National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru writes a level-headed and intellectually honest response to Paul Ryan’s critics on the left. He offers some useful food for thought on the policy details, including a reminder that Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform, which involved a shift to block grants, prompted dire warnings similar to those aimed at …
Budgets
Behind the Budget Deal: Preserving the Status Quo
Budget issues are complex and confusing, which makes them infinitely spinnable. Officially, the deal House Speaker John Boehner cut with President Obama over the FY11 continuing resolution—which is distinct from the FY12 …
Ryan’s Vote
Today, the House is expected to vote on Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget. Almost universally, Republicans have praised the document, which cuts $6.2 trillion in spending over the next decade. “I think you’ve got it give Paul Ryan credit because he put out this plan, this blueprint. And it’s courageous for him to do this,” Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle …
Could Last Week’s Spending Compromise Fall Apart?
Update, 3:35 PM
By a 260-167 vote, the bill has passed the House with bipartisan support. HR 1473 will keep the government open through Sept. 30, the end of the 2011 fiscal year. Fifty-nine Republicans broke with their party to vote against the deal, a spike from the 28 who supported the one-week bridge resolution that bought time for …
Latest Column
On Obama’s speech.
On Cue, House GOP Pans Obama Speech
They pretended to have been hopeful. “I thought it was an olive branch,” Paul Ryan said in the basement of the Capitol this afternoon, a few hours after he joined a cadre of House Republicans, at the behest of the President, at George Washington University for Obama’s policy speech. Instead — surprise! — the Republicans were …
The Launch of the 2012 Spin
Here’s what we learned today: Whatever action Congress takes on the debt ceiling and deficit reduction will be the last significant work Washington does before all pretenses are abandoned and campaigning for 2012 begins in earnest.
In the next four to six weeks, Congress must pass a measure raising the debt ceiling as the Treasury …
Pawlenty: Budget Deal “Unacceptable”
Via Halperin, GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is denouncing last week’s budget deal between the White House, Harry Reid and John Boehner. Pawlenty’s statement seizes upon rising conservative anger–Hannity led with this topic last night–over reports that many of the cuts amount to accounting sleight of hand:
The more we learn
…
The $1 Trillion Tax Battlefield Takes Shape
President Obama didn’t offer a lot of specifics about how he intends to close the federal budget deficit in his speech at GW Wednesday, but he did make one thing clear: he intends to go head-to-head with Republicans over taxes.
That makes political sense. If he’s going to go after $2 trillion in spending, as his aides say he will …
Deficit Reduction Made Simple
David Leonhardt has the cure in about 750 words.
How Will Obama Propose to Tackle the Deficit?
In Washington these days, you’re nobody if you don’t have your own deficit-reduction plan. Paul Ryan has people talking about his conservative blueprint. Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have an establishment-centrist take. The Democratic left has its own alternative. And a bipartisan group of six senators is at work on still another …
What the 2011 Budget Deal Says About FinReg
Getting the government back to pre-Obama spending is a central tenet of the Republican budget agenda. The GOP’s proposals for 2011 and 2012 would put across-the-board domestic discretionary spending back at 2008 levels and Paul Ryan’s “Path” would freeze it there for five years. For the only two federal financial regulators subject to …
NPR Funding: After all That…
…its federal subsidy survives, notes my colleague James Poniewozik.
Once again in Washington, sound and fury signifies…. not much.