Republicans want to kill the government that accomplished that. They want to go back to Downton Abbey days. The rich stay rich; the poor stay servants.

"I am one imperfect man saved by God's grace," Mark Sanford proclaimed as he declared victory. What I would love to see, is if Sanford applied his new personal understanding of grace to his new role in government. Perhaps he could convince his party that a little grace would do it some good.

CLARKSDALE, Miss. -- It's early on a Friday morning, and high school chemistry students in Victoria Dawson's class are working equations at the board....

Anyone despairing that Congress can't get anything done should note last week's swift vote to get furloughed air traffic controllers back to work. Congress can move very quickly and efficiently when it wants to and when their own comfort and that of constituents well-off enough to fly was affected. Reduced unemployment benefits, children dropped suddenly from Head Start programs, poor mothers and babies losing food supplements, teacher layoffs, and cancelled meal deliveries for seniors didn't move them -- but airport delays as members headed out of town for their April recess were apparently unacceptable.

You know me, don't you? That's right. I belong to that tiny and soon-to-be vanishing breed known as Sequester Delay Passengers.

The preposterous legislative sideshow taking place around sequestration gives a pretty clear picture of how little the people who were elected to run the government actually know about it.

Responding to highly publicized flight delays from the "sequestration" budget cuts, the House and Senate have voted overwhelmingly to allow the Transp...

The sequester, of course, isn't ideal. There are almost certainly better ways to cut. Some cuts that haven't had any short-term consequences may do harm eventually. But, messy as it is, the sequester seems to be working.

President Obama's 2014 budget proposal contains a lot of good news for children and families on the rough edges of America's struggling economy, putting real teeth behind his recent calls for creating ladders of opportunity and helping to level the playing field for millions of Americans wrestling with poverty.

President Barack Obama's "Preschool for All" initiative in his 2014 2014 budget proposal is billed as a way to make sure every American child can atte...

WASHINGTON -- The ripple effects of sequestration are taking hold. And among the first and most affected are hundreds of lower-income parents forced t...

The Long Depression isn't hitting us all at once. It's taking pieces out of us over the course of years. That's allowed people to define previously unacceptable economic conditions as "The New Normal."

The president has been spending the last year and a half talking about how he wants to fight for the middle class, and his budget should reflect those values. This is why it is so deeply troubling that Obama is strongly considering putting a Social Security cut into his budget document.

Putting a bunch more kids in Head Start is not what's being proposed here. The main proposal is a partnership with states to ensure that all four-year-old kids from moderate and low-income families have access to quality preschool.

WASHINGTON -- As he heads home for recess over the next two weeks, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) says he's not worried about facing blowback from his co...

WASHINGTON -- Citing budget cuts caused by sequestration, a Head Start program near Fayetteville, Ark., has decided to take the dramatic step of closi...

Our children -- the future nurses, educators, astronauts, presidents and CEOs who will heal, educate and lead our country -- are counting on Congress to act. And to act now.

Is it really possible that the president and Congress (who are the elected representatives of the people) cannot agree on any reasonable reductions that would not imperil the health and safety of the nation?

On Friday, if sequestration -- the term used for the pending across-the-board cuts to many federal programs -- goes into effect, the impact on low-income children will be devastating.

Should sequestration be allowed to take effect, human service nonprofits would lose billions of dollars in government funding and might have to make difficult choices, such as laying off much-needed staff, or worse, ending programs and serving far fewer clients.

Sequestration could cost thousands of teachers their jobs, according to a grim report the White House released Sunday. That's just one possible impact...