House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote to overturn health care reform on January 12. The bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and set the nation's health care laws back to the way they were last March, has no chance of becoming law. The GOP controls the House, but Democrats control the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate Democrats will block the bill.
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones reports that the 2-page House bill carries no price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ACA would save $143 billion dollars over the next decade. The GOP repeal bill contains no alternative plan. So, repealing the ACA would be tantamount to adding $143 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.
Why are the Republicans rushing to vote on a doomed bill without even bothering to hold hearings, or formulate a counter-proposal for the Congressional Budget Office to score? Kevin Drum of Mother Joneshazards a guess:
[Speaker John] Boehner [(R-OH)] knows two things: (a) he has to schedule a repeal vote because the tea partiers will go into open revolt if he doesn't, and (b) it's a dead letter with nothing more than symbolic value. So he's scheduling a quick vote with no hearings and no CBO scoring just so he can say he's done it, after which he can move on to other business he actually cares about.
An opportunity?
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that all this political theater around repealing the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity for Democrats to remind the public about all the popular aspects of the bill that the GOP is trying to strip away.
Last weekend several key provisions of the ACA took effect, including help for middle income seniors who are running up against the prescription drug "donut hole." Until last Saturday, their drugs were covered up to a relatively low threshold, then they were on their own until they spent enough on prescriptions for the catastrophic coverage to kick in again. Those seniors will be reluctant to give up their brand new 50% discount on drugs in the donut hole.
Another crack at turning eggs into persons
A Colorado ballot initiative to bestow full human rights on fertilized ova was resoundingly defeated for the second time in the last midterm elections. Attempts to reclassify fertilized ova as people are an attempt to ban abortion, stem cell research, and some forms of birth control. Patrick Caldwell of the American Independent reports that new egg-as-person campaigns are stirring in other states where activists hope to take advantage of new Republican majorities.
Personhood USA, the group behind the failed Colorado ballot initiatives, claims that there is "action" (of some description) on personhood legislation in 30 states. Caldwell says Florida may be the next battleground. Personhood USA needs 676,000 signatures to get their proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Right now, they have zero, but they promise a "big push" in 2011.
Ronald McDonald = Joe the Camel
In AlterNet, Kelle Louaillier calls for more regulation of fast food industry advertising to children. New research shows that children are being exposed to significantly more fast food ads than they were just a few years ago. Other studies demonstrate that children give higher marks to food products when they are paired with a cartoon character. Louaillier writes of her organization's campaign to prevent fast food companies from using cartoons to market fast food to kids:
For our part, my organization launched a campaign in March to convince McDonald's to retire Ronald McDonald, its iconic advertising character, and the suite of predatory marketing practices of which the clown is at the heart. A study we commissioned by Lake Research Partners found that more than half of those polled say they "favor stopping corporations from using cartoons and other children's characters to sell harmful products to children."
Local elected officials are joining the cause, too. Los Angeles recently voted to make permanent a ban on the construction of new fast food restaurants in parts of the city. San Francisco has limited toy giveaway promotions to children's meals that meet basic health criteria. The idea is spreading to other cities.
2011 trendspotting: Baby food
The hot new snack trend for 2011 is mush, as Bonnie Azab Powell reports in Grist. In an attempt to burnish its portfolio of "healthier" snack options for kids Tropicana (a PepsiCo company) is introducing a new line of pureed fruit and vegetable slurries. The products, sold under the brand name Tropolis, feature ground up fruits and veggies, vitamin C, and fiber in a portable plastic pouch. These "drinkified snacks" or "snackified drinks" will be priced at $2.49 to $3.49 for a four-pack, making them more expensive than fresh fruit.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Is the conservative approach to job creation as deluded as attacking Iraq in response to 9/11? Or is it even more deluded? Either way, it's conceptually similar, in that rationale offered is an excuse, not a reason. The neocons wanted a new Cold War, and in "Rebuilding America's Defenses" they frankly admitted that they needed a "new Pearl Harbor" (p. 63) to get public opinion stampeded into supporting them. On the economic side, Naomi Klein wrote a whole book, The Shock Doctrine about how the "give the rich people all your money" scam works. (Put people into a total panic, then hit them with an avalanche of pre-fab theories telling them "there is no alternative.")
