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When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez floated her idea (quasi-embraced by Sen. Kamala Harris) to raise the top marginal income tax rate to 70 percent on the richest Americans in order to pay for her "Green New Deal," I wrote that governmental confiscation of 70 cents on any dollar earned in a free society is unfair and immoral.  But would such a scheme at least make significant headway toward boosting federal revenues, commensurate with the orgy of new spending the Democratic Left is advocating?  Budget analyst Brian Riedl crunches the numbers for the Daily Beast and details the predictable answer to that...

GUTHRIE: Do you believe in raising taxes on the wealthy? TRUMP: I do. I do – including myself. I do. That was...this morning, in an interview that featured some other controversial statements.  In fairness to Trump, he's been using the "raise taxes on rich people like me" line for months, embracing Obama-style class warfare tax gimmicks like the 'Buffet Rule.'  But raising taxes on anyone, an outcome Trump just re-endorsed, is not what his formal policy agenda proposes.  Just the opposite.  As we've seen on issues such immigration, abortion and foreign policy, Trump routinely makes clear that he isn't familiar with his own positions.  His stances aren't...

UPDATE- The House has passed the Ryan budget 219-205. The 'Path to Prosperity' received 217 more votes than the president's budget. You can read the GOP's plan here. My summary is here. *** Original Post *** Last we checked in on the budget battle in DC, our post-partisan president was smirkingly denouncing House Republicans' fiscal blueprint as a "stink burger" and "meanwich." The wit! The erudition! With Congress' lower chamber poised to pass Paul Ryan's 'Path to Prosperity' -- which reduces the rate of federal spending increases, reforms Medicare and balances within ten years -- the House first took up...

Late last week, Obamacare regulators added more than 800 pages to an ever-growing document that will govern your healthcare. The bureaucrats' work product now prints out to 20,000 pages -- nearly eight times the length of the infamous original bill: That tower is already taller than Kobe Bryant (see update), and much of the law hasn't even gone into effect yet. According to the Government Accountability Office, Obamacare is projected to add $6.2 trillion to the nation's long-term deficits, despite presidential assurances that it wouldn't add a "single dime" to our red ink:

We've known this failure was forthcoming for some time, but it's still worth flagging for several reasons, which we'll get to momentarily.  First, the basics:   Monday marked the deadline set in law for President Obama to submit a budget, but he missed it — making this the fourth time in his five years in office that he's failed to submit the blueprint on time. That makes his record equal to the three previous presidents combined, who spanned 20 years in office. This year, Mr. Obama blamed the late passage of his tax increase deal early last month. "Because these issues were not...

I humbly proffer the ultimate companion piece to this morning's item, which quoted the President Obama expressing his irritation over John Boehner's incessant carping about some "government spending problem" the president is convinced doesn't really exist.  Ladies and gentlemen, it has indeed come to this:   Lawmakers are still positioning themselves for a debt ceiling fight in a few months, but one Republican congressman wants to snuff out a particular idea immediately: the U.S. Treasury minting $1 trillion platinum coins to avert a debt ceiling showdown. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has introduced a bill to specifically ban President Barack Obama...

WASHINGTON -- The newly elected Republican-led House was peacefully sworn into office Thursday as GOP leaders began planning for four years of divided government. If you thought the past year was a rocky one, 2013 may make the political trench warfare battles of 2012 look like a Sunday school picnic. Soon after the smoke cleared in the wee hours of New Year's Day, when Congress had taken the government to the precipice of the "fiscal cliff," and even a bit over, it was clear that ever more contentious battles awaited incoming lawmakers. There were the automatic spending cuts buried in...

While most media accounts of the fiscal cliff fiasco have focused on Republicans' travails, few have adequately noted Democrats' starring role in our current dysfunction.  Harry Reid obstructed a vote on the president's plan, Nancy Pelosi whipped votes against her own erstwhile plan, and the president has fully retreated from ideas he supported as recently as last year.  A pre-Christmas Wall Street Journal article walks readers through the failed negotiations, and two recurring themes are woven throughout: (1) Obama has zero interest in meaningful concessions on his end, and (2) Obama is supremely confident in his ability to stick Republicans...

WASHINGTON - The latest sign President Obama fears he's headed for defeat came this week when he said he'd seek a "grand bargain" with Republicans to reduce a $16 trillion debt. Over the course of his campaign, Obama has ignored the monstrous debt he's piled up over the past four years in an orgy of unprecedented annual spending increases and budget deficits. Now, with little more than a week left before Election Day, and the presidential race in a dead heat, he suddenly wants a compromise with Republican leaders in Congress to curb spending and borrowing. Well, he's four years...

This video, which is being featured on Drudge, was shot at a protest outside of a Romney campaign rally in Ohio.  It appears to have been organized by the SEIU:   Interviewer: You've got an Obama phone?Obama supporter: Yes!  Everybody in Cleveland or minority got a phone.  Keep Obama in president, you know?  He gave us a phone.  He's going to do more.Interviewer: How'd he give you a phone?Obama supporter: You sign up if you're on food stamps, you're on Social Security, you've got no income, you're [on] disability.Interviewer: What's wrong with Romney, again?Obama supporter:  Romney?  He sucks. Bad. Why...

Just so you know, this deficit is totally out of context and was certainly not built by President Obama:   The Obama administration projects a budget deficit of $1.211 trillion this year, though that is $116 billion lower than an estimate released earlier in the year. "This reflects lower-than-expected spending, partially offset by lower-than-expected receipts," Budget Director Jeffrey Zients wrote on the White House website. In unveiling the administration's midyear budget review, Zients reported that this year's deficit is estimated to be 7.8% of Gross Domestic Product. That is less than the 8.5% projected in a similar report in February....