President Obama has repeatedly claimed that his health care reforms also represent entitlement reform. Not surprisingly, the Congressional Budget Office shows this claim implausible. They have scored several health care proposals as costing more than $1 trillion in the first decade, and certainly more thereafter. Accordingly, lawmakers are considering substantially …
President Obama today is promoting a Pay-as-You-Go (PAYGO) statute requiring that tax cuts and entitlement expansions be collectively deficit-neutral. Congress is likely to take up the proposal later this month. Since 2007, Congress has had a PAYGO rule mandating that each new tax and entitlement bill be deficit-neutral. Because it …
President Obama today released a list of 121 proposed program terminations and reductions, at a savings of $17 billion. It is important for any president to get acclimated to the idea of streamlining government, and this exercise can be the first step. Many of the programs that President Obama has …
Budget Trickery The President also employs budget trickery on spending. He first assumes that Iraq spending will continue indefinitely at 2008 levels (which was never going to happen, according to the military’s own Joint Campaign Plan), and then calculates $1.5 trillion in savings against that baseline. If you eliminate that …
Remember the media’s relentless criticism of the Bush Administration’s “groupthink” leading up to the Iraq War? Now the media is engaged in its own groupthink on how best to stimulate economic growth. The great macroeconomic debate of the past century has been over the role of government in economic growth. …
Yesterday the White House updated its budget estimates by releasing the annual “Midsession Review.” Media reports have focused on the projected budget deficits of $389 billion this year and $482 billion in 2009. As always, larger truths have been left out: Reports calling next year’s projected budget deficit of $482 …
