Related Articles: Gaming The Financial System

• An Expensive Health-Care Agenda

  Robert J. Samuelson 9/9/2009 12:00:00 AM

  When he addresses Congress tonight, one of President Obama's central tasks will be to convince Americans that he’s serious about controlling health costs. Of course, the president already claims that he is. He's repeatedly emphasized the need to rein in runaway health spending, which he rightly portrays as increasing federal budget deficits and depressing workers' take-home pay. The trouble: many, if not most, experts don't believe him. Aside from rhetoric, they don't find much in Congress's various bills that would reduce the torrid pace of health spending.

• Death, Republican Style

  Jacob Weisberg 8/29/2009 12:00:00 AM

  The republicans charge that Democratic health care reform would, in Sen. Charles Grassley's words, "pull the plug on Grandma." According to Sen. Jon Kyl, the bills before Congress would ration medical treatment by age. Rep. John Boehner says they promote euthanasia. Sarah Palin has raised the specter of "death panels." Such fears are understandable. It's not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make an early exit. After all, that's been the Republican policy for years.

• The Bailout Bonanza

  Daniel Gross 8/28/2009 12:00:00 AM

  The troubled asset Relief Program, the controversial $700 billion package passed last fall in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, wasn't pitched as a bailout. Rather, then–Treasury secretary Henry Paulson presented it as an opportunity for the taxpayer to profit by making investments in name-brand companies. Indeed, during the Great Panic of 2008, American taxpayers reluctantly made a series of very expensive investments in blue-chip companies—Fannie Mae, AIG, General Motors. But it's been hard to see the returns of these efforts, since they were designed to avert a total meltdown. Placing a value on an outcome that's been avoided is the sort of counterfactual exercise ice-blooded economists process with alacrity, but is harder for emotional humans to deal with.

• FACTCHECK.ORG

  Seven Falsehoods About Health Care

  Brooks Jackson 8/14/2009 12:00:00 AM

  But on the other hand, has Congress figured out how to pay for this overhaul? Not yet. Or will it really save families $2,500 a year as the president keeps claiming? Good luck on that one, too.

• The Next Money Pits

  8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

  California's crippling deficit resulted from overspending, foreclosures, contradicting ballot initiatives, and a two thirds majority needed to pass a budget. But 48 states face deficits, and some are in real danger of falling into the same hole that the Golden State did.

• No End to Earmarks

  Michael Isikoff 8/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

  Last spring President Obama and House leaders pledged to crack down on "earmarking," the practice by which lawmakers slip pet projects into spending bills that often benefit those who just happen to contribute to their campaigns. But on July 30, it was business as usual when the House approved a $636 billion military spending bill stuffed with about 1,100 earmarks worth more than $2.7 billion. "The swamp has not been drained, to put it mildly," says GOP Rep. Jeff Flake, who offered repeated amendments to strike selected earmarks, all of which failed. Among his targets: at least 70 earmarks worth more than $500 million for former clients of defunct lobbying firm PMA Group (closely tied to powerful Defense Appropriations chair Rep. John Murtha), which the FBI raided last year. The bill also included $80 million for an antimissile defense project that Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to kill but is being built, in part, by Northrop Grumman in Murtha's district. (A Murtha spokesman didn't respond to requests for comment.)

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