And so, as the administration enters the next stage of deficit reduction talks, it’s doing so with its chest notably puffed out. “It is fair to say we’ve entered a new phase,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told The New York Times on Monday. “The popular narrative is that we sought compromise…
Tag: economy
Google chairman on economy: ‘The current strategy is ludicrous’[video]
Christiane Amanpour’s Sunday interview with Google chairman Eric Schmidt is attracting an unusual amount of notice. Mike Allen excerpted it in Playbook, and Kevin Drum asked, “Why don’t more CEOs talk like this?” If you watch the clip, you’ll see why: it’s a refreshingly clear and analytical take on what’s holding back American business. via…
Paul Ryan, Herman Cain Push For Tax Increases On Middle Class
Ryan, while backing a payroll tax hike, nevertheless said that tax hikes cannot be part of the deficit-cutting proposal that the super committee comes up with. As part of his explanation, Ryan made it clear that he sees no difference between raising taxes proactively and allowing tax breaks to expire. “You already have…
Wonkbook: The ‘supercommittee’ is not really super
So pity the poor members of the supercommittee, who are being asked to be all things to all people, and who are inevitably going to fail. Some of them, in fact, are already trying to prepare the rest of Washington to be disappointed. In today’s edition of The Hill, Alexander Bolton reports that…
The Great Recession in five charts
How brutal has the recession been to U.S. households? Americans are earning even less than they did 13 years ago. That’s according to new Census data released Tuesday, which found that real median income fell to $49,445 in 2010, the lowest number since 1997, and the largest decline in income in a single…
Chart of the day: America’s surprisingly tiny small-business sector
The one thing every American politician can agree on is that small businesses are a crucial driver of the U.S. economy. So it’s somewhat surprising to discover that, as John Schmitt of the Center on Economic and Policy Research points out, the United States actually has the smallest small-business sector among wealthy countries….