Blog: The Fine Print / Open, Accountable Government

Walker, Budget Nutcase

Mar 5, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GAO Chief David Walker showed up on 60 Minutes yesterday. Dean Baker has a nice takedown of what he said. I accuse him of three more errors against entitlements and the long-term fiscal imbalance. First, he limits options for policy solutions: So where's that money going to come from? "Well it's gonna come from additional taxes, or it's gonna come from restructuring these promises, or it's gonna come from cutting other spending," Walker says. What about reforming the private health care system- the source of the problem? Second, he distorts the opposition's beliefs:

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Do Your Job, Congress

Mar 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Things are moving forward on a plan to create a panel (CQ, $) of legislators who'd come up with proposals to curb long-term fiscal problems. If created, the commission will no doubt propose legislative packages of "tough choices," a euphemism for painful legislation that'll cut benefits here and raise taxes there, with the intention of reducing the long-term budget imbalance, but not producing any tangible benefit for the public.

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Wyden's Health Care Plan Could Save $1.5 Trillion

Mar 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Here's an interesting study of Sen. Ron Wyden's plan to provide health care insurance for all Americans. It estimates that the plan would slow the growth of health care costs by nearly 1 percent, a reduction in total health care spending (public and private) of about $1.5 trillion over ten years. You can agree or disagree with Wyden's plan (I think it relies too much on private insurers and doesn't go far enough to control costs). What's inarguable is that providing more health insurance would control costs in a moral and effective way.

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Children's Health Insurance Program Rundown

Feb 28, 2007 by Matt Lewis

SCHIP, a federal health insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women, has been making news lately (CQ ($) has a good article on it). Here's a quick rundown of what's been happening:

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The Fiscal Gap: Terrible

Feb 26, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The fiscal gap is an awful way to measure and think about the budget's long-term fiscal imbalance. I don't know why, but GAO likes it. They gave a rundown of what the fiscal gap is in a report released on Friday. The fiscal gap is the amount of spending reduction or tax increases needed to keep debt as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) at or below today's ratio. Another way to say this is that the fiscal gap is the amount of change needed to prevent the kind of debt explosion implicit in figure 3.

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More Americans Becoming Severely Poor

Feb 23, 2007 by Craig Jennings

McClatchy reports today on a study of 2005 census figures which found that "the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period." The McClathy article also draws on other studies to underline its point - that severe poverty, not just poverty, is growing and growing at an alarming rate.

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Mitigating Globalization-Generated Wage Stagnation

Feb 23, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The American Prospect's Harold Myerson has a op-ed piece in that publication today, Can Free Trade Be a Fair Deal?. In the op-ed, he links American middle class wage stagnation to globalization, specifically, to global wage convergence. The one policy proposal he offers seems paradoxical. For what would the global minimum wage policy he advocates do but hasten global wage convergence? At the same time, he rejects the proposals offered by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his fellow Hamiltonians at Brookings

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    OMB Watch on TomPaine.com!

    Feb 23, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

    Check out Adam and Craig on TomPaine.com today -- "No New Taxes? Don't Read His Lips."

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    Wrong Wrong Wrong!

    Feb 23, 2007 by Matt Lewis

    Glenn Hubbard, former head of the President's Counicl of Economic Advisors, said some ridiculous things on NPR's marketplace yesterday about long-term fiscal problems and the President's budget. Among the many opinions passed as facts, this one merits the most attention: The president's budget poses a challenging question: Can we restore fiscal discipline without damaging economic growth with higher taxes?...The answer is yes.

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    Budget Blind Spot

    Feb 22, 2007 by Matt Lewis

    A comment on testimony given to the Senate Budget Committee by Jason Furman, the leader of the center-left Hamilton Project and a scholar at the CBPP. The testimony concerns the "fiscal gap," the hot new phrase for what's typically called the long-term structural imbalance in the federal budget. His testimony is interesting and largely constructive. But it's more notable for its demonstration of budget wonkery's biggest blind spot: health care economics. Furman says rising health care costs are primarily responsible for the "fiscal gap." Yet all he says on the overall issue is this:

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