KeithHennessey.com

I began this blog at the end of March after the stimulus bill had become law.  I had been struck by how much the stimulus debate had focused on whether the bill was efficient.  (It clearly was not.)  There was much less discussion of whether the stimulus would be effective, and of the timing of [...]

President Obama may not realize that the people who work for him are required to ignore hundreds (thousands?) of Congressional earmarks.  The President has the ability to stop them from doing so.  I hope that he will not.
Thanks go to former OMB General Counsel Jeff Rosen for pointing this out.
An Executive Order is a document [...]

It looks like my post from yesterday agrees with CBO’s December paper.  Maybe I should have read it earlier.
Yesterday I wrote,
Information must be combined with the incentive to purchase high-value medical care – a decision that involves both the medical benefit of the treatment and the financial cost. …
The Administration’s proposals on health information technology, [...]

Last December the Congressional Budget Office published a comprehensive paper that describes how they approach analysis of health insurance reform proposals.  It is a critically important (and somewhat technical) document for anyone who cares about health care legislation in the United States.
CBO is the referee for the budgetary costs of legislation.  They estimate the effects [...]

The Obama Administration is beginning to leak to the press their impending decision on loans to U.S. auto manufacturers.  I am writing in parallel to explain how you might think about such a Presidential decision.  There’s an obvious caveat that every President and each Administration are different, but I hope my explanation will at least [...]

In May of 2007, I wrote “Why are gas prices high, and what can we do about it?”  At the time, the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.22.
The national average price is now 59¢ higher, at $3.81 per gallon.  That’s down 30¢ from a high of $4.11 in early [...]