http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/ en Copyright 2013 Fri, 17 May 2013 12:51:09 -0400 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.33 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Today, in a widely anticipated study, the Heritage Foundation staked out a bold claim about immigration reform: the lifetime budgetary costs of a Gang of Eight-style measure would total $6.3 trillion: The $6.3 trillion figure is the bottom line of a complicated analysis. The study's authors, Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, summed up all of the government expenditures -- not just federal, but state and local as well -- that would accrue to immigrants once they received legal status. Andrew Stiles has written a helpful preview of the study here. One key argument Rector and a Richwine... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/05/06/heritages_immigration_reform_price_tag_63_trillion_504.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/05/06/heritages_immigration_reform_price_tag_63_trillion_504.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/05 05/06/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 06 May 2013 12:40:54 -0400 187703 President Obama downplayed the risks involved in the rollout of his health care law at a press conference today. Asked by MSNBC's Chuck Todd why Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) believes the implementation might be a "train wreck," Obama suggested that the majority of the law's installation had already been successfully carried out: So there are a whole host of benefits that -- for the average American out there, for the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, this thing's already happened, and their only impact is that their insurance is stronger,... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/30/obama_downplays_health_care_law_implementation_fears.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/30/obama_downplays_health_care_law_implementation_fears.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/30/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:48:08 -0400 The Urban Institute is the bearer of bad news: the wealth gap between whites and minorities in the U.S. is even larger than the income gap. And it's been growing, even as all groups have lost wealth during the recession years: The four authors drill down into data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to find out what's gone wrong. Over the course of the recession, Hispanics lost badly in the housing market, while black Americans saw their retirement accounts badly depleted: The researchers write that the fact that minorities "were not on good wealth-building paths before this... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/29/the_racial_wealth_gap_is_growing_499.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/29/the_racial_wealth_gap_is_growing_499.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/29/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:20:37 -0400 186637 The New York Times reports that a bipartisan group of senators are trying to try again for gun control legislation, after the last week's failure. Whether they'll have any more success a second time around is an open question. But as Tom Gara points out in the Wall Street Journal, the horse has already left the barn when it comes to limiting gun sales. Gara quantifies the "Obama surge" in gun sales that's taken place during the gun legislation fight. "In fact, the rush beginning in December has been high even by historic standards: the FBI conducted just under... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/26/table_why_gun_control_was_doomed_no_matter_what_498.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/26/table_why_gun_control_was_doomed_no_matter_what_498.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/26/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:00:14 -0400 186284 In a long-awaited report to Congress on the costs and benefits of federal regulation, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) conceded 2012 was the costliest year ever for red tape. With $19.5 billion in regulatory costs, 2012 topped the next highest cost year by 57 percent. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The report, which was well overdue, also failed to record costs of six “economically significant” regulations. AAF’s tally has last year’s regulatory cost at $215 billion – still a pure addition of... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/25/white_house_admits_2012_was_costliest_for_regulation_496.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/25/white_house_admits_2012_was_costliest_for_regulation_496.html Sam Batkins Sam Batkins 2013/04 04/25/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:36:47 -0400 In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama promised to train 100,000 new teachers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in the next 10 years, a theme he's returned to in successive addresses. Just this week, Obama reasserted his commitment to STEM education by promoting it through a variety of tools in his budget proposal, saying that "This is the time to reach a level of research and development that we haven’t seen since the height of the space race." A new report from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, however,... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/25/no_shortage_of_stem_graduates_495.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/25/no_shortage_of_stem_graduates_495.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/25/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:01:37 -0400 186057 Banks owned by African-Americans and other minorities may have suffered racial discrimination at the hands of the TARP bailout program, a new study finds. The report, authored by Louisiana-Lafayette finance professor Linus Wilson and Stanford political science grad student Lucas Puente, finds that non-minority banks were approximately 10 times more likely to obtain funds than African-American owned banks, controlling for other factors. The researchers compared the 36 banks and thrifts that received of roughly $500 million in funds disbursed through the TARP’s Community Development... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/24/study_minority-owned_banks_less_likely_to_receive_tarp_program_funds_493.