Posted by Michael F. Cannon on July 22, 2010
By Michael F. Cannon
That didn’t take long at all. Left-wing congresscritters have (re-)introduced legislation to create a “public option” in ObamaCare’s health insurance exchanges.
The Congressional Budget Office scores the bill as reducing federal deficits by $53 billion by 2019. How? Paying doctors and hospitals less! Put that on a bumper sticker! The public option would use Medicare’s price [...]
Categories: Congress, Politics |
Tags: cost containment, Government and Politics, government health care, Health, health bill, health insurance, Health, Welfare & Entitlements, Medicare, Obamacare, prescription drugs, public option, spending | 
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Posted by Tad DeHaven on July 15, 2010
By Tad DeHaven
A recent paper by Veronique de Rugy examines how policymakers use various budgeting gimmicks to increase spending and obscure liabilities. One particularly abusive mechanism is the designation of supplemental spending as an “emergency.” The emergency designation makes it easier for policymakers to skirt budgetary rules, particularly “pay-as-you-go” (PAYGO) requirements.
The following chart from the paper shows [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: Appropriations, debt, deficit, funding, George W. Bush, office of management and budget, Senator Tom Coburn, spending, stimulus, the economy, veronique de rugy | No Comments »
Posted by Michael F. Cannon on July 1, 2010
By Michael F. Cannon
In a recent post on how RomneyCare is increasing health insurance costs in Massachusetts (by encouraging healthy residents to purchase coverage only when they need medical care) and how ObamaCare will do the same, I linked to a Boston Globe article where an insurance-company spokeswoman made this odd claim:
We believe…the gaming in the system…is adding [...]
Categories: Politics |
Tags: boston globe, Health, health care system, health insurance, Health, Welfare & Entitlements, individual mandate, insurance, Massachusetts, medical care, premiums, romneycare, spending | No Comments »
Posted by Alan Reynolds on June 22, 2010
By Alan Reynolds
A recent Washington Post column by Ezra Klein dreamed up a new excuse for the conspicuous failure of Obama’s so-called stimulus plan. Klein argues that the stimulus of federal spending has been offset by the “anti-stimulus” of fiscal austerity by state and local governments. For proof he quotes Bruce Bartlett, who is fast becoming the favorite go-to guy [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: Bruce Bartlett, federal spending, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, gdp growth, Government, government spending, liberals, spending, state and local governments, Washington Post | No Comments »
Posted by Mark A. Calabria on June 10, 2010
By Mark A. Calabria
Today begins the televised political theatre that Barney Frank has been waiting months for: the first public meeting of the House and Senate conferees on the two financial regulation bills. While there are a handful of important differences between the House and Senate bills, these differences are overshadowed by what the bills have in common. The [...]
Categories: Congress, Politics |
Tags: Bailout, barney frank, consumer protection, fannie mae and freddie mac, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, financial crisis, financial regulation, Government, Housing, housing bubble, monetary policy, regulation, spending, taxpayer | No Comments »
Posted by Christopher Preble on June 3, 2010
By Christopher Preble
Over at National Journal’s National Security Experts blog, this week’s question revolves around the health of the U.S. economy, and its relationship to U.S. power.
The editors ask:
How serious a threat is the mounting debt to the nation’s standing as the world’s only superpower? Can the U.S. continue to spend more than all other countries combined on its [...]
Categories: Economy, National Security, Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: benefits, collapse, crisis, debt levels, eastern europe, Foreign Policy and National Security, General, Health, Welfare & Entitlements, insolvency, jagadeesh gokhale, military force, military spending, national security strategy, pension, pensioners, social security, social security system, spending, Taxes, taxpayers, terrorist | No Comments »
Posted by Tad DeHaven on May 26, 2010
By Tad DeHaven
Analysts across the ideological spectrum generally agree that the government’s regulatory bodies fail far too frequently. However, analysts seem to learn different lessons from this experience.
Washington Post business columnist Steve Pearlstein cites numerous examples of failure and concludes, “It’s time for the business community to give up its jihad against regulation.”
He says:
It hardly captures the [...]
Categories: Politics, Tax and Budget Policy |
Tags: Bush, Bush administration, business columnist, federal regulatory agencies, Government, political interference, regulation, regulators, Regulatory Capture, Regulatory Studies, spending, washington, Washington Post | No Comments »
Posted by Neal McCluskey on May 26, 2010
By Neal McCluskey
Would you agree to sell your soul? And not just sell it, but sell it for an undisclosed prize? The states of Maryland and Kentucky would: Both have endorsed as-yet unpublished national curriculum standards for mathematics and language arts, declaring that they will relinquish their ability to set their own standards — to control their [...]
Categories: Politics |
Tags: Arne Duncan, curriculum, curriculum standards, Education, Education and Child Policy, education secretary, federal money, national curriculum, national curriculum standards, national standards, spending, standards | No Comments »
