Politics Daily
Inside Politics Daily
It's the Priests vs. the Nuns -- Again
The Census and Me -- Life in 10-Year Chunks
Michelle Obama Rejects Demonizing Twinkies In Her Anti-Obesity Crusade
Massachusetts Study: Health Care Reform Reduced Abortions
Women's Vote Will Likely Decide British Elections
Can the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth?
Democrats' Dilemma: Health Care Vote and the 'Enthusiasm Gap'
Pro-life Rep. Perriello Says Abortion Concerns Eased, May Back Health Bill
Chaos Theory - New Textbooks, Y'all!
Iraq War Debate: Surge Success, Intelligence Mistakes, Civilian Casualties- Huge Student Loan Overhaul Set to Be Tacked Onto Health Care Reform
Michelle Obama Takes Anti-Obesity Drive to Food Makers
Why I Don't Hate the IRS -- and Neither Should You
By Joann M. Weiner
If there is a more hated government agency than the IRS, I don't know what it is. Last year, irate taxpayers threatened more than 1,000 IRS employees with violence, and sometimes they acted on those threats, as we saw last month, when Andrew Joseph Stack III flew his plane into a seven-story building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and a 68-year-old Internal Revenue Service employee, Vernon Hunter. To many people who read about the tragedy, Hunter was just another government bureaucrat. But there was much more to the man. Hunter was a Vietnam veteran, an usher at the Mount Zion Baptist ...
The New Credit Card Law: Feel-Good Changes, but Not Much Reform
By Joann M. Weiner
The president has high hopes for the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act -- the Credit CARD Act -- which took effect on Monday. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. calls it the most comprehensive reform in this area since the Truth in Lending Act was enacted in 1968. But it has plenty of shortcomings, too. The new rules mean that credit card companies cannot "retroactively increase rates or increase rates in the first year you open an account, charge misleading late fees or use over-limit fee traps," said President Obama in a statement. The president reminded ...
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's Plans: Jobs, Wine and Oil
By Joann M. Weiner
Virginia's new Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, has ambitious plans for his state. He wants to put young Virginians back to work, make Virginia the first East Coast state to drill offshore, and to compete with California to become the wine capital of the United States. McDonnell made these points in his keynote address to the inaugural conference of the American Action Forum, which its Web site calls a new voice for "center-right ideas and action." With jobs as the focus of the conference, the governor said that "the scariest unemployment statistic we face" is the hidden unemployment ...
The 'Fortunate 400' and Why They Need a Tax Haircut
By Joann M. Weiner
The IRS may have given President Obama's new bipartisan fiscal review commission fresh ammunition as the panel considers which taxes to increase to help close the $1.4 trillion deficit. According to tax authorities, the richest 400 taxpayers each received the equivalent of an $82 million bonus in 2007. These households had an average $345 million income, a 30 percent increase from the previous year, when they made $263 million. ...
Budget Expert: U.S. Fiscal Crisis 'Endangers our Prosperity and Freedom'
By Joann M. Weiner
"The federal government faces an unprecedented fiscal challenge that risks the future well-being of our children and grandchildren." That's the warning issued by Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the moderator of a conference of budget experts who gathered at Washington's Mayflower Hotel Tuesday to evaluate the nation's fiscal crisis. The panelists, who were participating as part of the Pew-Peterson Commission on Budget Reform, generally did not view President Obama's tax and spending proposals as credible and noted that the president does not ...
PIGS in Europe Face Consequences of Budget Failures
By Joann M. Weiner
There's an old saying in Washington's tax community that "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered." Typically, the phrase refers to corporations or even individuals who try to carve out too many exceptions to a general rule, or stretch a tax provision a little too far. By doing so, they draw attention to overly generous perks, and Congress takes them away. In Europe today, however, the PIGS -- Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain -- are getting slaughtered over the possibility that they may default on their sovereign debt obligations. Years of government spending far exceeding tax revenues have ...
The Economics of Snow Removal: Government Plows vs. the People's Shovels
By Joann M. Weiner
The record snowfall that hit the Washington, D.C., area in the past week created havoc for the federal government, the District government, and nearly all metropolitan area residents. With two near-blizzards dumping three feet of snow on a region that normally gets 15 inches of snow in an entire season, even the hardiest residents knew that they would be snowbound for days. Schools closed for a week and the federal government shut down for three and a half days, costing an estimated $350 million in lost productivity, according to John Berry, director of the Office of Personal Management. ...
AIG Bonuses: Why Those Pesky Contracts Can't Be Ignored
By Joann M. Weiner
The United States is a country that follows the rule of law. And it does so even if that means paying employees of AIG, the failed insurance company whose actions nearly caused a global economic collapse last year, millions of dollars in bonuses. U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $180 billion to rescue the insurance giant. Yet, despite owning nearly 80 percent of the company, taxpayers are not allowed to break AIG's existing contracts just because they don't like the terms or because they had nothing to do with writing them. To understand why, consider two types of contracts that AIG is ...
Obama Calls for Big Tax Hikes, But Lets Bankers off the Hook
By Joann M. Weiner
President Obama knows that there are just two ways to close the $1.6 trillion federal budget deficit. He can raise taxes, or he can cut spending. On Monday, the president proposed doing some of both in an attempt to cut the federal deficit to $727 billion by 2013. In terms of taxes, the fiscal year 2011 budget raises more than $1.5 trillion from companies and wealthy individuals over the next decade. Offsetting these tax increases are $250 billion in savings from a three-year freeze on non-defense discretionary spending and $23 billion this year from cutting federal programs. ...
Obama's First Veto May Be Over Consumer Protection Bill
By Joann M. Weiner
President Obama knows that most Americans have no idea how their local bank transforms thousands of monthly mortgage payments into arcane credit default swaps with AIG. But the president recognizes that the banks' financial engineering nearly brought on another Great Depression when the house of cards that their structured financial products created collapsed in 2008. And the president is committed to making sure that the American consumer will never again be put at the mercy of the bankers. ...
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