The evidence keeps piling up that the budget deficits aren't increasing interest rates and aren't harming the economy. But deficits aren't just an economic problem- they're a moral problem, says economist Andrew Samwick: Suppose for the sake of argument that deficits don't put much upward pressure on interest rates. Even in that case, they still have to be financed at the existing interest rate, and the burden of financing them has to be borne by someone in the future. Taxing someone in 2020 to pay for our spending binge in 2003 violates my notions of fairness, and that is a substantially more salient issue here than any additional concerns about efficiency. Hold on there- that's a bit too simple.

The Senate is considering an important provision that would stop the latest White House interference in the regulatory process. President Bush's efforts to undermine the ability of federal agencies to protect the public will take effect July 24 unless Congress acts to stop him. Take Action! Tell your senators to support this provision.

Kravis Argues Against Interest ... Carried Interest The lead business article in today's New York Times, Henry R. Kravis, the billionaire founder of the corporate buyout movement, put the lie to Wall Street's claims that taxing fund managers' fee income as ordinary income will shrink returns for America's pensioners. Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) -- author of a bill to end the so-called "carried interest" tax loophole -- and his staff met in late June. The Times reports that at the meeting, a Levin aide

The recent New York Times Magazine has an article titled, "Right to Spend" which discusses the complex and certain issue of money in politics by referencing the recent Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) decision without actually discussing the case. "Now, however, the Supreme Court has used the First Amendment to throw out one part of the law and threatened to discard the rest. In this new gilded age, are we doomed to return to gilded-age politics?