But most particularly on job creation--and comparing the two issues that are up right now: millionaires tax cuts and unemployment insurance--the evidence is overwhelmingly against conservatives as this CBO chart (page 11, slightly modified for visual purposes) clearly shows (unemployment insurance at the top, income tax cuts at the bottom, about 1/6th as effective):
Last night, Rachel Maddow had a real economist on to refute this nonsense (although Rachel holds up a different, earlier CBO document, that has the same data in a table, not a chart):
Once again, that surreal clip from John Shaddeg's interview with Mike Barnicle went like this:
In two previous articles, "Maintain Tax Cuts for the Rich? Americans Don't Seem to Buy the Conservative Argument" and the "Efficacy of Tax Cuts Is now Questioned" I laid out two basic premises. One was that a majority of the American people did not buy into the conservative argument that tax cuts had to be maintained for the richest among us. The second was that the use of tax cuts in this type of economic downturn had been called into question by some very prominent economists and that those same economists just happen to be on the right side of the political spectrum. The notion that tax cuts are of little use in this particular economic environment received further support last week with the publishing of the findings of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office from which the following conclusions were drawn: " The concept of lower taxes is so appealing to voters that many embrace them as an economic cure-all... But economic research suggests that tax cuts, though difficult for politicians to resist in election season, have limited ability to bolster the flagging economy because they are essentially a supply-side remedy for a problem caused by lack of demand.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this year analyzed the short-term effects of 11 policy options and found that extending the tax cuts would be the least effective way to spur the economy and reduce unemployment. The report added that tax cuts for high earners would have the smallest "bang for the buck," because wealthy Americans were more likely to save their money than spend it....Neither of those options, though, would do as much to stimulate the economy as offering direct payments to the unemployed and Social Security recipients or reducing the payroll taxes of workers, the study found...So while the decision on whether to extend the tax cuts will have a lasting impact on the deficit and on how the nation's tax burden is distributed, economists and tax experts say it is unlikely to offer much immediate relief for high unemployment and sluggish growth... It may have some small impact along the margins, but firms don't hire based on tax breaks; they hire based on demand," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "So a lot of the tax breaks are likely to be rewarding people and companies for what they were going to do anyway."
As a footnote to the above, it's also of note that another prominent conservative has come to criticize the notion that tax cuts would be economically effective today. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter and Fellow at the ultra conservative American Enterprise Institute, in an interview on NPR's Marketplace said the following:" The recession began when all the Bush tax cuts were fully in effect. And yet, it's suggested that re-enacting the tax cuts will somehow cure the crisis that those same tax cuts failed to prevent." Don't get me wrong, Frum is not endorsing the Obama Administration or its economic policies, not by a long shot. What he is saying, that is relevant to my premise is that those who are banking on tax cuts to pull us out of the current predicament are sadly mistaken as to their usefulness. Many would argue that tax cuts can only work if they are coupled with spending cuts, but to think that the government could reign in spending in the midst of this type of downturn requires a quantum leap of faith that would come with the notion that removing one of the only simulative elements remaining in the economy would somehow not cause the recession to worsen. This point was further underlined recently on Meet the Press. When pressed by moderator David Gregory, the Republican Minority leader, Mitch McConnell, declined to commit to spending cuts if the GOP took control of Capitol Hill. The bottom line is this: those on the far right fringe who parrot 18th and 19th Century economic concepts seem to strangely factor out the social chaos that would result from an ideology that was better suited for the world of Charles Dickens than the globalized world of today. The Republicans who hope to capture Capitol Hill in a few short weeks know this as well that's why they are reluctant to go on the record and say otherwise.
