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By Martha Nussbaum
$15.48
Sam Harris
$19.74
$19
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Bill Boyarsky — While Republicans race to cut spending, including outlays for education, health care and social services, they never mention one of the real reasons for the deficit: the cost of the war in Afghanistan and the mess we’ve made in Iraq.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — “We’re broke.” You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. Just one problem: We’re not broke.
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White House / Pete Souza
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The statistical evidence is that smaller class size means better education, but smaller class size also means higher taxes. So Education Secretary Arne Duncan chose trickery to divert parents from the clear road.
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This week on Capitol Hill, lawmakers passed a continuing budget resolution and prevented a government shutdown—for now. Also on this edition of “Left, Right & Center,” we have speculation about Newt Gingrich’s bid for White House glory ...
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If you want to get national attention as a governor these days, don’t try to be innovative about solving the problems you were elected to deal with.
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By Amy Goodman — Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Idaho ... these are the latest fronts in the battle of budgets, with the larger fight over a potential shutdown of the U.S. government looming.
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AP / Alex Brandon
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The good news: It doesn’t seem as though disputes between congressional Republicans and their Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill and in the White House over spending cuts will bring the government to a standstill. The bad news ...
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More strife in Libya, the Wisconsin Assembly passes a bill barring collective bargaining rights, the death of DOMA and a budget standoff in Washington. Buckle in for “Left, Right & Center.”
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By Amy Goodman — As many as 80,000 people marched to the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison on Saturday as part of an ongoing protest against newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to not just badger the state’s public employee unions, but to break them.
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AP / Andy Manis
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By Bill Boyarsky — The demonstrators in Madison, Wis., are fighting to preserve American hopes for opportunity and security that conservative Republicans are trying to destroy.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — We are acting as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit, the only test of leadership is whether a president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly, and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees.
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By Amy Goodman — President Barack Obama unleashed his proposed 2012 budget this week, pronouncing, proudly: “I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years.”
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President Obama may have picked one of the only places in the country where delivering a speech about his new budget plan would be met with enthusiasm by visiting the Parkville Middle School and Center for Technology in Baltimore ...
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whitehouse.gov
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Could President Obama’s newly unveiled budget—which includes, he claims, funding cuts to programs he supports—represent an attempt to win over some conservative constituents before Nov. 4, 2012?
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Welcome to the war over E2I2. The great budget battle of Bill Clinton’s presidency was waged around a slightly different set of initials, also inspired by the “Star Wars” character R2D2.
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AP / Andy Manis
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Gov. Scott Walker in cash-strapped Wisconsin is pretty sure he’s doing the right thing in trying to ram through a bill ending collective bargaining rights for most public employees. But, just in case, he’s putting the National Guard on alert.
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has resigned in the wake of massive anti-government protests that lasted more than two weeks. What’s next for Egypt after this historic revolution?
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AP / Susan Walsh
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As if the last couple of years haven’t been brutal enough, here comes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with the exasperating news that the job market isn’t going to markedly improve for “several years.”
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AP / Nick Ut
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By Bill Boyarsky — The budget cuts being proposed in state capitals around the country may sound vague and abstract, but what they boil down to are many scenes of misery.
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By Ruth Marcus — The man once known as Governor Moonbeam sounded more like Governor Laser Beam when it came to addressing California’s fiscal crisis.
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By Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch —
In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.
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By Ruth Marcus — Discretionary spending, the part of the federal budget that is not on autopilot and is subject to annual appropriations, generally constitutes less than 40 percent of federal spending. Take out defense spending and that share drops to well under 20 percent.
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Wikimedia Commons / Office of Management and Budget
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So, the former head honcho of Obama’s Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, is now sitting in a very plush position over at Citigroup, from where he gave his latest economic prognostications in Thursday’s Financial Times ...
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AP / Rich Pedroncelli
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By Bill Boyarsky — Covering the statehouse or city hall is regarded as the minor leagues of political journalism. But this year, these too-often-unappreciated scriveners are in the middle of one of the most important domestic stories in decades.
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By David Sirota — In a Washington circus that features as many morons as oxymorons, we have self-described deficit hawks who promote tax cuts, alleged war opponents who back war escalations and supposed anti-government conservatives who press to expand the National Security State.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller
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The Pentagon’s budget is only about half of what the U.S. spends on war and defense. If you add costs like nuclear weapons and the medical care of wounded soldiers, the figure tops $1 trillion. Robert Higgs has the math to prove it.
