Just before the election last Tuesday, 80 corporate CEOs called on Congress to formulate a debt reduction plan including both spending cuts and revenue increases. As "an effective framework" for addressing the issue, the statement cited Simpson-Bowles, a sweeping plan to fiscally restructure the federal government that was...

When it comes to the elderly and their Social Security benefits, President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney don't just sound "similar," as Obama put it in their first debate. They sound identical.

"Neither the president nor I are proposing any changes for any current retirees or near retirees,...

Lance Armstrong got away with ringleading what now looks like a vast doping conspiracy, in part because the sports media refused to investigate what was right under their noses. Why? Because they were too invested in the heroic image that congealed around the Tour de France winner. In much the...

Coming soon: a new pressure group called "The Can Kicks Back," which aims to turn younger Americans into an anti-deficit avenging army. It will surely attempt to play a role in the post-election talks surrounding the "fiscal cliff." This offensive bears a slight odor of deja vu, however, because one...

David Leonhardt, along with Matt Bai, is part of the New York Times' center-right Washington tag team. So it's no surprise when he mourns Congress's failure to "rein in" entitlements. But every so often he goes a bit too far.

In his column, he makes the legitimate point...

"Managed decline" is one of the favorite catchphrases of the American right. Briefly, it's an accusation that Democratic politicians and the Obama administration -- i.e., the "extreme left" -- have decided to let the U.S. decline economically and militarily, with government "managing" that process to protect special interests like unions...

That's the real issue behind the Social Security debate -- and the deficit fight as well. But it's almost impossible to have a constructive public discussion about the elderly and the share of the economy they occupy so long as deficit hysteria continues.

Don't go to Pete Peterson's

Ted Nugent, the "Motor City Madman" of '70s hard rock, has a plan to fix Social Security: eliminate it. And make workers under 45 pay to wind it up. With enemies like this, does Social Security even need friends?

At this point in his demented career, The Nuge -- Tedly,...

People who want to cut Social Security benefits to lower future budget deficits are "reasonable" and "serious." Moreover, economists have reached a "consensus" that this should be done. People who oppose balancing the budget on the back of Social Security recipients, on the other hand, are "denialists" whose views are...

When the housing bubble popped and Wall Street did a swan dive, they created an economic whirlpool that the rest of us are still struggling to escape. Two years later, Congress is trying--and failing--to pass a financial reform to stop the lending practices that led to the bubble and put...