A corollary argument that is used to support the extension of tax cuts to those families earning over $250,000.00/year is that idea that if this tax break is eliminated, that job creation will suffer. Here again there seems to be little in the way of empirical evidence to support this claim. A recent article; "Tax Increases Would Hit Few Small Businesses"; summarized the findings of the IRS and it's Joint Committee on Taxation as follows: "Despite that emotional appeal, Internal Revenue Service statistics indicate that only 3 percent of small businesses would be subject to the higher tax, and many studies of previous tax increases suggest that it would have minimal impact on hiring... According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 97 percent of all businesses owners do not earn enough to be subject to the higher rates, which would be levied on income of over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for families...But much of the research over the last two decades has found that increases in top tax rates can lead to an increase in the formation of small businesses, as wealthy individuals apparently begin start-ups to avail themselves of the more generous tax breaks offered to businesses... Higher taxes may lead individuals to seek self-employment because the opportunities for tax evasion and avoidance are greater," according to a report released this month by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which surveyed more than 20 studies on the effects of taxes on hiring."
Thus it seems that the hue and cry about the dangers to job creation at the level of small business may in fact be greatly exaggerated after all, yet one more political football flying about amidst all of the misconceptions that relate to the issues of tax policy and it's applicability in the midst of the worst downturn since the 1930s. It's important to note that I am not against tax cuts per se; it's just that they are not and never have been a cure all too economic ills. That said; the monotonous reiteration of the sanctity of tax cuts in this particular environment seems to amount to nothing more than the political posturing of those who are at a loss for good ideas as to what we need to do to repair the damage done over the past thirty years of deregulation and bubble economics.
With regard to the fact that most Americans don't support extending tax cuts to the wealthiest, the latest New York times/CBS poll supports what the last Gallup Poll showed: "The poll found that 53 percent of Americans say Mr. Obama's proposal to increase taxes on households earning $250,000 or more is a good idea, and 38 percent say it is a bad idea." Thus once again as was previously pointed out, the disappointment and anxiety of rank and file Americans does not translate into empathy for the woes of the most fortunate among us.
2)New York Times/CBS News Poll September 15, 2010http://documents.nytimes.com/new-york-timescbs-news-poll-new-york-timescbs-news-poll-mood-of-the-country-as-midterms-approach?ref=politics 3)
Climate skeptics found plenty of reasons to dig out their dreary critiques this week, between the continuing controversy over erroneous reports from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and the record-breaking snowfall on the East Coast. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his family built an igloo which Inhofe then dubbed "Al Gore's house" in the streets of Washington, D.C. The Virginia GOP ran ads attacking the state's Democratic representatives for their support of cap-and-trade and urged voters to "tell them how much global warming you get this weekend." And skeptics across the world claimed that the smaller mistakes in IPCC reports undermined the organization's broad conclusions on climate change science.
Let's plow through this slushy thinking before it piles up too high.
Snow still happens in a warming world
In the winter, it snows, and one snowstorm does not overthrow all of climate science. "Perhaps it's time for a refresher," wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. "'Weather' and 'climate' are not the same thing. Weather is what happened yesterday or may happen tomorrow; climate patterns occur over decades."
"We can absolutely expect climate change to bring blizzards in places that don't normally see a lot of blizzards, like Washington, D.C.," chimes in Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. "Climatologists expect just this sort of 'global weirding': less predictable, more extreme, more damaging."
Cold temperatures, even record lows, do not contradict the extensive body of evidence that global temperatures are rising. As Hiskes points out, erratic weather patterns support climate change theories, and the coming seasons will feature more newsworthy weather events. Chalk up the snowfall that shut down the federal government for almost a week as a bad sign, akin to harsh storms like Hurricane Katrina.
Climate science stands despite IPCC errors...
The IPCC messed up. The international organization is meant to gather and review the body of climate change science and produce definitive reports on that field. But in past reports, the organization included a few facts unsupported by real scientific research. Mother Jones' Sheppard runs down these mistakes: the IPCC cannot back up its claims about the rising sea-level in Holland, crop failure in Africa, and the melting of Himalayan glaciers.
The bottom line, though, is that these errors do not affect the reports' main conclusions. As Sheppard explains, "The controversies over the IPCC's data haven't challenged the fundamental agreement among the vast majority of scientific bodies that climate change is happening and caused in large part by human activity."
