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Based on yesterday’s organized leaks from the President’s staff to the press, I am updating my legislative projections one day after making them.

At some point in September, the President, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid will need to choose a legislative path for health care reform. I will provide an overview of the legislative landscape, then walk through each of five paths. Today I project a 55% chance that the President will fail to enact a comprehensive health reform bill.

The President and Speaker Pelosi have shifted their health care message for the August Congressional recess. I disagree with those who say this is a new strategy. It’s a new message to try to sell the same strategy, and with the same desired policy outcome as we’ve seen over the past few months.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel brilliantly identifies four key mistakes made by the President and his team in their health care legislative effort. Here are six additional health care stumbles by Team Obama, rounding out Kim’s list to an even ten.

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).

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 by [...]

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 [...]

Despite Secretary Geithner’s statement to the contrary, I still think the Administration is running out of room within the $700 B Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).  In my last four posts on TARP funding (1 2 3 4), I have stuck to what I think I can demonstrate analytically.  I am now going to shift [...]

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 [...]

Now let’s look at last week’s farm bill procedural snafu.
Last Wednesday we thought the farm bill veto would be straightforward:

Congress passes the farm bill conference report and sends it to the President.  There are several steps in this process.

The bill is passed by both Houses.  That’s the “engrossed bill”.
This engrossed bill is then “enrolled”.  [...]