This week the House voted on budget proposals for Fiscal Year 2013. The Republican budget, put forward by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, was presented as "a choice between two futures" that would show a stark contrast between their priorities and those of Democrats.

They were absolutely right: the...

This post is part of a series on childhood poverty in the United States in partnership with Save the Children's U.S. Programs and Julianne Moore. To learn more go to savethechildren.org.

As an early educator, my wife Judy devoted her career to helping provide children with the opportunities, care,...

America is still recovering from the worst economic crisis many of us have seen in our lifetimes. For many African-Americans, recovery is not coming nearly fast enough. We have made some progress since the worst days of the crisis -- President Obama inherited an economy that was losing nearly three-quarters...

The patent that led to the telephone was approved in one month. The patent that led to the cell phone, as former White House economic advisor Austan Goolsbee recently observed, was approved in three years. Today, patents are held up for even longer -- and jobs and growth are held...

If you're feeling overwhelmed this Tax Day, you're not alone. The complexity of our tax code isn't just a nuisance for families and businesses -- it's a drag on our entire economy. Each year, Americans spend billions of dollars and more than 225 million collective hours doing their...

As we work to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, both Republicans and Democrats have offered plans for our economy. Republicans' own Congressional campaign chair admitted that they intend to return America to the "exact same agenda" of the Bush years -- the agenda that got...

Everyday, our children are accumulating debt and interest they'll spend their lives paying off, curtailing their ability to meet challenges and invest in the future. How do we get our country out of its $1.35 trillion hole?

Democrats have faced that question before when having to clean up other people's...

Why do so many schools have auditoriums?

Why do they have athletic fields?

We take features like those for granted today, but there was a time when a school building with anything more than classrooms and chalkboards was considered wildly unorthodox. But, more than a hundred years ago, educators came...

America is in a massive fiscal hole. And on behalf of President Obama, we have helped to introduce a bill designed to start digging us out: pay-as-you-go, or PAYGO. The idea behind PAYGO is simple: our country, like any family struggling with deep credit card debt, must start paying for...

As popular as Medicare is now, it is hard to believe that it was once bitterly opposed. Medicare came into existence 43 years ago today, in the face of many who doubted that it could cover millions of people, provide them with excellent care, and keep costs low.

By now,...