WASHINGTON -- More than 100 union members and progressive activists marched to a Capitol Hill hotel Wednesday to protest a meeting of corporate chiefs...

Disaster relief, including for Hurricane Sandy, is government spending. It is no worse, but also no better, than meals on wheels for the elderly, school breakfast for poor children, unemployment compensation and rent subsidies. All are government spending and all are "about human beings."

Senators and Representatives who are thinking of touching the "third rail:" How many constituents are calling your office today to say, "Yes, I want you to cut the Social Security COLA"?

Now is not the time to take steps backward for our nation's seniors and people with disabilities. By preserving and strengthening vital programs like SSI, we can continue ensuring that people with disabilities are able to live in their communities, with the dignity they deserve.

Raise your hand if you went to a public college or university, work for government, borrow books from a public library, ride on government-run buses, subways, or light-rail, use or work for the post office, took a vacation in a national park... and on.

Make no mistake, the Ryan budget ends Medicare as we know it. This is not hyperbole -- it is fact.

For Roosevelt, government intervention in the economy was not about destroying individual liberty; it was about restoring individual liberty. This is a good reminder for President Obama.

Either spend some money now in order to enable a generation of kids to participate in and contribute to our society, or pay exponentially more later when we have a generation of adults who are wholly reliant on us because we didn't give them the skills they needed.

There are many things President Obama must cover in his State of the Union address. But our nation's finances are in such dire straits that they are reaching a critical condition.

The reason why the message of the Occupy movement has struck a chord with so many people is that it touches on an issue that goes beyond the standing of America's "top 1%." People are not merely resentful of inequality. They're scared due to insecurity.

Ensuring that American students can attend school with full bellies seems like the most uncontroversial public policy of all time. Not so anymore, now that child nutrition has met the Tea Party.

Our child poverty statistics are morally and economically indefensible. Is this the best America can do? Is this the reflection of our values as a nation?

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- There was one thing and one thing only on the minds and lips of Mitt Romney's aides and advisers after Wednesday night's Republ...