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/24/study_minority-owned_banks_less_likely_to_receive_tarp_program_funds_493.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/24/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:59:22 -0400 The growth of spending on health care has slowed over the past few years. But why has it slowed? That's a question with significant implications for many of the most pressing debates on Capitol Hill, especially regarding the future of Obamacare and the federal budget. Researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Altarum Institute have released the results of a study that indicate that the slowdown in health care cost growth can be explained largely by the broader economic downturn. That rules out -- or at leaves little room for -- alternative explanations, such as the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/22/health_care_costs_all_about_the_economy_492.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/22/health_care_costs_all_about_the_economy_492.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/22/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:35:34 -0400 185609 This is a sobering chart from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: Five years after the recession began, state tax revenues haven't recovered. States are taking in 5 percent less than they did when the recession hit, and at least 15 percent less than might be expected if the last few recessions are any guide (judging by eyeballing the chart above). It doesn't look like state tax revenues are returning to trend, based on this chart. http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/16/five_years_after_the_start_of_the_recession_state_tax_revenues_havent_recovery_486.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/16/five_years_after_the_start_of_the_recession_state_tax_revenues_havent_recovery_486.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/16/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:06:31 -0400 184773 President Obama’s just-released budget includes plans for a total of $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, for a total of $4.3 trillion in such measures intended to lower deficits for his tenure. “That surpasses the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that many economists believe will stabilize our finances,” Obama said in his weekly address on Saturday. As the president’s budget is rolled out and discussed, it’s worth reviewing that $4 trillion goal. Why $4 trillion, and not some other number? $4 trillion in a decade is the number the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/10/obama_budget_why_4_trillion_in_deficit_reduction_481.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/10/obama_budget_why_4_trillion_in_deficit_reduction_481.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/10/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:42:17 -0400 (Image via the White House Flickr feed) If education policy is a war between reformers and teachers unions, the reformers seem to be winning. Under Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Obama administration has steadily expanded accountability measures and boosted charter schools, making Duncan a foe of teachers unions. It’s not just Democrats, however, who have reason to celebrate. GOP reformers in red states such as Indiana and Louisiana are experimenting school choice measures, such as vouchers and education savings accounts, that threaten to undercut the unions’... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/08/the_suburbs_vs_school_reform_478.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/08/the_suburbs_vs_school_reform_478.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/08/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:38:55 -0400 The bottom line of today's jobs report, which showed the economy adding merely 88,000 jobs: nearly 22 million are unemployed or underemployed. Here's what the total number of Americans searching for work looks like, via Planet Money: http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/05/22_million_americans_looking_for_work_477.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/05/22_million_americans_looking_for_work_477.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/05/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:08:41 -0400 183341 A recent Urban Institute study mulled over the implications of the fact that today's under-40s have less wealth than their parents' generation did at the same age. It appears that the story can be boiled down to two factors. The first cause of the drop in wealth for younger Americans is that most people buy their first home sometime in their early 30s. Of course, the timing wasn't going for the cohort of 30-somethings who bought their first house in the mid-2000s: And this comes after they'd racked up unprecedented levels of student debt in their 20s: The Urban Institute... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/03/why_young_folks_arent_as_wealthy_as_their_parents_were_476.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/03/why_young_folks_arent_as_wealthy_as_their_parents_were_476.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/03/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:55:29 -0400 The Economist's Allison Schrager notes that trend that might be of concern: Americans are saving less: And the savings that Americans do have are mostly tied up in retirement savings (her data is from the Survey of Consumer Finance): So savings are down overall, and funds set aside for short-term needs and rainy days are down even more. That Americans are saving less isn't self-evidently problematic. But the fact that savings increased dramatically when bad times hit around 2007 suggests that in aggregate people didn't have enough saved up. Schrager goes into some of the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/02/are_americans_saving_enough_474.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/02/are_americans_saving_enough_474.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/02/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:38:41 -0400 AEI's chartmaker extraordinaire Mark Perry has come up with a picture worth 1,000 words: Perry writes: "...for the second month in a row, “Saudi America” took the top spot in December as the No. 1 petroleum producer in the world." http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/02/saudi_america_473.