...but that does not excuse the IPCC's behavior
The IPCC cannot use that broad consensus as a defense, however. The organization needs to maintain both an impeccable reputation as a scientific body and its independence from political pressures. At The Nation, Maria Margaronis argues that in the climate arena, science and politics have been wedged too closely together.
"On a subject as politicized as this, it's not surprising that scientists have been found guilty of hoarding data, smoothing a graph or two, shutting each other's work out of peer-reviewed journals," she writes. "The same goes on in far less controversial fields, where what's at stake is only money and careers. ... Every research paper and data set produced by climate scientists or cited by the IPCC is now fair game for the fine-toothed comb, whether it's wielded honestly or with malicious intent. Nit-picking takes the place of conversation."
Margaronis suggests that scientists admit to uncertainties and open up their data, while the rest of us stop looking to them as unimpeachable oracles on climate change. But as long as skeptics jump on a researcher's every doubt as a refutation of all climate science, that's not likely to happen.
Brace for impact
Negative attitudes about the IPCC and the snow are not idle threats to climate reform. As Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly, "It seems mind-numbing, but Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) said snowfall in D.C. has had an effect on policymakers' attitudes."
As cheap as they are, stunts like Inhofe's seem to dampen lawmakers' political will to pass real climate change legislation. Apparently, the Senate, already tip-toeing away from the cap-and-trade provisions passed in the House, can't talk about global warming when there's snow on the ground.
Foot-dragging like this costs the United States money and credibility. Administration officials are already downplaying expectations for the next international conference on climate change, to be held next winter in Mexico. And if the Senate gives up on a comprehensive climate bill and passes a weaker provision, the country will ultimately pay the price in higher deficits.
At Grist, David Roberts declares, "Good climate policy is responsible fiscal policy." His evidence? Reports from the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate's comprehensive climate legislation (known as the Kerry-Boxer bill) knocks $21 billion a year off the deficit, according to the CBO. The watered-down alternative increases the deficit by $13 billion a year.
Encounters with the arch-skeptic
Citing snowfall as an argument against global warming-and against passing climate change legislation!-is not the only half-baked idea climate skeptics throw around. As Joshua Frank notes for AlterNet, "There are usually a range of issues these skeptics raise in an attempt to cast doubt on climate change evidence." Frank offers a primer of responses to common complaints-i.e. humans don't contribute to global warming, that carbon emissions aren't to blame, either, that climate science cannot accurately measure global warming.
Keep this resources handy. It only takes one event, like this week's snow storm, for those misguided arguments to surface.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The CBO didn't explain how it came to the seemingly arbitrary figure of 90 percent. Franken said he and Rockefeller met with the CBO chief Doug Elmendorf about his determination and came away uncertain of the reasoning. Elmendorf, who is not an elected official, deemed that 80 percent for small groups and 85 for large didn't amount to nationalization. In the American system of government, what Elmendorf says, goes, so regardless of the rationale, the bill includes the figures he dictated.
Two questions: what technical backup did Franken have (like experts of his in the room, prior briefings, etc)? And what was Elmendorf asked about the 90% point?
As it stands, the meeting appears to have been a mess - and, if for no reason that the 90% thing was Franken's big number on health care, you'd have thought he'd have gone about things rather less casually!
On MLR, the HuffPo piece also flags the provision in the manager's amendment which allows the HHS Secretary to adjust the MLR numbers. Uh oh...
Second, rescission:
The same piece highlights the bizarre case of Anthem Blue Cross, which operates in California.
State regulators identified loads of illegal rescissions by ABC, but at first failed to impose fines fearing that the company would challenge each case in court.
Eventually, company and regulators made agreements under which fines were imposed, and rescissions rescinded - but apparently these deals weren't as tough as they looked.
Much of this was originally posted as a comment to one of Paul Rosenberg's earlier diaries but it really deserves its own diary.
In assuming that the Public Option is not going to pass, I continue to look for ways of extending the fight and not letting it die, continuing to press the issues which divide us from traditional Democrats.
