How one Congressional Budget Office score salvaged Max Baucus’ day and possibly his bill. When Senate Finance Chairman Mac Baucus finally revealed his long anticipated bill, his Democratic colleagues treated the proposal like the open salvo in barter exchange and Baucus like a used Turkish rug merchant they were sure was out to swindle them. [...]
There aren’t many surprises in the Baucus health plan. However, Ezra Klein highlights what looks to me to be an important feature of the bill, and one that has not gotten all that much attention in the coverage that I’ve seen so far:
Imagine this: You are the opposition researcher for Sen. Chris Dodd, the embattled and not so popular Democrat from Connecticut. You just found out that your boss may face an unlikely Republican candidate in the fall. Linda McMahon, the matriarch of a family behind World Wrestling Entertainment, America’s last great traveling circus act. So what [...]
Jimmy Carter’s intervention in the winguts v. Obama controversy has raised the expected amount of dust–and I suppose the standard reaction is that “it’s a good thing we’re having this conversation,” but I’m not so sure that it is. Since I was one of the early racism-shouters here on Swampland, and on the Chris Matthews [...]
Kate Pickert has a clear explanation on Time.com here.
From TIME’s Kate Pickert: The Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill has provoked a wide range of reactions from special interest groups and lawmakers. Here is what the major players have to say in the wake of the bill’s unveiling:
Fred Kaplan, as usual, is excellent on the subject of Admiral Mullen’s confirmation hearings. I’ll have more on what went wrong with the military’s Aghan campaign this summer in my print column tomorrow.
Brooks Kraft just emailed me this one, and another after the jump (along with Brooks’ explanation of what was happening):
Download a PDF of the CBO Budget score here. UPDATE: So what does it say? The Baucus plan, as laid out in a preliminary report, would reduce the deficit by $49 billion in the first ten years. Over the subsequent decade (2019-2029), which is harder to predict, CBO estimated the reduction as about .5 percent [...]
The release of the Baucus plan raises all sorts of policy questions, but it also raises a significant political issue that I keep forgetting to address here: Why on earth is the implementation of universal health insurance delayed until 2013?
