KeithHennessey.com

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 page, [...]

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 [...]

When discussing health insurance we frequently hear that there are “46 million uninsured” in America.  This figure is from a monthly survey of about 50,000 households done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.  This Current Population Survey (CPS) then uses statistical techniques to paint a picture of the entire U.S. population.
Advocates [...]

I would like to compliment and thank President Obama for saying this in Strasbourg, France last Friday:
As we take these steps, we also affirm that we must not erect new barriers to commerce; that trade wars have no victors. We can’t give up on open markets, even as we work to ensure that trade is [...]

Thanks to Reuters’ MacroScope blog for noticing:
Keith Hennessey, a former top economic adviser to President George W. Bush, saw this one coming. He rightly predicted that the Group of 20 would drop a key word from its communique at the conclusion of the London Summit: Free.

Here is my original post from Wednesday:  A quick guide [...]

The President has arrived in London for the G-20 economic summit.  I have different policy views than the President on some of these issues, but I will not criticize him while he is overseas.  I will attempt to gently highlight a couple of substantive issues that concern me, but at the same time I want [...]

Here is the “Leaders Declaration” for the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy (aka the G-20 Summit) hosted by President Bush last Friday and Saturday in Washington, DC.
This is the second of a two-part note.  Here’s the first part.
A fair amount of the press coverage followed a ready-made storyline:  “Lame duck President … [...]

We expect the House to vote on the Farm Bill conference report today.  The President will veto this bill.  Here is the President’s statement on the bill.
The final legislative language for the conference report was released Tuesday morning.
Hint:  If you want to find the really bad stuff in a big bill, always start at the [...]

This past weekend the President signed a short-term extension of a program that finances health insurance for children, called SCHIP:  the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.  We expect the Congress today will send the President H.R. 976, a bill that “reauthorizes” SCHIP for five years.  The President has said he will veto this bill, and [...]