Steve Benen

Of all the issues Republican presidential candidates want to talk about, the U.S. mission that killed Osama bin Laden should be near the bottom. It’s not complicated: there’s no GOP upside for reminding Americans about one of President Obama’s triumphs. It was curious, then, that Mitt Romney went on Fox News and picked a fight […]

The economic recovery is admittedly shaky, and House Republicans appear eager to make matters worse, but right now, there’s growing cause for optimism. The number of Americans filing initial claims for regular state unemployment-insurance benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 364,000 in the week ended Dec. 17, reaching the lowest level since April 2008, […]

The irony of Ron Paul’s new problem is that he’s wanted the media to start taking his candidacy seriously for quite a while, but reporters have treated him like a joke and a sideshow. Now that news outlets are taking him seriously and asking about his record, the Texas congressman seems thoroughly annoyed. As you’ve […]

The payroll tax cut will expire in 9 days and 16 hours unless House Republicans agree to pass the Senate’s bipartisan compromise, and at this point, there’s no reason to believe that’s going to happen. The House GOP is under all kinds of pressure, but it hasn’t so much as hinted at giving in. With […]

Today’s edition of quick hits: * ECB starts making offers: “After more than a year of frustrating and mostly fruitless summit meetings of European political leaders, the European Central Bank appears to have found a more promising way to ease the euro zone crisis: give money to banks at bargain-basement rates.” * A very serious […]

When President Obama announced that all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of the year — a promise that came to fruition last week — the response from Republican presidential candidates was immediate: they were outraged. What’s more, the usual suspects, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, made the rounds, telling […]

It’s not uncommon for the Obama administration to do something worthwhile. Once in a while, though, the administration does something very worthwhile that will have a major impact on society. Dave Roberts has a helpful piece today on the EPA’s new national standards for mercury pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants — the first […]

I’ve been wondering for months why Mitt Romney’s Republican rivals weren’t going after the former governor’s vulture-capitalist record. It turns out, they were just waiting until crunch time. To briefly review, Romney got very rich running a private-equity firm, Bain Capital, which broke up companies and laid off American workers. He had considerable success orchestrating […]

So far, we’ve seen the payroll tax-break fight play out in a variety of steps. The first was House Republicans passing a ridiculous, right-wing extension of the tax policy, filled with extremist goodies that necessarily made the bill a non-starter. The second was the Senate approving a temporary, bipartisan compromise. The third, of course, came […]

When the Senate voted over the weekend on its bipartisan payroll-tax-cut compromise, it passed 89 to 10. One of the 10 was Sen. Bob Corker (R) of Tennessee. Corker’s concerns had nothing to do with procedures or timetables; he simply doesn’t want there to be a payroll tax break. He’s heard the warnings about the […]