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/02/saudi_america_473.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/02/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:01:47 -0400 182928 At The New Republic, Timothy Noah scores some points on Jeff Sessions, the Alabaman ranking Republican member of the Senate Budget Committee. Sessions’ crime? Pushing the claim that the federal government spends more on welfare -- $746 billion -- than on any other budget item, and that total federal and state spending on welfare programs is more than $1 trillion. Noah writes that Sessions’ definition of welfare is an “unrecognizably maximalist” one (Sessions simply asked the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to add up every means-tested item in the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/01/about_that_1_trillion_in_welfare_spending_472.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/01/about_that_1_trillion_in_welfare_spending_472.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/01/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:17:36 -0400 (Photo via the White House Flickr feed) In the spring of 2008, Rep. Paul Ryan first introduced an ambitious plan to rein in the country’s debt. The proposal called for cuts in just about every area of the federal budget, but its centerpiece was replacing the traditional Medicare program with a system of subsidies for private plans. Ryan's plan drew only eight cosponsors and died in committee. After the financial crisis led to exploding federal deficits and brought fiscal concerns to the fore of public concerns, Ryan’s budget gained popularity on the right and, in... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/01/medicare_cuts_without_the_ryan_plan.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/04/01/medicare_cuts_without_the_ryan_plan.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/04 04/01/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:04:00 -0400 Julia Isaacs notes a surprising safety net fact: children in families struggling through a spell of unemployment are more likely to receive food stamps than unemployment insurance: Of childrearing families with at least one unemployed parent, fully 39 percent receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) benefits. Only 36 percent receive unemployment benefits. Food stamps are an anti-poverty program, whereas unemployment insurance is just that -- a program intended to help families smooth over the temporary shock of job loss without disrupting their lives. The... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/29/families_facing_joblessness_more_likely_to_get_food_stamps_than_unemployment_benefits_470.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/29/families_facing_joblessness_more_likely_to_get_food_stamps_than_unemployment_benefits_470.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/29/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:43:19 -0400 182433 On Tuesday, the Indiana state Supreme Court upheld the state's voucher program as constitutional. The court rejected the arguments of teachers union representatives and others that providing vouchers ran afoul of the state's constitutional duty to maintain a public school system and the prohibition of the use of state funds for religious purposes (80 percent of the schools in the voucher program are religious schools, according to CNN). You can read the opinion here [pdf]. The program's proponents hope that the case will set a precedent for school voucher systems across the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/28/school_vouchers_establish_a_toehold_469.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/28/school_vouchers_establish_a_toehold_469.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/28/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:08:49 -0400 182318 "Supporters of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants are unlikely to find a moment morefavorable to the case they have to make." That is the reaction of E. J. Dionne Jr. and William Galston to a survey of public sentiment on the issues surrounding immigration reform. The survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institution with  Brookings, finds broad support for immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship or legal residency among many different groups and demographics: The topline results are so favorable to comprehensive immigration reform --... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/25/whats_driving_immigration_reform_sentiments_467.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/25/whats_driving_immigration_reform_sentiments_467.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/25/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:32:44 -0400 181742 The MIT economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman try to understand why men are falling behind women in a new report for Third Way. Men are faring worse in education: And in the labor market: The problem isn't that college is somehow a better deal for women than it is for men, Autor and Wasserman explain. Getting a degree is still a great deal for both men and women:  So why aren't more men getting degrees and moving up the economic ladder? Autor and Wasserman look past the normal explanations to a few "pre-market" factors that could explain the emerging... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/20/how_to_keep_men_falling_behind_in_two_steps_464.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/20/how_to_keep_men_falling_behind_in_two_steps_464.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/20/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:38:58 -0400 181108 The new face of childrearing out of wedlock is the 20-something woman, rather than the teen mom. That's the takeway from a new report, "Knot Yet," published by a coalition of marriage research organizations. It's a major phenomenon shaping American society. The age of women at first birth has risen over time, but the age of women at first marriage has risen even faster. The result is that now almost half of all first births are to unmarried women: Three of the report's authors, Kay Hymowitz, W. Bradford Wilcox, and Kelleen Kaye, write in a Wall Street Journal op-ed... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/19/20-somethings_are_the_new_unmarried_moms_462.