One such issue, I think is the role played by the Congressional Budget Office in this fight. Prior to this fight who outside the beltway had ever heard of the CBO? But at every point, the CBO was brought it to give a supposedly impartial numbers-only score to any proposal contemplated by either House. I argue below the jump that they were not impartial, they represented the point of view of the Insurance Industry, that this needs to be confronted in future battles, and that it's possible to do so.
My sense is that lefty bloggers (not least Bowers) are tending towards a thumbs-up for a health care bill of more or less the shape of Harry's substitute.
The For the win!!! factor is significant; but perhaps there's also a sense that, even with a weak PO, the bill has substantive benefits which would weigh its its favor even absent the imperatives of politics.
I have no expertise in the same time zone as that needed to form an independent judgement of the merits of any of this legislation; but the odor I'm getting is uncongenial.
In previous pieces (here and here), I've drawn attention to some worrying stuff.
But - the CBO are supposed to be, if not good guys, then at least neutral.
However, there are two systemic problems with their product:
They produce the analyses that they are asked by pols to produce;
and
They don't show their workings.
With results often depending on relatively small differences between immense sums, its possible for projected benefits to swing wildly based on apparently modest differences in modeling assumptions.
We simply don't get to look under the hood - to see the models used, a full list of assumptions made, etc; and we don't get that most minimal of statistical requistites, explicit confidence intervals.
Here's an example - Medicare D in HR 1 (108th) - of CBO scoring producing a misleading impression (the CBO are only obeying orders, remember - the pols are making the plays):
Although the bill passed at the end of 2003, Part D drug benefits were not offered until 2006. Having served as the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) during the implementation of the Medicare Modernization Act, I can attest to the need for two years to build the risk adjusters, design the bidding systems and all the other infrastructure necessary to ensure the new system would work. Still, a 10-year budget estimate that has very low, atypical spending for the first two years, gave policymakers a very unrepresentative picture of the ongoing costs of that program.
When it comes to the current health care bills, this back-ending of costs also skews the numbers:
In the House and Senate health care bills, many of the changes to spending and taxes wouldn't take place for a few years. That means that cost estimates for those provisions only account for a portion of the decade, but the CBO "score" is still a 10-year estimate.
Not the prime motivator for delaying a load of provisions till 2014 - but, given that the total cost and deficit effect of the bill as enacted (if one is) are such key numbers, the fact that the delay reduces the CBO scores gives the bills a shot of botox.
The bottom line is: for nongroup policies, average premiums go up about 10%, but, net of subsidy for those who receive it, there's a 50+% average reduction. The quality of the policies is supposed to improve, too - but, so far as I can see, the basic difference made by the bill is the humungous dole of corporate welfare to the insurers.
However, because the comparisons are done in percentages, it's not immediately apparently whether the uninitiated are being misled.
According to the CBO, the largest category (those covered by large groups) get no net benefit from the bill.
That is the big question everyone is wondering about these days. Most of the traditional media is drooling over the idea of a train wreck, hyping the disagreements and hoping for failure. But the disagreements are also quite real and quite significant. Conservative Democrats don't want a public option, progressives are insisting on it. Conservatives don't want to spend too much, progressives want to be sure insurance is actually affordable to the middle class.
Conservatives don't want businesses to pay anything for their workers' health care, progressives don't want businesses to get a free ride, especially if their workers are being forced to buy insurance. Conservatives want workers taxed on their health plan if it's a good one, progressives would rather have the super rich pay more in taxes instead of the middle class worker with a decent insurance package.
These are tough issues to work out, but I am confident that the White House and the legislative leaders will figure out a way. When legislation is this important to pass - substantively and politically - leaders figure out a path to getting it done. I have seen it happen many different times over the years- seemingly impossible to solve policy differences worked out with patience, muscle, and creativity.
