Host Cecil Prescod speaks with Mike Lofgren who spent twenty-eight years working in Congress, the last sixteen as a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget committees, which gave him an insider’s look at the Bush tax cuts, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Hurricane Katrina disaster relief, debates on the Pentagon budget, and the various deficit-reduction commissions.
Increasingly frustrated by the gridlock and partisan polarization in Congress, Lofgren left government service as the debt ceiling crisis of 2011 came to a boil.
His initial hit article as a private citizen, Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult, received over a million views on Truthout.com. Lofgren has expanded on that article in his new book, The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.