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/19/20-somethings_are_the_new_unmarried_moms_462.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/19/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:12:53 -0400 180892 In a piece in which he makes the case that U.S. government spending on retirement is crowding out other priorities and must be curtailed, Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson criticizes both Democrats and Republicans for failing to present Social Security reform measures, calling out Paul Ryan in particular. The prospects for reducing Social Security spending are probably brighter than Samuelson indicates in his column. In fact, some kind of significant Social Security reform is the most likely component of any small-scale 'Grand Bargain' that would be struck, as recent... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/18/social_security_is_the_hardest_to_cut_on_paper_460.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/18/social_security_is_the_hardest_to_cut_on_paper_460.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/18/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:12:27 -0400 Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a long story by Eli Saslow on the role that food stamps play in the weakened economy of Woonsocket, a small Rhode Island town. Saslow reports that one third of Woonsocket's residents received SNAP -- supplemental nutrition assistance program -- benefits that allow them to purchase staples at stores around the town. The aggregate $2 million SNAP injects into Woonsocket generates a monthly flurry of activity, Saslow reports, as folks just scraping by at the end of the month crowd grocery stores to buy food with SNAP funds. Saslow follows a... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/18/woonsockets_food-stamp_economy_459.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/18/woonsockets_food-stamp_economy_459.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/18/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:27:27 -0400 The Economic Report of the President -- 500-plus pages of data and tables on the White House's analysis of all things public policy -- is out, and there's a lot to digest. One item that struck me was a an entry on the implementation of Obamacare titled "Is the Cost Curve Bending?" The cost curve, in this case, being the projected rise in health care costs. Over the past decade or so, the rate of health expenditure growth has declined or remained constant in every year. The report tries to determine whether that's the result of a down economy lowering health care... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/15/white_house_states_show_health_care_cost_curve_is_bending_456.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/15/white_house_states_show_health_care_cost_curve_is_bending_456.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/15/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:07:30 -0400 180385 The controversy over the welfare waiver rule issued by the Health and Human Services Department last year came to a quiet end this week, with House Republicans passing a bill to block the rule and the White House more or less shrugging in response. The rule, which became a rallying point for the Romney campaign during last year’s presidential election, would have waived certain work requirements for states. Republicans argued that the Obama administration had overstepped its authority in issuing the rule and that it would gut the 1996 welfare reform (previous RealClearPolicy... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/14/a_quiet_end_to_the_welfare_controversy_454.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/14/a_quiet_end_to_the_welfare_controversy_454.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/14/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:58:31 -0400 For generations, Catholic schools have been a key feature of the education landscape in cities across America, providing a quality alternative to public schools for millions of children. Over time, however, demographics and a changing education system have shifted the ground out from underneath Catholic schools. Hundreds of parochial schools close every year, and every Catholic school faces new and daunting financial problems. Over recent years, another challenge has presented itself to Catholic schools: the rise of significant competition from charter schools. Charters present parents with... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/14/will_charters_crowd_out_catholic_schools_453.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/14/will_charters_crowd_out_catholic_schools_453.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/14/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:19:41 -0400 One new feature of the House Republican budget is a helpful illustration of the drivers of the public debt: What's great about this chart is that it shows where the increases in spending are coming from. In time, Social Security disbursements will slowly ramp up. But the real ramp-up is coming in the health programs, especially Medicaid (and Obamacare exchange subsidies) and Medicare. Interest costs grow along with health care. That's not the only good chart in the budget, though. There's also a simple and clear illustration of the implicit marginal tax rates created by... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/12/good_charts_from_the_house_republican_budget_452.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/12/good_charts_from_the_house_republican_budget_452.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/12/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:34:53 -0400 179836 This morning House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan introduced his fiscal year 2014 budget alongside several of his House Republican colleagues. The budget is mostly the same as last year's House GOP budget, with the biggest difference being that this year's version includes a higher tax revenue baseline from the fiscal cliff deal that allow Ryan to achieve a balanced budget by the end of the 10-year window. Otherwise, the key features of the plan are the same: it calls for base-broadening, rate-lower tax reform; block-grants Medicaid and other means-tested programs to the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/12/ryans_budget_changes_little_reignites_medicare_debate_451.