of simultaneous, seemingly coordinated clampdowns on peaceful demonstrators in cities all across the country. Why now? It could be nothing more than one heck of a coast-to-coast coincidence, at least theoretically speaking. But there are indications that this might have been at least partially planned and coordinated at a national level. read more »

Between 1979 and 2007, the after-tax household income of America's most affluent 1 percent ballooned by 275 percent, while the bottom 20 percent's income inched up just 18 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more than an entire third of the nation's wealth, which is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. From these sad facts you might correctly deduce that America's "Class War" is nearly over. The rich are now just mopping up. They recently tied up a few loose ends when Congress finally passed those long-stalled, job-killing "free trade" agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama. Now if they can just privatize Social Security and Medicare, the whole conflict will be over. read more »

The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare have been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question. The first was a report from the Census Bureau that used a new experimental poverty index. While these new measures showed a slightly higher overall poverty rate, the most striking difference between the new measure and the official measure was the rise in the poverty rate among the elderly. read more »