Obama’s Acceptance Speech: The More Things CHANGE, The More They Remain the Same
I wrote a quick post before bed last night giving my off-the-cuff reaction to Barack Obama's nomination acceptance speech, arguing that, despite all the talk of "change," it was basically a speech that Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or John Kerry could have given. The NYT has a six-page transcript of the speech as delivered. Let's ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 29, 2008 08:14
Obama’s Spending Wish List
This just in: Politicians promise lots of things they won't be able to deliver if they get elected. Yesterday, we had the hilarity of John McCain's promise to balance the budget in four years without raising taxes or cutting anything but "wasteful" spending. Today, we've got an analysis from the Los Angeles Times showing that Barack Obama is ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 8, 2008 12:03
McCain to Balance Budget - Here’s How
John McCain is promising to balance the budget in his first term: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico. [...] “In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 7, 2008 08:00
Medicare Trustees Report
The latest report issued by the Medicare Trustees is not good. The HI annual cost rate is projected to increase from 3.11 percent of taxable payroll in 2007 to 11.40 percent in 2082—8.02 percent of taxable payroll more than the projected income rate for 2082. Expressed in relation to the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP), HI cost is estimated to rise ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 10, 2008 19:27
Iraq Political Progress Benchmarks
Jason Campbell, Michael O'Hanlon and Amy Unikewicz say that Brookings has come up with some metrics to measure political progress in Iraq and that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there actually has been some. The most intriguing area of late is the sphere of politics. To track progress, we have established “Brookings benchmarks” — a set of goals on the political ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on March 10, 2008 08:17
Closing the Earmarks Favor Factory
Mark Tapscott provides an extensive report of a Congressional Research Service finding that President Bush could, by mere executive order, stop all earmark spending directed by committee report rather than actual legislation. It turns out that this is the vast majority of all pork barrel spending. Of course, no evidence whatsoever has been provided in the last seven ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on December 22, 2007 09:34
Free Medicare for Everyone!
Kevin Drum, taking as a given that most of us are perfectly satisfied with our current health coverage but scared of losing it, offers an interesting solution: [E]xpand Medicare (or create a similar program) to cover every person in America under the age of 21. And then let them keep it as they grow older. In ten years everyone under 31 ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 30, 2007 16:17
Sam Nunn Mulls Presidential Bid on Unity08 Ticket
Former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn is thinking about a White House bid, the AJC's Jim Galloway reports. Sam Nunn left the U.S. Senate more than 10 years ago. Since then, the Georgia Democrat, who made his name nationally as a defense-minded hawk, has watched what's happened to the country, and he's more than a bit ticked — at the "fiasco" in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 20, 2007 16:28
The Unsustainable Nature of Medicaid
Jagadeesh Gokhale argues in this Cato Policy Analysis that Medicaid is on an unsustainable growth path. Current trends and policies imply unsustainable growth in federal Medicaid outlays. In the year 2006, federal Medicaid spending was 11.9 percent of federal general revenues and 1.5 percent of GDP. Making conservative assumptions about future growth in Medicaid enrollment and spending per beneficiary, this paper ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 24, 2007 09:39
How Corrupt is Congress?
Today's Washington Examiner editorial argues that the convictions of Bob Ney and Randy Cunningham and the criminal indictment of William Jefferson may well be just the tip of an iceberg of corruption in Congress. While federal prosecutors don’t claim Jefferson used earmarks in his solicitations, let it be noted that the same disdain for the public trust epitomized in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 11, 2007 07:45