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/12/ryans_budget_changes_little_reignites_medicare_debate_451.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/12/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:35:49 -0400 If the housing market gathers momentum, could rising home prices put upward pressure on inflation? Two researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are interested in the question, because housing is the most important component of the consumer price index: What makes the answer to that question a little tricky is that home prices do not factor directly into the CPI, because houses are considered assets, not consumer goods. Instead, the CPI factors in the implied rent owners pay by living in their homes rather than renting them out to others. The Bureau of Labor Statistics includes... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/11/will_an_expanding_housing_market_spark_inflation_450.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/11/will_an_expanding_housing_market_spark_inflation_450.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/11/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:57:20 -0400 179696 In a report for the Mercatus Center on the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Charles Blahous produces a simple chart that shows the pressure that government health care spending is going to put on the budget in the years ahead: This chart shows that, if Obamacare comes online as planned (a significant "if," especially in the case of the state-level Medicaid expansions) spending on Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and subsidies for the health insurance exchanges will just about double in the next 10 years, with no sign of letting up in the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/07/chart_the_coming_budget_pressure_from_medicaid_and_obamacare_447.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/07/chart_the_coming_budget_pressure_from_medicaid_and_obamacare_447.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/07/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:02:12 -0500 179247 (Photo via the White House Flickr feed) On Wednesday, the Republican House of Representatives passed a bill to fund the government that did not include language defunding Obamacare (although the bill would delay the implementation of the law’s health insurance exchanges). Following the recent decisions of some Republican governors, including conservatives such as John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida, to move forward with the law’s expansion of Medicaid, this development is a blow to Obamacare’s most strident critics. That isn’t to say that all... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/07/obamacare_opponents_havent_surrendered_they_were_defeated_445.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/07/obamacare_opponents_havent_surrendered_they_were_defeated_445.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/07/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:11:10 -0500 Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has turned heads this week for his proposal that immigration reform not include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In his new book written with Clint Bolick, Immigration Wars, Bush writes of illegal immigrants: "those who violated the laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship." Bush suggests that the government should offer permanent legal residency instead of citizenship. Those words from were bound to attract criticism at a time when both President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Marco... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/07/immigration_expert_peter_skerry_what_jeb_bush_gets_wrong_and_right_444.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/07/immigration_expert_peter_skerry_what_jeb_bush_gets_wrong_and_right_444.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/07/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:57:29 -0500 (Photo via the White House Flickr feed) As the automatic spending cuts take effect and many of the parade of horribles the White House warned about fail to materialize, Democratic officials are beginning to worry that President Obama has cried wolf over the effects of the sequester, Politico reports. Democrats are probably right to worry, given that Team Obama has clearly overreached in its warnings about the sequestration’s cuts. Perhaps an even greater cause for concern is the appearance that the administration is trying to mislead the press and intentionally making the impact of... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/06/crying_wolf_over_the_sequester_443.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/06/crying_wolf_over_the_sequester_443.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/06/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:13:12 -0500 Liberal Democrats are trying to outdo President Barack Obama’s State of the Union proposal to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 by submitting legislation that would also link the minimum wage to inflation and set the floor at $10.10 instead. Although the bill, introduced by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative George Miller of California, would appear to be only slightly bolder than Obama’s $9 promise – after all, $1.10 an hour wouldn’t strike most workers as a huge raise – it represents a much more drastic expansion,... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/05/why_liberals_1010_minimum_wage_would_a_much_bigger_risk_than_obamas_9_441.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/05/why_liberals_1010_minimum_wage_would_a_much_bigger_risk_than_obamas_9_441.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/03 03/05/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:59:55 -0500 The apple may not fall far from the tree, but the junior Senator from Kentucky has managed to step out from under his father's shadow. After a luncheon with Family-PAC Federal in Chicago, I asked Sen. Rand Paul about sequestration and why he hates to steal. Nicholas Hahn: What happened on March 1, when sequestration took effect? Rand Paul: Well, the biggest problem our country faces is the mounting debt -- 16 trillion dollar debt. We're borrowing over a trillion dollars every year and we've added 6 trillion just in the last four years, so we have to do something. The sequester... