Robert Reich

A blue-ribbon science panel makes it official: Global warming is happening quickly, and human activity is its main cause. What is America doing about it? With five percent of the world’s population, accounting for a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the most advanced technology in the world, you’d think something big. Think […]

Last year, more than a million families lost their homes to bank foreclosures — a 42 percent jump over 2005, according to RealtyTrac. That’s still a small percentage of homeowners. But it marks a huge increase in foreclosures — especially among recipients of what are known as sub-prime loans. These are borrowers with weak credit […]

The president’s health care proposal deserves one cheer for the following reason: It potentially de-couples health care from employment. Under his proposal, everyone would be eligible for a tax deduction for health insurance up to $15,000 per family, $7,500 for a single person — regardless of whether the insurance is provided by the employer or […]

Democrats are eager to show they’re serious about reforming the way Congress does business. So they’re pushing a new ethics and lobbying bill that will ban gifts, meals, and free trips from lobbyists and their clients, and require that the legislative sponsors of all earmarks for pet projects be identified in the legislation. But calling […]

House Democrats are pushing a bill to require Medicare to negotiate drug prices. So far, so good. But in what appears to be a bow to the political clout of Big Pharma, the bill does not authorize Medicare to drop from its approved list drugs on which manufacturers fail to offer good deals. This is […]

One of the first items of business for the new Congress is increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. The president says he’ll sign the bill, but only if it contains new tax breaks for small businesses that will offset the increased cost resulting from a minimum-wage hike. Congress should pass the minimum wage […]

It was the year of feeding at the trough. It was perhaps the worst Congress in a century — not a do-nothing Congress, a do-awful Congress. It was a Congress that dispensed so much lard you’d think they had a pig-slaughtering house in the cloak rooms. At last count, Congress handed out over $50 billion […]

‘Tis the season to be jolly and also to make donations to your favorite charity. This year’s charitable donations are expected to total more than $200 billion, a new record. Some 80 percent of them are made now, in the final weeks of the year. But lots of charitable dollars — especially from the wealthy, […]

A private-sector group called the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation offered a number of measures recently to ease up regulatory burdens on companies that list their shares publicly in the United States, in order that the U.S. financial market stays competitive internationally. The group has the unofficial support of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has […]