The tax break for employee-sponsored health insurance is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Internal Revenue Code. It gets absolutely no respect.

For years, conventional wisdom in Washington said the nation's long-term fiscal crisis is being driven by the aging of the Baby Boomers and their impact on entitlements, such as Social Security and, especially, Medicare and Medicaid.

Today's Washington Post takes Senator John McCain to task for promising unsustainable tax cuts, including making permanent President Bush's tax cuts, repealing the AMT, making permanent the research and experimentation tax credit, cutting the top corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent, and allowing businesses to immediately write off all capital investments (rather than depreciating them over time). He has also proposed to require a super-majority vote in Congress for any tax increases. (Last week, TaxVox raised its own questions about how tough it would be for McCain to keep his tax cut promises.)

Hillary Clinton has an uphill struggle to win the Democratic nomination for President. But she is still battling, so I have a few questions for her, as I've had for John McCain and Barack Obama.

John McCain now says "no new taxes." It may be a great way to play to a still-skeptical GOP base, but it will be a hard pledge for President McCain to keep. To see how tough, just take a look at his own health care plan.

After convincing primary wins in Maryland and Virginia on Feb. 12, Barack Obama has the momentum in the Democratic race for president, so, it seems like a good idea to ask some important questions about his fiscal policy agenda.

Now that the presidential primary season is heading into the homestretch, the candidates may begin to focus on important issues they’ll face if they are actually elected. With that hope, TPC has put together an online briefing book on the U.S. tax system—with lots of background information on tax and budget policy along with options for reform, both incremental and sweeping.

Maybe it's time to have a grown-up discussion about the Bush tax cuts. Something big will happen to them before they expire in 2010. But they are not going to be made permanent. Nor will they be allowed to completely expire. For their own reasons, both political parties continue to argue over these absolutes, but this debate is silly and leads nowhere.

The Bush Administration's 2009 budget, released last week, contained a proposal to reform the tax incentives aimed at encouraging additional retirement saving. The Administration's plan calls for the consolidation of the various types of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) into a single Retirement Savings Account (RSA). RSAs would have the characteristics of a Roth IRA—that is, once contributions are made to the account, both the account balance and eventual distributions would never be taxed.

After Congress agreed to its $169 billion stimulus package last night, a happy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) boasted, "What has passed the Congress in record time is a gift to the middle class and those who aspire to it in our country."