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/05/rand_paul_spending_is_a_moral_problem_440.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/03/05/rand_paul_spending_is_a_moral_problem_440.html Nicholas Hahn Nicholas Hahn 2013/03 03/05/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 05 Mar 2013 07:09:47 -0500 The New York Fed's Donghoon Lee takes note of U.S. student debt approaching the $1 trillion mark: Student loans are the second-largest form of private debt, behind mortgages, having eclipsed credit card debt: (HELOC stands for home equity line of credit.) The absolute value of student debt is high enough to cause concern. But it's worth noting that student debt has grown so rapidly relative to other kinds of debt in large part because consumers have tried to lower debt during the recession. Student debt growth may be more resilient during a recession than other kinds of consumer... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/28/the_rise_of_student_loan_debt_438.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/28/the_rise_of_student_loan_debt_438.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/28/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:19:11 -0500 178277 Has the Obama administration been planning massive cuts to discretionary spending all along? The economist Jeffrey Sachs, writing in the Financial Times, notes that, for all the dire warnings about the sequester his team has issued over recent days, President Obama has budgeted for levels of discretionary spending just as low or lower than the levels that will be brought about by sequestration since coming into office. Sachs is right: Obama’s first budget [pdf] after coming into office projected that discretionary spending – that is, spending that, unlike major... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/27/obamas_plans_for_massive_spending_cuts_come_true_437.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/27/obamas_plans_for_massive_spending_cuts_come_true_437.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/27/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:19:21 -0500 New York City famously cut crime drastically during the 1990s. In a new study, NYU's Brennan Center for Justice notes that this achievement took place at the same time that the city's prison population declined -- a point against a tough law-and-order approach to crime-fighting in other U.S. cities. Cime has gone down: This graph shows the FBI Unified Crime Report (UCR) Index for NYC versus New York State. Crime went down steeply in New York City during the '90s: Yet the New York City jail population began declining in 1991, and fell below that of the state along with the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/26/new_york_city_cut_crime__and_incarceration_434.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/26/new_york_city_cut_crime__and_incarceration_434.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/26/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:22:15 -0500 177931 In a longer piece for the Breakthrough Institute, Brookings’ Scott Winship pushes back against nostalgia for the economy of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and makes the case for optimism about the long-term prospects for rising prosperity in the U.S. Winship’s key insight is that the slowing rates of growth in Americans’ incomes don’t mean that living standards aren’t increasing as fast as they have in the past. It’s a matter of simple math: small percentage changes from a large base can be large absolute changes. And the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/18/chart_living_standards_are_growing_fast_428.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/18/chart_living_standards_are_growing_fast_428.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/18/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:05:04 -0500 176875 This chart, from the Energy Information Administration, shows the power of tax incentives: The wind production tax credit was scheduled to expire with the fiscal cliff in January. To be eligible for the credit, wind projects had to have begun commercial production by December 31st of 2012. As the chart shows, that meant that wind power companies got the job done in a hurry to take advantage of the deal: about 40 percent of the year's total production came online in December. As a result, last year the U.S. ended up adding more capacity for wind power than for natural gas. As it happens,... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/14/tax_incentives_matter_wind_power_edition_424.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/14/tax_incentives_matter_wind_power_edition_424.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/14/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:49:22 -0500 Political Calculations always provides interesting, alternative ways of looking at data. The latest update examines President Obama's minimum wage proposal, with a review of what's happened since 1994, when the minimum wage was $4.25 per hour. Here's the key graph: Since 1994 the number of teens and young adults without income has gone up steeply. Even more surprising, the number of teens and youg adults with income (i.e., with full-time or part-time jobs) has gone down. What does this have to do with the minimum wage? Political Calculations explains that approximately half of... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/14/the_decline_of_working_teens_and_young_adults_423.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/14/the_decline_of_working_teens_and_young_adults_423.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/14/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:24:54 -0500 176383 The Urban Institute's Nadia Karamcheva takes note of an interesting phenomenon: American seniors are taking on more debt. And it's not just a product of the recession, but something that's been developing for a while: And it's not a matter of increasing incomes. Seniors' debts have been increasing relative to their assets: The obvious takeway from this data is that it reflects poorly on the state of financial security for U.S. seniors. But it's not as clear what exactly is causing this increase in old-age debt, especially given that it's not limited to the... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/08/seniors_are_taking_on_more_debt_420.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/08/seniors_are_taking_on_more_debt_420.