It’s obvious why he’s lying, of course: if Carnahan admitted how costly the House Democrat health bill will be, he would get a far worse reception. Congressman Carnahan tells his constituents that the CBO has scored the House Democrat health bill and concluded that it produces a $6 billion surplus. That’s an out-and-out lie. You can find the CBO score here. If you look at | Read More »
What was it that touched off today’s market rally? According to the UK Telegraph, it was due to analyst Meredith Whitney’s urge to buy Goldman Sachs. Why is Whitney so confident about Goldman Sach’s future performance? Our more bullish outlook on Goldman Sachs shares is deeply rooted in our sustained bearish stance on the U.S. economy and the state of U.S. financials at large. Specifically, | Read More »
Today is a big day for the Blue Dog Democrats. They’ve spent the first 6 months of this administration supine, voting for whatever spending Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi told them to. As a result, the federal deficit is approaching $2 trillion – with nothing to show for it. All along, Barack Obama has paid lip service to the Congressional budget rule known as PayGo. | Read More »
The Spectator’s Phil Klein alerts us to the release of the Annual Report of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees. The Trustees have found that due to the recession, benefits paid out are overtaking revenues brought in even faster than projected. The trust funds for these programs will be bankrupt sooner than expected but more importantly, the programs will become a serious drain | Read More »
Congressman Paul Ryan, the senior Republican on the House Budget Committe, today laid out the problems with the House Democrat Budget Resolution:
Gee, there seem to be lots of Blue Dogs going home and telling their constituents: The stimulus was too partisan; Republicans got shut out of the process; and, The Blue Dogs are so influential that Congressional leaders can’t ignore them anymore. It begs the question: if the Blue Dogs are so influential, then why are they now apologizing and declaiming responsibility for how it turned | Read More »
It was always hard to imagine that every Democrat would march in lockstep support of a massive spending bill that stands little chance of actually doing anything to help the economy. But I would not have expected that a Blue Dog like Shuler would choose inauguration day to rain on Barack Obama’s parade: Shuler, who twice voted against the $700 billion bank rescue and the | Read More »
Barack Obama requested $775 billion. The current pricetag is $825 billion. But the House Progressive Caucus thinks it needs to be a little bigger: say, $1.4 trillion. Liberal Democrats in the House are lobbying hard to put President-elect Obama’s economic stimulus bill over the trillion-dollar mark. “Some of us are saying we need a stimulus of 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4 trillion to prevent a | Read More »
Faced with a slow economy and a large deficit, Democrats in Washington are going to try to solve the problem by adding more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Many governors are faced with similar challenges, and some at least, are trying a different approach. One noteworthy example is Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty: In his State of the State Address to a joint body of | Read More »
NBC news and the Wall Street Journal have completed a detailed poll of the American public, examining popular views on the risky spending scheme being considered in Congress. The headlines about the poll say things like ‘Public Backs Obama Stimulus Plan,’ and ‘Americans Strongly Back Obama and His Stimulus Plan,’ and they’re largely right. As the Journal summarizes: Overall, the poll found strong public backing | Read More »
Incoming OMB Director Peter Orszag took some flak at his confirmation hearing today, most notably from Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL). But while the continuing criticism of Obama’s economic plan will make the headlines, Orszag might also need to answer some more questions about the damage he seems to expect Obama to do to the economy.
It was only a week or so ago that we caught Blue Dog leader Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin spinning nonsense to her local press. She was pointing out that the Blue Dog caucus is larger than it has ever been — so large that they are ‘impossible to ignore’ — and then explaining why the Blue Dogs are forced to play dead while Barack Obama and the | Read More »
Headline: “Obama Vows No Earmarks on Stimulus” Fine Print: “We are going to ban all earmarks — the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review…” It’s much easier to ban earmarks if you change the definition. According to the Office of Management and Budget, an earmark is spending where “the congressional direction… circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the | Read More »
Jon Henke lays out the danger to Congressional Republicans of supporting Barack Obama’s stimulus package: Here’s the calculation on fiscal stimulus: If Obama gets his way, he’s looking at massive, trillion dollars deficits, and much more government intervention in the economy. The public may tolerate this due to fears about economic crisis, but if it works out well and the US gets a relatively soft | Read More »
Clearly I need to hit the econ books again. I would have thought that spending $250 billion on state education systems over the next few years would contribute to a reduction in overall economic growth, as opposed to an increase. It seems that many states are encountering budget trouble, and are being forced to consider cuts that would force students to forego higher education, in | Read More »
Congressional Blue Dogs are commonly described as moderate or conservative Democrats, but it’s probably more accurate to describe them as deficit hawks. While they’re typically somewhat to the right of their Democrat brethren, their calling card is an insistence on balanced budgets, including stiff tax increases to close deficits. So what’s a Blue Dog to do when your newly-elected president is calling for hundreds of | Read More »
Alan Reynolds points out that Barack Obama’s math just doesn’t add up: The new president, whoever he is, will start out facing a budget deficit of at least $1 trillion, possibly much more. Sen. Obama has nonetheless promised to devote another $1.32 trillion over the next 10 years to several new or expanded refundable tax credits and a special exemption for seniors, according to the | Read More »
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