Jonathan Chait flagged this quote from Eric Cantor today and came up with an interesting theory as to why he said it: Mr. Cantor complained that the president, while insisting on additional tax increases, still has not embraced the structural changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that he says are needed to strike a [...]
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“We must embrace the need for modest reforms—otherwise our retirement programs will crowd out the investments we need for our children.” President Obama, State of the union address, 2013 Is that really true?
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This is how they achieve their long term goals — under the radar, changing the way the numbers are calculated to prove an ideological point and change our understanding of how the world works. The story says the Senate endorsed “a model called ‘dynamic scoring,’ which assumes that tax cuts will pay for at least [...]
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It would seem so: Speaking to Megyn Kelly about the Supreme Court’s hearing on Proposition 8, O’Reilly–who has previously compared gay marriage to bestiality–appeared to have “evolved” on the subject. He said he didn’t “feel that strongly” about gay marriage “one way or another” and thought the decision should be left to individual states. “I [...]
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David Ignatius wrote his Iraq mea culpa today and it's a good one. He admits that Iraq was an epic strategic blunder and that he was wrong to have been such an enthusiastic cheerleader for it. But in chronicling his mistakes, I find this one to be almost shocking coming from a sophisticated man of the world.
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Jared Bernstein has posted some very important information that one can only hope both the White House and the Democrats are aware of and prepared to change direction because of. It shows that our runaway medical costs are actually slowing down and he posits that there's good reason to believe that it's permanent rather than transitory.
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Did you also know that none of that, by law, can go to fund Social Security's projected "shortfall?" And that if they do change that law, it will forever put an end to the dedicated revenue stream that keeps SS out of the general budget? I'm afraid so.
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Just FYI, White House National Economic Council director Gene Sperling said today on his Reddit chat that the president really prefers the Chained CPI and that it’s not just an inducement to get the Republicans on board with the Grand Bargain. This may sound obvious, since it’s been clear from before the inauguration that the [...]
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Ultimately, a whole lot of this comes down to money: as the old saying goes, "it is very difficult to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it."
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Yes, Mr Prudent himself, the man who "worries" for your grand kids, has been looting his shareholders for decades. I guess he knows a thing or two about debt, but not in the way you think.
I knew he was a phony, of course, by the fact that he didn't say a peep when the budget was in surplus and the Democrats wanted to use it to shore up Social Security. (I guess he was too busy counting his billions during the tech boom to take the time.) But the minute President Bush pushed through his tax cuts (it's yer muneee!) Peterson jumped back into the fray screaming that the sky is falling, we must cut Social Security.
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