Economy
The Wrecking Crew Is Winning
Congress is taking this week off on the first of their spring breaks. The legislators will return to find only four days left before the first of the Republican Congress’ austerity bombs – the deep automatic cuts in government spending known as the sequester – is set...
Obama Keeps The Climate-Jobs Connection
As I discussed yesterday, David Leonhardt of the New York Times counseled President Obama to drop using green jobs as a selling point for address climate change. Thankfully, last night Obama did not listen. Obama made clear that tackling the climate crisis can be...
Yes to Obama’s New Jobs Focus. But No To Benefit Cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
With tonight’s State of the Union address, President Obama attempted to refocus his new second term with a focus on jobs and supporting the middle class. He clearly wants to stop talking about deficits and debt and start talking about reviving the economy for...
SOTU Challenge: When Talking Climate, Don't Forget The Green Jobs
Expectations are high for President Obama to get specific about his second-term plans to protect the climate, particularly regarding plans to bypass Congress and use the EPA's authority to further reduce greenhouse gas pollution. The appeal is obvious: no need to...
9 Steps the President Can Announce Tonight to Help Homeowners And Create Jobs
"Reviving his populist re-election message," says the Washington Post about tonight's State of the Union speech, "President Barack Obama will press a politically-divided Congress to approve more tax increases and fewer spending cuts." Messages like that are always...
State of the Union Challenge: A Five-Year Jobs Plan
The previews of President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday promise that job creation will be a major focus – a welcome development in the face of Washington's debilitating and wrong-headed obsession with deficit-cutting. But what's really important is...
SOTU Challenge: Meeting Million New Manufacturing Jobs and Doubling Exports Commitments
Before the election President Obama set a goal of doubling exports and creating one million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016. What has to happen for these goals to be met? In The State of the Union Stakes Bob Borosage points out the stakes and challenges that...
The State of the Union Stakes
The president has little choice but to focus on the central challenge now facing the country – and his emerging progressive coalition today. That is the same challenge that drove the original progressive movement – an economy scarred by extreme and corrupting inequality that works only for the few and not the many. This is, as the president put it in his speech at Osowatomie, Kansas, the make or break moment for the middle class – and for all those who aspire to join it.
The Wall Street Journal Thinks Losing 1 Million Jobs Is "Unscary"
The Wall Street Journal editorial board today is counseling Republicans that the looming across-the-board spending cuts known as the "sequester" are "unscary" and preferable to any compromise that would raise more revenue. Why should taking a meat ax to the federal...
The CBO Report: Six Things You Can't Talk About in Washington
Whom the gods would destroy, the old saying says, they first make mad. And there's no quicker way to become completely untethered than to read economic reports, including the latest one from the Congressional Budget Office, and then watch the political debate go on as...
