David Coates

Posts Tagged ‘federal deficit’

May 25, 2013

The Half-forgotten Debt Crisis

            The attention span in Washington DC these days is remarkably short, and multi-tasking is something at which Congress seems particularly inept. So right now the focus there is overwhelming on just one thing, scandals – some genuine, some imagined, all minor – while the real business of the American people goes largely unexamined. The […] read more »
March 13, 2013

The Problem with Charm Offensives: If They Are Needed, They Have Already Failed

  Faced by insurmountable odds as the Carthaginians swept down the Italian peninsula during the Second Punic War, the Roman general Fabius Maximus simply retreated and retreated, wearing the opposition down by declining to engage with them at all. Watching the Republicans play the President right now, the scorched earth policy that the Romans used […] read more »
November 15, 2012

Ensuring that the “Grand Bargain” is genuinely a Bargain.

  It is lobbying week in Washington DC. Tuesday was labor’s day at the White House. Wednesday it was the turn of the business community. Friday it will be the usual politicians – Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Pelosi, Reid – in other words, the usual political gridlock masquerading as democracy in action.[1] read more »
September 22, 2012

A Progressive Primer on the Issue of America’s Debt Problem – Ten Things You Really Need to Know

  Central to the Republican critique of the Obama Administration in this election cycle has been the Administration’s supposed failure to address and resolve the problem of America’s growing debt. There is much wild and loose talk in beltway circles these days about federal over-spending, about federal over-borrowing, about the nation steadily going broke, and […] read more »
March 8, 2012

Taking the Republicans to Task: (3) on Smaller Government, Smaller Deficits

              The current frontrunners in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination vary far more in their personalities and leadership styles than they do in their problem analysis and policy prescription. Ron Paul apart, their explanation of what is going wrong in contemporary America, and what therefore needs to be done to put things […] read more »