Adjusting the Baseline and Changing the Message
This week saw the drop of three major budget proposals, from House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They are all bad for various different reasons. And in...
View ArticleMisplaced Priorities and Wasted Time
Let's turn to the Republican budget from Congressman Ryan and the House Budget Committee. At one level, based on my prior posts, one could think I'd be supportive of the Republican budget. But, I'm...
View ArticleAnother Silly NYT Editorial
One can always count on the New York Times editorial board for misleading commentary on matters budgetary. Here is their latest installment. First, we have the customary dipsy doodle on tax...
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A Budget Comparison
Now that the House and Senate have passed their respective budgets, I thought it might be useful to do a comparison, at a high level, between the budgets. The chart below provides a very simple way of...
View ArticleWhy Our Way of Discussing Budgets Must Be Reformed
The following appeared in an article at The Hill onlineRepublicans are betting that the public will be receptive to the Ryan plan’s measures to balance the budget in just 10 years, through lowering tax...
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The Timing of Savings
Several commentators have made the point that the President's budgetary savings are back end loaded. I wanted to test this theory so I calculated the savings in each budget relative to the CBO...
View ArticleA Question for Zandi and Blinder
Back in the days of the ARRA debate, a great deal was made of a study by Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder that described the effects of the stimulus using a complex economic model. I don't want to renew...
View ArticleA Very Weak Argument About the ACA
This post from Ezra Klein exemplifies the type of argumentation that will be used by the administration to encourage the young to make bad financial decisions around health insurance, a decision on...
View ArticleThe Bush (and Obama) Tax Cuts
One of the things we read all too often on the web is about the gross revenue impact of the "Bush tax cuts." It's so often said that we pretty much all accept it as a reality. The point of this post...
View ArticleThe Sad Sad Nature of the Debt Ceiling Debate
This is a truly sad time to be an American. One cannot help but watch the current squabbles over the funding of the government and the debt ceiling without feeling both helpless and deeply disturbed....
View ArticleIt's Time for Conservatives to Embrace Welfare as We Know It
Rather than post an incredibly long response in a thread on a similar topic, I've decided to write a fairly long blog post instead. The topic du jour I suppose is how do conservatives create an ideas...
View Article"Only 5 Percent" Could Come Back to Bite the ACA
Over the last little while, the defenders of the ACA have been making the argument that those hit by losing their existing coverage are "only" 5 percent of Americans. Leaving aside the fact that many...
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Better and Worse Off Under the ACA
There's a bit of a raging debate going on over whether people are going to be better or worse off under the coverage provisions of the ACA. In the end, the math is almost impossible to do since it...
View ArticleNow This is Interesting
The always wonderful Tax Policy Center has just published a wonderful piece of work on taxes and spending since 2000. You can find it here. It will be the subject of several future posts, once I get...
View ArticleA Few Thoughts on the Executive Power Debate
There's lots of discussion back and forth on various blogs on the executive power debate generating lots of commentary about whether its the dictatorial executive or the do nothing legislative that...
View ArticleA Rorschach Evening
I was up fairly late last night watching a surprisingly interesting Iowa caucus outcome. This morning, it appears to be pretty clear. Hillary won (but barely), Cruz won (perhaps a bit unsurprisingly...
View ArticleLearnings from Iowa and New Hampshire
Yes the polls in New Hampshire only closed about 30 minutes ago but it appears there's enough insight to write a post now rather than tomorrow morning. Here's a few things that I think we've learned...
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