To the surprise of few, Congress’ super committee is on the brink of failure–unable to agree on $1.2 trillion in budget savings as required by last summer’s debt limit deal. But the panel was doomed from the start. Here are five reasons why: The parties could not bridge their theological differences. Mainstream Democrats believe government should play an important role in the [...]

My latest column at the Christian Science Monitor: America’s fiscal challenges are often portrayed as a conflict between hawks and doves. The real battle, however, is between foxes and hedgehogs. Unfortunately, fiscal hedgehogs still have the upper paw. “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” wrote the ancient Greek poet [...]

Sooner or later, Congress will realize it needs new revenues to help balance the budget, and trimming tax subsidies is the way to get them.  But will it tackle individual preferences, such as the mortgage interest deduction, one at a time? Or, will it try to limit the political bloodshed and go after these tax [...]

On Friday night, Standard and Poors announced that it was downgrading U.S. long-term sovereign debt from AAA to AA+, the first such downgrade in U.S. history. Here are five things you should know about the downgrade — four important, one trivia. 1. S&P downgraded U.S. debt not only because of the deteriorating fiscal outlook, but also [...]

Congress headed off for its summer vacation yesterday, exhausted after the protracted wrangling over the debt limit that ended with a whimper when President Obama signed the bill that lets the government continue to pay its bills. Few people were happy with the result—the best you can say for it is that we won’t have [...]

Here’s a quick multiple choice quiz about the Gang of Six’s new budget proposal. Over the next ten years, would the proposal: a. Cut taxes by $1.5 trillion b. Increase taxes by $2.0 trillion c. Increase taxes by $1.2 trillion d. All of the above. If you answered (d), you have a fine future as [...]

The Senate’s bipartisan on again/off again Gang of Six has proposed an ambitious tax and spending package that closely follows the plan offered six months ago by the chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Their plan is not so much a budget as a framework. In some cases it is quite [...]

In July 2000, under immense pressure from President Clinton, the Israeli government made Yasser Arafat a remarkable offer: It would recognize a Palestinian state that included Gaza, more than 90 percent of the West Bank, and a big chunk of Jerusalem.  But Arafat, who had worked all his life to create a Palestinian nation, walked away [...]

Will Donald Trump bring Barack Obama’s birth certificate to the Royal wedding? I have no idea, but now that I’ve made our Web optimization folks happy, here is another question: What’s the deal with the People’s Budget, the fiscal plan released this week by 80 congressional progressives? The answer is likely to drive less traffic than [...]

“The Path to Prosperity,” Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) solution to federal budget deficits, called for keeping “overall revenue as a share of the economy at historical averages between 18 and 19 percent.” The House budget resolution chose the higher value and set the revenue target at 19 percent of GDP through 2050. What’s so special [...]