KeithHennessey.com

In addition to providing the deficit effects of the health care laws, CBO should have told lawmakers what the separate effects would be on spending and on taxes. The new CBO baseline document provides this information, although five months too late to affect any votes.

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.

Here’s a brief summary of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony today before the House Budget Committee.

I attempt to summarize the President’s 5,000+ word economic speech last week at Carnegie Mellon University.

Never before have I seen a CBO Director so bluntly refute the policy claims of a President and his Budget Director.

House Democratic leaders are doing in this bill exactly what they did in the two health care bills in March: shifting spending into future legislation to reduce the apparent cost of the current bill. Will it work again?

The House will soon vote on a new version of the “tax extenders+ bill.” CBO says this bill would increase the deficit $134 B over the next decade.

vote-a-rama: (n) an extended sequence of back-to-back votes in the United States Senate. A side effect of special rules for considering the budget resolution or a reconciliation bill, a vote-a-rama may last 10, 20, 30 hours or more, and occurs after all time for debate has expired but before a vote on final passage.

A knowledgeable friend pointed out a $29 B Medicaid gimmick in the reconciliation bill that has so far, to my knowledge, not been publicly discussed.