Campaign for America's Future

Here we go again. more »

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On Tuesday, May 15, one of America's wealthiest men, Peter G. Peterson, will use his foundation's money to lecture the rest of us about why the federal deficit is the most serious problem facing our country. more »

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The reason members of the Super Committee didn’t reach an agreement is that Republican members insisted on damaging cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare – AND they wouldn’t budge from their refusal to roll back tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans. more »

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Progressives may sometimes feel like they're in a backdoor high-school affair with the President. You know the kind: The popular kid will make out with someone from the wrong side of the tracks. But he'll only take a rich kid from "the right kind of family" to the school dance. more »

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People in the capital were thrilled by Twitter's role in 2009's Iranian uprisings. They probably weren't as excited this weekend when a new "hashtag" (topic) suddenly climbed toward the top of Twitter's trend list. It's not printable here, but the first word began with a "F." After that came the words "you" and "Washington." more »

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Diligent reporter that I am, I got up yesterday morning to do a bit of fishing for a story, and as so often happens, I’ve caught something a bit unexpected.

Now what I have for you today starts out as a bit of insider information that came to me on background—but it turns into a chance for those of us who support Social Security to very much get in the faces of our members of Congress, for more »

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There’s a lot of ways to be petty and cheap and stupid, and a lot of ways to stick it to a program you don’t like, and by extension, the clients of that program…and this week the House Republicans have embarked on an effort to combine the two into one petty, cheap, and stupid way to stick it to the clients of Social Security and the workers who administer the program. more »

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The latest Democracy Corps/Campaign For America's Future poll on jobs and the economy has a clear message for the President and his party: Stand up for jobs, and protect Social Security and Medicare. The results couldn't be clearer. Yet it's still rumored that the President's State of the Union will emphasize deficit reduction over job creation, and the White House has refused to assure worried Democrats that the President won't also propose cuts to Social Security.

How many polls will it take to convince the White House that this is political suicide? How many expert analyses will it take to persuade them that its premature to make deficits the priority when the country desperately needs jobs and economic growth?

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In an open letter to the President this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders mentioned "worriesome reports" that the President is planning to cut Social Security. These reports don't come out of the blue. They're the culmination of a months-long campaign. The White House has been privately signalling for months that it was leaning in that direction, and now the sky over Washington is darkening with trial balloons floating up from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Before you make such a disastrous and unwarranted move, Mr. President, there's someone I think you should meet. Actually, you may have run into him before: He's a skinny guy with an keen analytical mind and a gift for brilliant oratory. Sound familiar? He ran for President last time around, and he had some very sensible things to say about Social Security: more »

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Uh-oh. David Brooks is offering the President advice again. Since we're told that Brooks is one of President Obama's favorite columnists, there's always the chance that his latest idea will gain traction in the White House. Brooks is smart, and he's a good salesman, so his ideas may resonate with a lot of other powerful Democrats, too.

That would be a very, very bad thing indeed. He's using new catchphrases to dress up some very bad, very old, and very unpopular ideas.

Two old paradigms ain't worth forty cents.

The Brooks proposal may sound fresh, but it's really only a mash-up of two stale notions: That "bipartisanship" happens whenever well-heeled Democratic and Republican politicians cut a deal, and that "transformation" is always exciting and positive - no matter what you're transforming from or to.

Brooks is still thinking in clichéd, outmoded "left" vs. "right" terms. Like so many others in Washington, he doesn't realize that the world has changed. The Grand Compromise he's offering isn't between "liberals" and "conservatives," but between most Americans - Republicans and independents as well as Democrats, Tea Partiers as well as progressives - and the tiny band of Washington insiders that have hijacked that city's thinking with ideas they continue to peddle as "bipartisan."

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