KeithHennessey.com

Congressional Democratic leaders just released their summary of Bill #2, the health bill they intend to move through the reconciliation process. This post is a placeholder. I will update it within a few hours with my initial analysis of the description and score.

In the second health care bill, sixteen States and DC will receive billions of new dollars that they will be able to use for any purpose. This funding is, in effect, fiscal stimulus, and will not expand health insurance enrollment.

I hope that the pending health legislation is not enacted into law. If it is, fiscally responsible legislators, including those on the new Fiscal Responsibility Commission, should include in their formal recommendations repeal of all the deficit-increasing provisions of these new laws.

Team Obama says the President’s budget would reduce the deficit. CBO says the President’s budget would increase the deficit. What the heck is going on? Who is right? Let’s use Budget Bubble Graphs to see if we can understand what’s going on.

The fiscal policy debate focuses only on deficits and ignores a major philosophical distinction between the two parties: different beliefs about the appropriate size of government. I am going to do my best to correct this by expanding its scope and introducing a new kind of graph. I call it a Budget Bubble Graph.

Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid, and their Administration allies face seven challenges in implementing the two bill strategy.

I am going to describe the mechanics of the anticipated “two bill strategy” to enact health care reform using reconciliation. If you don’t care about all this procedural mumbo jumbo you can skip this post and head over to my strategic analysis: Hurdles of the two bill strategy.

Conventional wisdom says the tenure of President George W. Bush was dominated by partisanship. This conventional wisdom ignores significant bipartisan legislative accomplishments led by President Bush. If President Obama wants bipartisan legislative success, he could learn a few things from his predecessor.

I have been fairly aggressive in my recent criticism of the Administration. I figure it’s time I say something positive about good things they are trying to do. Here are six of President Obama’s economic policies that I support.

The recent anniversary of the stimulus law reminded me that I need to recap my views. I will highlight a point I think is being overlooked in the historic debate and comment briefly on the pending stimulus (sorry, “jobs”) bills.