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/08/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:59:52 -0500 175634 We’re a long way from the Tea Parties of 2010. With yesterday’s updated budget projections showing mitigated debt, fiscal doves have a stronger case right now than they have since before the economic crisis. Three charts show where we are, having cut spending and raised taxes on high earners in the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff showdowns. The first, from the Congressional Budget Office’s Budget and Economic Outlook report, shows the big-picture view of the debt projection for the next 10 years: The debt might not be going down. But the CBO doesn’t... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/06/high-water_mark_for_fiscal_doves_419.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/06/high-water_mark_for_fiscal_doves_419.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/06/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:44:02 -0500 CNN Money presents an interesting case that the recent drop in the number of long-term unemployed workers -- one of the brighter spots in recent job reports -- is actually bad news. The author, Tami Luhby, cites a few left-of-center experts, including the Center for American Progress' Adam Hersh and CEPR economist Dean Baker, in offering the explanation that the reason the rate of long-term unemployment has dropped is that unemployment insurance benefits have been curtailed. As unemployed workers use up their eligibility for benefits, they simply drop out of the workforce altogether.... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/05/did_expiration_of_benefits_cause_a_drop_in_the_long-term_unemployed_418.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/05/did_expiration_of_benefits_cause_a_drop_in_the_long-term_unemployed_418.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/05/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:58:49 -0500 A pair of charts from NPR's Lam Thuy Vo, America's greatest economic chartmaker, has attracted attention for clearly identifying an important trend in the U.S. health care system. The first chart shows how spending on health care has developed over the past 40 years. It hasn't changed much: Where money comes from, however, has changed drastically: Out-of-pocket spending, meaning dollars paid out by the person or family receiving the health care, has gone from the largest component of health care spending to the smallest besides the category of "other." The NPR... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/05/who_pays_for_health_care_today_417.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/05/who_pays_for_health_care_today_417.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/05/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:47:08 -0500 175134 The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Republicans, led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, have released an energy policy blueprint, in which they strike a positive note about the prospects for becoming independent of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil imports. Of course, energy independence -- consuming only energy produced domestically -- is a goal constantly promoted by candidates seeking the presidency and then ignored by presidents, because it's not feasible anytime soon. The energy committee Republicans, however, make the case that it might be possible for... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/04/energy_independence_from_opec_--_a_real_possibility_416.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/04/energy_independence_from_opec_--_a_real_possibility_416.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/04/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:53:51 -0500 175025 (Creative Commons photo via Flickr user Ray_from_LA) If President Obama and Senator Marco Rubio are successful, we’ll soon have an immigration grand bargain, one that couples reform – heightened border security and a streamlined immigration process –with some kind of amnesty or other resolution to the question of the status of the roughly 11 million immigrants currently in the U.S. without authorization. Although both of those planks, neither one of which would be politically viable without the other, are primarily thought of in terms of Hispanic immigration to... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/01/immigration_policy_is_no_longer_just_about_mexico_414.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/02/01/immigration_policy_is_no_longer_just_about_mexico_414.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/02 02/01/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 02 Feb 2013 07:28:30 -0500 The Economist takes OECD data to compare U.S. gas tax rates to those of other countries with advanced economies. Most such countries have gas taxes that are much higher than taxes on other sources of energy. The U.S., however, taxes gas at a very low rate relative to some of its peer countries: This graphic indicates that low gas taxes are a North American phenomenon. http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/01/31/americas_low_gas_tax_413.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/01/31/americas_low_gas_tax_413.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/01 01/31/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:57:50 -0500 174491 The Center for American Progress' Michael Linden draws attention to an important phenomenon: spending in one budget category, non-defense discretionary spending, has been cut over the past few years to the point that it is projected to reach postwar lows as a percent of gross domestic product. 'Non-defense discretionary spending' is a vague term, but as Linden explains, it means more or less everything that isn't defense, Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. It includes nearly all of the federal government’s investments in primary and secondary education, in... http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/01/29/domestic_discretionary_spending_slated_to_reach_new_lows_412.html http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2013/01/29/domestic_discretionary_spending_slated_to_reach_new_lows_412.html Joseph Lawler Joseph Lawler 2013/01 01/29/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:11:18 -0500 174212