If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
It's been a very bad week for the merchants of austerity. In Europe, the just-released statistics on first quarter performance show EU nations sliding deeper into recession. In Spain and Greece, unemployment rates are approaching a staggering 30 percent. In Britain, the Tory government took as good news the fact that the UK managed to eke out 0.3 percent growth. Even Germany, the prime sponsor of these policies, is on the edge of recession. You don't promote growth by slashing demand. Supposedly, fiscal tightening improves business confidence. But if some entrepreneur somewhere decided to break ground for a new factory because the president and Congress at last cut the budget, nobody could find such a person. Even the Washington Post editorial page, which has long been promoting a budget bargain built on more cuts, warned in its lead Sunday editorial, that austerity is pinching too hard -- in Europe, that is. How about at home?
President Obama's new budget attempts to define a progressive alternative to conservative demands for a politics of austerity. European progressives are wrestling with the same challenge, and are reaching similar conclusions.
President Obama's 2014 budget proposes an increase to funding for expanded learning opportunities through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant program. This is an exciting step in the right direction for our low income children and youth.
As a bellwether for innovation and home to one out of every eight children in America, California will play a vital role in fulfilling the president's vision for early learning.
This is real money to seniors who are already struggling. Democrats should not propose policies that hurt middle class families in the hope that Republicans will suddenly cooperate in solving our budget challenges.
Fiscal conservatives around Obama have sold the president on the idea that nipping and tucking Social Security and Medicare is an easy way to get a lot of money, and doing it by the backdoor will entail a lower political cost to him. So far, he seems to have been proven wrong on all three assumptions. The Republicans haven't given an inch, the $270 billion in cuts undertaken so far this year under the January budget deal and the March sequester have cut the growth rate in half, and he is alienating core Democratic constituencies. One unanticipated benefit of Obama's stance is new, explicit pressure on Democratic House and Senate members, as well as candidates considering running for president in 2016, to pledge not to cut Social Security and Medicare. It would be so much better if this Democratic president were behaving as a progressive leader right now.
Did the White House just hand an excuse to anti-Obamacare state officials to punt on the law's Medicaid expansion? As states continue to wrestle with...
A greater tax deduction for students is not a handout. On the contrary, it helps those who are willing to meet the challenges of higher education to invest in our collective future.
This well-meaning program is a serious mistake for two reasons. First, it is no more than a politically correct, cosmetic solution that distracts attention from what really needs to be done. Second, it will likely wind up doing much more harm than good.
Far from being an impossible set of demands, the collective opinion poll version of the wisdom of the American people is, in fact, a smart set of solutions -- or at least it would be, if we had a government capable of following our wishes.
His plan includes boosts to some health and development programs, and overall higher funding levels for foreign assistance than what Congress has put forward. But his funding recommendation is still a decrease from previous years, and specific cuts are cause for concern.
In this video, Yvette Carnell of Your Black World discusses Obama's budget proposal, which includes a plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, with me.
Buried in the $3.8 trillion budget President Barack Obama sent to Congress Wednesday is a small item of potentially big significance. The White House ...
Of all the ideas to increase government spending or reduce the deficit, doing so on the backs of charities has to be one of the worst.
The government wants to limit how much money you can save in a tax-deferred retirement account, saying too many people are taking tax deductions for saving more money than they are likely to need.
The best way to sway members of Congress is to endanger their seats if they aren't willing to do the right thing. In the real world, politics isn't about playing cat and mouse. It's about power.