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Flickr / qmnonic (CC-BY)
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The legislation that President Obama signed Tuesday represents the biggest revamp of the country’s food regulation system in decades—that is, if it gets past those congressional Republicans spoiling for a fight as they pledge to crack down on government spending this year.
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. House of Representatives
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The GOP is mobilizing to make some big changes over the next two years, including but not limited to the following: taking down health care reform, cutting the budget and attempting to oust President Obama from the White House in 2012.
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Flickr / Leo Lau (CC-BY)
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Those greedy bureaucrats sending out Grandma’s Social Security check and cleaning the toilets in our national parks finally will get slapped down, thanks to our honest, hard-working politicians. Republican lawmakers ...
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AP / Iranian Students News Agency / Arash Khamushi
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A serious rift has divided the Iranian government in a manner that could be tricky to resolve, as it puts the country’s parliament on one side and its president on the other. On Monday, the news broke that Iran’s parliament had been working on a plan to eject ... (continued)
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By Joe Conason — The facts about earmarks—and the deficit, for that matter—are so simple that even the dumbest birther should be able to understand.
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White House
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By Ruth Marcus — I read “Decision Points” and it turns out that George W. Bush is the Edith Piaf of fiscal policy: He regrets nothing.
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U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Jamean R. Berry
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By David Sirota — Beware the sophistry of budget talking points—especially those seeking to deter any criticism of defense spending.
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By Joe Conason — The best recent estimates by civil engineers and government experts indicate that we would have to spend well over $2 trillion during the next five years on roads, bridges, airports, railways, transit, sewers, waterways, ports, dams, parks and schools simply to maintain them in decent condition.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Not like the truth will make a difference for the folks who watch Fox News, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the short-term effects of extending George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and concluded that doing so would be the least effective way to cut unemployment and spur the economy.
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By Ruth Marcus — The president’s position that the tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year should be extended permanently is fiscally reckless.
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By Ruth Marcus — We need to do something about tax expenditures, those spending programs disguised as tax breaks that cost us close to $1.2 trillion a year.
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DoD / Cherie Cullen
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The most important fact in the New York Times report on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ spending cuts comes 15 paragraphs in, when we learn that the U.S. will still spend more than ever on the military, more than all other countries combined, more than under President Bush. (continued)
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AP / Carlos Osorio
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A $26 billion aid package was passed by the Senate on Thursday that aims to ensure that school districts and states do not have to can tens of thousands of teachers and government workers. Just two Republicans crossed the ideological aisle to support the bill, which now heads to the House.
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Photo illustration based on an image by Flickr user cometstarmoon (CC-BY)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid? While we’re at it, does any other democracy have a powerful legislative branch as undemocratic as the U.S. Senate?
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Flickr.com / mindfrieze
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Does the Defense Department’s budget make the Pentagon look fat? Some officials believe so, as political and economic pressure to cut the U.S. military’s bloated spending habit has stirred the first serious debate on the Pentagon’s budget since 2001’s terrorist attacks.
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U.S. Air Force / Master Sgt. Jeremy Lock
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By Amy Goodman — Getting out of the red is the new black. Deficit hawks have swooped down on the U.S. budget. This week, they attacked unemployment benefits.
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boc.ca.gov
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California’s outdated technical infrastructure has made 200,000 state employees very, very happy. After an injunction by the governor to cut workers pay to the state’s $7.25 minimum wage, the state controller has successfully argued that such pay docking would be impossible given the state’s outdated payroll computer system.
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By Ruth Marcus — The government’s struggles with infant formula, of all things, offer a broader lesson in how hard it is to take even the most common-sense steps to save taxpayer dollars.
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By Joe Conason — We could easily slip into another Great Depression if our leaders continue to heed the chattering class on the deficit. But cutting spending is not just bad economics; it’s bad politics, too.
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By Ruth Marcus — This is no time for retrenchment, but the deficit projections coming out of the Congressional Budget Office are alarming and will only get worse if we dawdle.
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By David Sirota — The last time America found itself in a budget debate pitting domestic priorities against war expenditures, Richard Nixon was in the White House and David Obey was the youngest member of Congress.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Peter Orszag is resigning his Cabinet-level position and possibly heading to the relative calm of a think tank. Orszag decided to leave before work on the next budget starts in earnest. A successor is likely to be promoted from within the administration.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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