The Obama administration recently opened talks with officials in Arkansas and Ohio on plans to allow the states to use federal Medicaid money to buy private health insurance for their low-income residents. Several other states seem ready to follow suit. If this all goes through, it...

If you're one of the 50 million Americans on Medicare -- or one of the 77 percent who say Medicare is important to them and their families -- these are confusing times.

President Obama talked about Medicare at his inauguration arguing that "every citizen deserves a basic...

So let's say that President Obama and enough members of Congress avoid the "fiscal cliff" and finally agree on a budget deal--one that puts us on a sustainable path over the long haul. Will voters applaud, or will our country see the kind of turmoil that has swept through Greece...

The presidential and vice presidential candidates spent a lot of time on health care in their last debates -- for all the good it did the voters. The comforting generalities and sleep-inducing statistics may have helped the voters get a sense of personalities. When it comes to actually sorting out...

In a gentler era, the word "Keystone" summoned up images of a dozen or so portly and inept cops blundering their way through Max Sennett comedies. Today, Keystone means the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline which, if built, would carry crude oil from Canadian "tar sands" to...

It's hard to put a good face on the June jobs report. Unfortunately, 80,000 new jobs a month isn't even enough to keep up with population growth and new people coming into the labor market. Even if we were gaining jobs at three times that rate, we wouldn't...

This past weekend, basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal graduated from Barry University with a doctorate in education. That makes him not just an exceptional athlete, but an exceptional college graduate as well. O'Neal dropped out of Louisiana State University in 1992 to play pro basketball, but he promised his...

When it comes to jobs, can the U.S. walk and chew gum at the same time?

After several months of robust, promising job creation, the economy only added about 120,000 jobs in March, barely enough to keep up with population growth. Last week,

Here are two facts that should be attracting a lot more attention than they are.

• Over the last decade, nearly two-thirds of new jobs in the U.S. economy came from businesses less than five years old. That's a big hint on how to rev up job...

A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows what a lot of younger Americans have probably noticed for themselves: even if you're lucky enough to have a job, it's still tough to get ahead. Over the last decade, wages for younger male college grads have...

As the presidential candidates spout on about jobs and the economy, I sometimes wish I could put my late grandfather on the stage during the debates. Not just because he had a low tolerance for blather, although he did, and I think the politicians would find his comments, let's say,...

You know how sometimes when you repeat a word over and over again, it starts to lose its meaning? If you listen to our current crop of presidential candidates, they're doing their best to do that with the most important word in this election: Jobs.

• President Obama's...

You can't get very far in watching the presidential primaries without hearing this line: "we've got to help the job creators."

Well, of course. We all need jobs. Just look at the unemployment numbers, the grim projections, or the people who aren't even...

It seems hard to disagree with the 8 in 10 Americans who say Congress is doing a terrible job in wake of the dismal, dispiriting debate over raising the debt ceiling. We dodged a needless and potentially devastating government default, but aside from that, this debt deal is...

There's an old movie comedy called Support Your Local Sheriff , with James Garner playing a gunslinger hired to clean up a Western mining town. When he's hired to replace the latest of a long line of short-lived lawmen, the mayor hands him a tin star with a...

With the debate over the nation's debt ceiling continuing to rage, research conducted by our organization, Public Agenda, shows a real chasm between Washington and the rest of the country. Two-thirds of Washington leaders say we need to raise the debt limit, while surveys of the...

Part of leadership is conveying an air of optimism and confidence. Any management book, any memoir by a general, politician or basketball coach will tell you that. But what does it mean when leaders are more optimistic than the people they're supposed to be leading?

That's certainly been the situation...

As of this weekend, it looks like Congress will hammer out some sort of deal to extend the federal debt ceiling and avoid pushing the country to the brink of default. The response from the Washington Post's Ezra Klein is the best we've read so far. "Whew," Klein...

Admittedly, we may have an odd sense of humor when it comes to the federal budget. But after an initial shiver of fear, our first reaction to the news that Standard & Poor's had issued a "negative outlook" for the U.S. national debt was: "Oh, no. Mrs. Teasdale...