News & Comment

Pete Peterson, the billionaire former private equity mogul, is quietly funding a noisy bus tour to whip up debt hysteria across the land. The “Ten Million a Minute Tour” headed by the Peterson Foundation’s former CEO, David M. Walker will end this week in Washington, DC after traveling coast to coast to alert America about the myriad of alleged dangers posed by government debt and deficits. Really, it should be called the “Million an Hour” cavalcade because that’s about how much Peterson and company made, in part, through obscene tax loopholes designed for private equity firms and hedge funds. If there really is a debt problem, then Peterson and his fellow tax-evading financial moguls have contributed mightily to it. But America does not face a debt crisis. Nor are we likely to face one in the next 100 years. In fact, we are the last country on Earth that needs to worry about its public debt. read more »

In Wednesday's debate Mitt Romney repeated his claim that cutting individual and corporate income taxes creates jobs. But when you look at what actually happened, the periods when we had the highest tax rates were the periods we had the greatest job and economic growth. And the periods with lower taxes had lower job and economic growth. (And we all know what happened in the Bush years...) Here is Romney at Wednesday's debate, read more »

I think President Obama spoke the best line in the debate last night. Call it a "zinger" if you want. "If you're 54 or 55, you might want to listen." Again and again Mitt Romney talked about how under his Medicare plan there would be no changes for "current retirees." He stressed that, without explaining what that means. "What I support is no change for current retirees and near-retirees to Medicare." read more »

In his most recent column, Paul Krugman makes a convincing case that the "real referendum" in this election isn't about President Obama's (real or imagined) economic policies, but about the "the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, on Social Security, Medicare and, yes, Obamacare, which represents an extension of that legacy." Krugman predicts that President Obama will win this resolution, and goes on to question whether the President will honor the will of American voters in his second term. If Obama wins, that means conservatives will have lost the "real referendum." Conservatives have already lost the "real referendum." They've been losing it for a long time — and it's worth considering why that's the case. read more »

Yes. We must address the very serious problem of a $16 trillion national debt and a $1 trillion federal deficit. But at this pivotal moment in American history, it’s essential that we understand how we got into this deficit crisis in the first place and who was responsible for it. More important, we must address the deficit in a way that is fair and does not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor — people who are already hurting. read more »

Republicans came into this campaign believing that it would be a referendum on President Obama, and that still-high unemployment would hand them victory on a silver platter. But given the usual caveats — a month can be a long time in politics, it’s not over until the votes are actually counted, and so on — it doesn’t seem to be turning out that way. Yet there is a sense in which the election is indeed a referendum, but of a different kind. Voters are, in effect, being asked to deliver a verdict on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, on Social Security, Medicare and, yes, Obamacare, which represents an extension of that legacy. If the polls are any indication, the result of that referendum will be a clear reassertion of support for the safety net, and a clear rejection of politicians who want to return us to the Gilded Age. But here’s the question: Will that election result be honored? read more »

Those of you who read this blog know that I've been nearly apoplectic over the past few months over the behind the scenes maneuvering to read more »

They call it the "fiscal cliff," but it's Social Security that's going to be pushed over it, unless we speak out now. The forces of austerity in Washington are using the prospect of automatic spending cuts and tax increases at the end of the year to pressure Congress into a "grand bargain," slashing Social Security benefits in the name of deficit reduction. read more »

This is awful, but I expect it happens every day and is only getting worse with the GOP assault on the "parasites": read more »

In this electoral season, the role of government in the United States has become an important issue. Surveys reveal that most Americans don’t like government, especially the federal government. And yet they want the things that government provides, such as defense, law and order, safe food and drugs, clean air, pure water, education, flood relief, health care, etc. For many years I taught about the role of government in different countries at Harvard Business School. Many of my students came from outside the United States. They were perplexed by the disdain, indeed disrespect, for government displayed by their American classmates. “It seems odd,” they said, “that you Americans loudly proclaim to the world the virtues of your political process, urging the rest of us to copy you, while at home you deplore the government which that process produces. And it’s not so much the policies that you decry as it is the institution itself.” read more »