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Friday’s jobs report was good news because the bad news beat expectations, and because it signaled that things might turn around more quickly in the future. But the President is wrong – the U.S. economy is not yet pointed in the right direction.

This page contains the most recent version of my list of “things you should know about the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill,” interspersed with parallel observations about the leaked outline of the House Democrats’ health care bill. I will post each time I update this page, so you can track it incrementally.  If you bookmark this [...]

Yesterday I posted and described the draft Kennedy-Dodd health care bill.  Today I would like to do the same for an outline produced by House Democrats. Here is a three-page outline of “Key Features of the Tri-Committee Health Reform Draft Proposal in the House of Representatives,” dated yesterday (June 8, 2009).

Over the weekend a draft of Senator Kennedy’s (D-MA) health care bill leaked.  After playing with Adobe Acrobat, here is the text of the draft Kennedy bill as a text file (173 K), and as a single Acrobat file (3.4 MB).  Update:  I fixed the broken link to the PDF. Unlike the leaked version, both [...]

In an earlier post I attempted to correct Dr. Austan Goolsbee’s incorrect and inflammatory statements about President Bush.  I would like here to add my views to one additional question on the auto industry discussion on this morning’s edition of Fox News Sunday. Host Chris Wallace moderated a discussion this morning with: Dr. Austan Goolsbee, [...]

This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace moderated a discussion about the auto industry.  One of his guests was Dr. Austan Goolsbee, who is a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. I want to focus on some incorrect and inflammatory statements [...]

This is the second in a series of occasional posts about the nitty gritty of working in the West Wing of the White House.  I am describing things as they were in the Bush Administration.  YMMV in the Obama Administration.  Again, it seems a bit silly to write about such trivial details, but given the [...]

Many of you are new to this blog since I wrote extensively about autos six weeks ago.  As background, I coordinated the auto loan process for President Bush last fall as the Director of the White House National Economic Council (the position now held by Dr. Lawrence Summers).  I wrote a series of posts on [...]

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _______________________________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 1, 2009 BACKGROUND BRIEFING BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS ON THE GENERAL MOTORS RESTRUCTURING May 31, 2009 Via Conference Call 7:10 P.M. EDT MS. PSAKI:  Thank you, everyone, for joining the call.  Just a reminder that the call this evening is on background, [...]

In a few hours I will offer my thoughts and reactions to the General Motors bankruptcy filing and the President’s noon announcement.  For now, here is what I have been able to figure out from the White House fact sheet and secondary source reporting through CNBC and the Wall Street Journal.  I assume that both [...]