Take the public option. In what is either a sign we will pass health reform, or sign of the apocalypse (or maybe both for certain fundamentalist Christians), conservative Blue Dog Mike Ross and I, one of the original hard core public option advocates, actually agree on something related to the public option. Ross is now suggesting that "instead of creating an entirely new government bureaucracy to administer a public option, Medicare should be offered as a choice." I have fought like crazy for a new public health insurance option to be created for people under 65 years old, but I actually think that this idea is a very reasonable compromise: don't create a new entity, just open up the perfectly good public option we have - Medicare - to anyone who wants to buy into it. That would actually strengthen Medicare because younger, healthier people would be joining the risk pool. And it would satisfy progressives by giving some real competition to the private insurance industry.
Or take affordability. For the fiscally conservative Democrats, they can take reassurances on that issue from the latest CBO report which says that both of the two House bills comes close to (one slightly above, and one slightly below) the $900 billion amount targeted by fiscal conservatives, but they also cover more people, are far more affordable and are deficit neutral.
Here's the bottom line on middle class affordability: the compromise the Blue Dogs forced on the House Energy and Commerce bill made the cost for middle class families $551 a year more, while the Senate Finance bill was a staggering $3,900 a year more for middle class families than the Senate HELP Committee bill. And yet the CBO now says that the better House version of the bill (which is closer to the Senate HELP Committee) is just as fiscally responsible as the "centrist" alternatives that cost the middle class families so much more. When you look at the actual numbers and policy implications of the bills, it's easy to come to terms. In this case, the House bill allows both fiscal conservatives and those of us who want more affordability for the middle class to win.
When conservatives and progressive Democrats in the Senate and House sit down to look at these bills, compromise ideas like Ross' idea of letting everyone buy into Medicare will emerge, and when the merits of the bills are analyzed, I believe that people will come to understand that the political and policy logic of going with the better alternatives in all these areas. This is too important - to the country, to the President, to the Democratic Party - for this not to get resolved.
And if Mike Ross and a lefty like Mike Lux can find a common ground, then anything is possible.
As the House and Senate Budget Committees begin work this week on their versions of the Congressional Budget Resolution, the usual suspects are lining up to oppose proposals that would pay for health care reform, reduce global warming, create more jobs and improve our education system. Beyond the expected Republican opposition, however, some key Democrats are also calling for changes that would seriously weaken Presidents Obama's groundbreaking budget.
Although the chairs of the House and Senate Budget Committees are expected to craft resolutions that remain faithful to the President's priorities, many of the revenue sources proposed by Obama are being called into question. Further, the skittish-on-spending Blue Dog Democrats in the House and similarly inclined Senate Democrats are urging reductions in domestic appropriations, which pay for education, job training, housing, child care and child welfare services, public health, and other family and community services.
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Bloggger
Since the U.S. is officially in a recession, and the Congressional Budget Office has predicted the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, just about everybody acknowledges that times are tough.
In the middle of last week, a story erupted that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had issued a report saying that only a small fraction of the infrastructure spending could be spent before the current recession was over. Essentially, it would be useless for the primary purpose it was being spent on.
Less than half the money dedicated to highways, school construction and other infrastructure projects in a massive economic stimulus package unveiled by House Democrats is likely to be spent within the next two years, according to congressional budget analysts, meaning most of the spending would come too late to lift the nation out of recession.
A report by the Congressional Budget Office found that only about $136 billion of the $355 billion that House leaders want to allocate to infrastructure and other so-called discretionary programs would be spent by Oct. 1, 2010. The rest would come in future years, long after the CBO and other economists predict the recession will have ended.
Two days later, the Huffington Post reported that the report didn't exist. But that wasn't the worst problem with this story. CBO hadn't released a public report, but it had released some estimates to a handful of senators. Those estimates were highly questionable on their face, and good reporters should have questioned them immediately. Moreover, CBO should never have issued them as they were. Further compounding matters, Peter Orszag--former head of the CBO, now Obama's head of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) responded with a letter (pdf) that soon became the standard Democratic line, but failed to cut as deeply as it should, perhaps out of loyalty to his old staff. Whatever the reason, only a few scattered Democratic voices seriously questioned the core of the CBO numbers--and those numbers are highly questionable on their face. What's wrong with this story, who blew it and how--as best I can figure it out so far--is all explained on the flip.
STATE BLOGS
