Originally appeared in the New York Times In Donald Trump’s two-plus years as president, his approach to policymaking has often been defined by an unsavory stew of indecision, inaction, flip-flops and outright lies. Nowhere has this been truer than with health care, where the administration has reversed direction multiple times. A short history: During his […]
Sometimes, swift and forceful government intervention in the private sector is the only way out of a crisis Originally appeared in the New York Times. Almost exactly 10 years ago, President Barack Obama went before the nation to unveil an urgent overhaul of the nation’s automobile industry. The financial crisis and plummeting economy had swept America’s already […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times. Yes, of course, we need a Green New Deal to address the world’s most urgent crisis, global warming. Just, please, not the one that a flotilla of liberal politicians, including seven of the top Democratic presidential hopefuls currently in the Senate, are signing up for in droves, like children following […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times. Medicare for All. The Green New Deal. Free college tuition. With each new entrant into the Democratic presidential sweepstakes comes a fresh cascade of ambitious social programs to entice and excite would-be supporters. The list of “payfors,” to use a bit of Washington jargon, grows more slowly. They’ll […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times. Steven Rattner responds to readers who have doubts about his plan to raise revenue from the uber wealthy. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for a steep increase in the tax rate of America’s top earners to help level income inequality and raise revenue for the deficit. But in […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times. Kudos to our latest political supernova, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for helpfully bringing taxes back into focus, with her call for a new top tax rate of 70 percent on incomes above $10 million a year. That seemingly simple concept makes for a great headline, but it’s not great tax policy. […]
Originally appeared in The New York Times. By any measure, 2018 was another Year of Trump. From his efforts to remake the American economy to his go-it-alone trade war to his curious pro-Putin foreign policy to the at least 17 investigations underway into his various activities, President Trump dominated the news as few of his predecessors have […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times In 2016, as he crisscrossed the country for his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised repeatedly that he would make American factories great again. “My plan includes a pledge to restore manufacturing in the United States,” he told a cheering crowd in the nation’s automobile capital, Detroit. In truth, Mr. Trump’s […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times. For the second consecutive Friday, the Trump administration had an opportunity to point to fresh data that supposedly demonstrates the strong boost the president’s policies have given to the nation’s economy. Last week, news that the gross domestic product expanded at a 4.1 percent rate in the second quarter […]
Originally appeared in the New York Times. American companies, according to their critics, are so focused on making quick profits that they have abdicated building for the long term. That idea has captivated policymakers, commentators and even some leading business executives. The complaint has reached a fevered pitch amid news that companies are diverting much of […]
