Posts by Robert

For those who follow the credit rating agencies’ assessments of the United States, the past several weeks have offered mixed messages. Overall, some improvement has been noted, mostly due to the steadily improving economy and the declining deficit. Concerns remain,…

The Obama Administration released its Mid-Session Review (MSR) of the budget on Monday. It would be nice to say that this update arrived just in time to clinch the deal on a fiscal sustainability plan, or even a plan to…

For those inclined to look beyond the sharp drop in the deficit this year, as we should, the budget update released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on May 14 has some striking indications of things to come. (more…)

The new budget plan released recently by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles once again demonstrates that it is possible to bring the deficit under control using a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases without harming the near-term economy. It…

Opening Day for the baseball season has come and gone in Washington but for the budget season it comes on Wednesday, when the President officially unveils his Fiscal Year 2014 proposals. Will he get a hit or be sent back…

President Obama is back home after a diplomatic mission to the Middle East in which he exhorted the Israeli people, particularly young Israelis, to ignore the competing claims of extremists and take the push for peace into their own hands.…

Back in August of 2011, with the nation’s debt bumping up against its statutory limit and an election year looming, President Obama and Congress made a deal. They would empower a special committee (the “super committee”) to reach a long-term…

In his State of the Union Address President Obama declared: “Our government shouldn’t make promises we cannot keep, but we must keep the promises we’ve already made.” It was good applause line, but it glossed over a key point: The…