It is an unwritten rule that if a former Treasury secretary has nothing nice to say about one of his successors he does not say anything at all. But in the nation’s capital these days, the rules of political comity are meant to be broken. Raising eyebrows in economic circles, Lawrence H. Summers, the mercurial…
The seventh floor of the Education Department’s headquarters near the Mall used to bustle. Now, nearly a dozen offices sit empty and quiet. The department’s workforce has shrunk under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who has said she wants to decrease the federal government’s role in education, including investigations and enforcement of civil rights in schools.…
Over the coming weeks, Congress will decide whether to sell out the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling as part of tax legislation being written in the U.S. Senate that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. According to a new analysis by the Center for American…
Hate crimes across the U.S. rose nearly 5 percent in 2016, according to the FBI’s annual tally, marking the first time in over 10 years that the country has experienced consecutive annual increases in crimes motivated by bias against race, religion, sexuality, national origin or disability. The FBI’s annual hate crimes report, published Monday, counted…
For several decades, a consensus has grown that reining in the United States’ $3.2 trillion annual medical bill begins with changing the way doctors are paid: Instead of compensating them for every appointment, service and procedure, they should be paid based on the quality of their care. The Obama administration used the authority of the…
We have 32 years left to solve climate change. That’s one of the key takeaways from the 2017 Global Carbon Budget, an annual report that “brings together scientists and climate data from around the world to develop the most complete picture available of global greenhouse gas emissions,” according to its authors. The 32-year point comes…
Republicans are right about the corporate tax system being broken, but wrong about why it’s failing and how to fix it. The basic proposition put forth by President Trump and congressional leaders is that the present tax rate, 35 percent, makes it hard for American corporations to compete with foreign companies and ends up driving…
On Monday morning, President Donald Trump unveiled his pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which has been leaderless since Secretary Tom Price resigned in late September over his use of private jets on the taxpayer’s dime. The nominee is Alex Azar, a former executive at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and…
There’s one set of eyes that President Trump’s appointees absolutely cannot ignore as they set about trying to reshape Obamacare and enact sweeping new changes to the government’s health-care programs. They belong to Joe Grogan, director of health programs at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. You’ve probably never heard of Grogan —…
A treasure trove of documents given the name of the Paradise Papers was unveiled last week, giving us a clearer idea of how rich people and powerful companies keep their money from the prying eyes of the Internal Revenue Service. Apple, for example, went hunting for a new tax haven when Ireland, its former shelter,…