Outside the Beltway

A comedian-turned-Senator makes some strong points about how America goes to war.

Obama’s main politics are hardly as leftist as many make them out to be. Indeed, much of them could have fit well in the the GOP of 1990s and early 2000s.

President Obama chided the media for paying too much attention to the birther issue, but his criticism was unwarranted.

Contempt for Congress is an old American tradition. Unfortunately.

If you look at the Tea Party’s impact on state politics, you see it really isn’t much different from the Religious Right.

Standard & Poor’s didn’t believe the Obama Administration’s argument that Washington would be able to fix the deficit. There’s no reason they should have.

According to a new poll, the American public still isn’t sold on the idea of cutting entitlements to cut the budget deficit.

One of the Tea Party movement’s favorite Senators used the dreaded c-word.

In all honesty, much of what is coming out of the mouths of self-described conservatives is actually pretty darn radical.

We’re approaching the point where those job approval numbers start to matter, and President Obama’s are heading down again.

To borrow a phrase: budgeting is the science of muddling through (with an emphasis on the “muddling” far more than the “science.”

The Congressional Budget Office has come up with slightly different calculations of the savings created by the Obama-Boehner budget compromise.

President Obama’s budget speech was light on specifics, but that’s because it was really the opening salvo of the 2012 campaign.

The GOP seems to be telling President Obama that revenue increases are off the table. That’s a huge mistake.

Prepare to be underwhelmed by President Obama’s big deficit speech on Wednesday.

What, if anything, does the budget deal mean for the future?

Paul Ryan unveiled an ambitious plan to cut the deficit today. The question is whether it will be the beginning of a debate, or an opportunity for Democratic demagoguery

Rather than fighting over the remnants of the FY 2011 budget, the GOP should make a deal and get ready for the bigger, and more important, battle ahead.

The American people have no idea what’s really in the Federal Budget, which makes any discussion about what to cut virtually impossible.

So far, the Republican House’s effort to cut back Federal spending isn’t very impressive.

With minor exceptions, all of the potential candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012 seem to have accepted the idea that defense spending, and the Bush-era interventionist foreign policy, are off the table when it comes time to talk spending cuts.

President Obama is once again catching flak for his leisure activities.

Wisconsin Republicans stripped state employees of collective bargaining rights without the Democratic senators who fled the state to prevent a quorum.

Republicans are about to take a walk along the third-rail of American politics.

More evidence of what we already knew: the public isn’t especially interested in cutting entitlements.

Speaking before Congress yesterday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke debunked the assertion that the GOP’s relatively modest $61 billion spending cut package would significantly harm economic growth.

It’s not the size of your government that counts — it’s what you do with it that matters.

The most likely cuts in federal spending are likely to actually increase the deficit over time.

Moodys warns the the Republican plan to cut spending could cost the economy 700,000 jobs.

A new national poll suggests that moves to restrict the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions are not popular with the public at large:

The drive to cut taxes is at the heart of the budget mess.

Neither side is covering themselves in glory in the battle over the Badger State budget.

President Obama isn’t unbeatable in 2012. but it’s clear even now that he’s going to be a far more formidable opponent than many Republicans seem to think.