KeithHennessey.com

Today the President announced his intent to nominate Jack Lew as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I support Mr. Lew’s nomination.

If the President is right when he says that “a decade of spiraling deficits” are “the consequence of a decade of misguided economic policies,” he is looking at the wrong decade. I don’t see how he can justify his own budget.

This is a wonky methodology post that some readers may want to skip. I am including it because I need to use it in another post today, and I anticipate I may need it again in the future.

As President Obama ramps up his partisan campaign blame rhetoric, remember that he is choosing not to pursue this bipartisan option that would enact more fiscal stimulus and extend unemployment insurance benefits while preventing tax increases on small business owners during a too-slow economic recovery.

Congress should extend unemployment insurance benefits for six months and reevaluate. They should pay for this by cutting future spending.

Recess appointments are not quite routine, but they are Constitutional and are an ugly reality of how things sometimes work in Washington. Yet the timing and manner of Dr. Berwick’s recess appointment are clear process fouls by the Obama Administration. In this case the President is using the recess appointment power not to work around a filibuster as claimed, but to avoid disclosing information that is potentially relevant to Dr. Berwick’s service, to avoid an unpleasant reprise of the health care debate, and because it’s convenient for the Administration.

Here are a dozen premises that appear to be driving Republican and Democratic party strategies as we approach the 2010 election.

I am going to try to group the different fiscal stimulus arguments into camps.

Dr. Krugman’s claim that the President’s Fiscal Commission is dead presents a strategic threat to Team Obama.

PolitiFact rated Mr. Emanuel’s claim about the Bush policy False.