Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania's newest senator and the former president of the anti-tax Club for Growth, has a predictably hawkish but particularly ill-conceived idea for focusing Congress's wandering minds on dealing with the federal budget deficit. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Toomey breezily informs readers that...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has provided a critical boost to New York State and New York City during a period of severe economic decline. The White House estimates that the stimulus package saved or created almost 150,000 jobs in the state in 2009. The Mayor's Office...

The financial reform bill is like a gigantic, half-completed connect-the-dots puzzle. The image is visible if you squint and make a few assumptions -- those must be Elizabeth Warren's spectacles -- but much remains unclear. Regulators, some of whom remain to be created by other regulators, will determine the ultimate...

The ghosts of stimulus proposals past -- more fiscal aid, more infrastructure spending, more money for food stamps -- will haunt the economy for months and years to come. At last, though, Congress is set to pass a $34 billion extension of unemployment benefits to stimulate the economy and aid...

One of the biggest, and least discussed, problems with the fiscal difficulties facing states and cities throughout the country is the irrationality they impose on legislators' decision-making processes. Instead of taking into account the increased needs of their citizens, more of whom rely on public benefits during a downturn, legislators...

The events of the last several years, from the beginning of the recession in late 2007 through the financial bailout and the recovery package and to the present trembles of fear about a double dip, have shown the federal government to be reactive. This is not a slight of the...

Ezra Klein's explanation of the adverse impact of state budget cuts and tax increases on federal stimulus efforts upset the folks at George Mason's libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center. Increases in federal spending in 2009 and 2010 swamped cuts to spending at the state level, they rejoined:

At...

The relationship between Washington and the American economy has reached a transitional moment. The tug-of-war between supporters of additional stimulus and fiscal hawks has heated up yet again, but this time is occurring with some sense of finality: there will be much argument about whether fiscal expansion or fiscal tightening...

There has been significant back-and-forth of late about President Obama's responsibility, power, and influence. Should he don a hard hat and tool belt and set about trying to cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? Could he have extracted Senator Lincoln's vote on a more...

On Wednesday, President Obama articulated a rather forceful argument for the positive role government can play in meeting collective challenges. Lambasting the concept of the Ownership Society ("everyone is on their own"), Obama reminded us of some of the things that government is good at: maintaining a safety...

On the heels of a report showing that 13 million low-income individuals have "worst-case" housing needs, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan writes here at The Huffington Post that the administration's Transforming Rental Assistance initiative is critical to ensuring that affordable housing options remain available to low-income households....

Back in the dark ages of December 2007 when the Great Recession was just beginning, Rochester Mayor Bob Duffy, Attorney General Cuomo's pick for lieutenant governor, expressed concern about the federal government's treatment of cities. He was worried that urban areas were not a priority for the Bush...

Europe's financial woes have led many across the Atlantic to look longingly at American federalism. Washington's capacity to come to the rescue of its ward states in times of economic collapse is considered an antidote to the conflicting political, economic, and financial motivations that are pulling Europe apart.

It...

The economic downturn has been with us for quite a while now. We are familiar with its more salient features: high unemployment, sunken home prices, less money in the bank. At least at the state and local level, we have even grown accustomed to government doing less, not because there...

The departure of Adolfo Carrion as President Obama's Director of Urban Affairs should have been big news. The reaction was mostly muted, however, with a smattering of press reports that pondered Carrion's political future and mused about whether his transition to HUD was a promotion or a demotion.

This is...

Transit advocates and city planners expend a lot of energy thinking about and debating the intricacies of human mobility: who will go where, when, and why and how can we help them get there more quickly, safely, and comfortably. We don't walk or ride or drive as the crow flies....

On Wednesday morning Politico picked up the dustup between New York Senator Chuck Schumer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, describing a perturbed Bloomberg lashing out at Schumer for "turning against" Wall Street. Schumer has offered support for the financial reform bill now moving through Congress, while limiting his day-to-day...

One might think, in this era of environmental consciousness and suspicion of special interests, that a prominent national politician would avoid comparison to Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Auto. Not Mayor Bloomberg. Visiting Washington on Monday, he expressed mounting frustration that New York's congressional representatives have allowed Wall Street...

It's been a bad couple of years for homeowners. Home prices are way down, one in four mortgages is underwater, and foreclosures continue apace. But homeowners should take solace: at least their difficulties have caught Congress's wandering eye.

Sure the big banks have made certain that the Senate...

The economic downturn and the resultant federal intervention in the financial sector and "real" economy have yielded a healthy crop of complaints about an overzealous Washington eager to stomp out the last embers of free enterprise. The more zealous call this policymaking socialism or dirigisme, an unleashing of...