Blog
Welcome to our blog – The Bottom Line, where you’ll find up-to-date commentary and analysis on the most important news in the fiscal world. Below is a list of our blog posts.
Bad Budget Concepts and The Case of Student Loans
Sometimes, the way we score certain items in the budget leads to sub-optimal policy choices. For example, as we explained recently, the long-term care...
Let's Offset the Costs of the Troop Surge
Last night President Obama gave a long-awaited speech on his plan for increasing troop levels, stating his intention to increase troops by 30,000...
Stimulus COBRA Subsidies Begin Expiring
Today, federal COBRA subsidies that help unemployed workers purchase health insurance from their former employers begin expiring. February’s stimulus...
CBO Reports on the Effect of Reform on Premiums
Under the Senate health care reform bill the average American will pay about the same for insurance as he or she pays now, the CBO and the Joint...
CBO Report Discusses ARRA Effect on Jobs, GDP Growth
The Congressional Budget Office has come out with a report estimating the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on employment and...
Considering a War Tax
Update: An editorial in today's Washington Post discusses the possibility o f increasing the gasoline tax to help pay for the troop increase. The...
Weekend Editorial Roundup
Here are the highlights from this weekend’s editorials on fiscal and budget policy: The Wall Street Journal calls the pharmaceutical industry foolish...
How to Reduce National Health Spending
The New England Journal of Medicine, last week, had an article by four RAND researchers on Controlling U.S. Health Care Spending. Using Massachusetts...
FDIC Deposit Fund Turns Negative
Yesterday, the FDIC reported that the deposit insurance fund fell below zero for the first time since the third quarter of 1992 (during the savings...
Federal Officials Pressure ‘Pay Czar’ to Ease Pay Restrictions at AIG
Worry about the government’s investment in AIG has prompted some federal officials to call for easing the restrictions on pay at AIG for 2010, the...
Interactive and Sharable Graphs Comparing the Health Care Bills
UPDATE: CHARTS AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE AS NEWER LEGISLATION IS PUT FORWARD. CURRENTLY, THEY REFLECT THE MANAGER'S AMENDMENT TO THE SENATE BILL. Today, US...
Deficit and Debt Make Headlines
Public concern over the United States’ ballooning deficit and debt seems to be growing. Both the cover of this week’s Economist and the lead story on...