Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
HEALTH CARE
Economic Crisis Demands Health Care Reform
The economic crisis has led some analysts to suggest that now is not the time for comprehensive health care reform. They argue that rising economic instability, burgeoning budget deficits, and other national priorities should push health care reform to the back-burner. But policy makers who ignore the link between economic and health care policies and divorce the health care crisis from the current financial meltdown run the risk of further eroding America’s economy. In his recent “Call to Action,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) wrote that “the link between health care costs and the economy is incontrovertible. Health care reform is not a distraction from addressing our economic challenges; health care reform is an essential part of restoring America’s overall economy and the finances of our working families.” Indeed, 15.3 percent of Americans lack health insurance, 23 percent forgo necessary care every year due to cost, and “22,000 uninsured adults die prematurely each year as a direct result of lacking access to care.” Growing health care costs are straining businesses and workers alike. Between 1999 and 2008, “premiums have increased 117 percent for families and individuals and 119 percent for employers.” As a recent New America Foundation study concluded, “We must reform our struggling health system not in spite of our economic crisis, but rather because of the impact health care has on the American economy. The economic and social impact of inaction is high and it will only rise over time.” Ultimately, Congress cannot help American families or address the economic woes “in a lasting, meaningful way without health care reform” that includes an upfront investment in coverage and health care infrastructure. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Healthcare Issues | Tagged: health care benefits, Health Care Reform, Medicaid coverage, SCHIP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page C01
To fully understand how John Podesta is managing the complex Democratic takeover of the federal government, you have to be familiar with Skippy, the evil twin.
Anyone who has worked for Podesta in the past decade knows Skippy, who first appeared during Podesta’s eventful years as chief of staff in the Clinton White House. As scandal rocked the end of that presidency, staffers knew they had better come prepared to meetings. Otherwise, nurturing mentor John would be replaced by Skippy — Podesta’s quick-tempered, edgy and sarcastic alter ego.
“You haven’t seen him in this meeting, have you?” the transition co-chairman for Barack Obama says with a laugh, noting that many a reporter has met Skippy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Issues | Tagged: transition team | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
November 25, 2008
SOME MEMBERS of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team, introduced yesterday, counseled against too much pump-priming by government when they worked in the Clinton administration or the financial markets. Happily, the group is also pragmatic enough to recognize when deficit-avoidance is impossible and the pendulum of deregulation has swung too far.
On Saturday, Obama announced a bold economic stimulus plan intended to create as many as 2.5 million jobs over the next two years and offer relief to cash-strapped cities and states. Obama said the plan would also make a “down payment” on his campaign promises, including investments in energy-efficient technologies and a middle-class tax cut. The numbers will be big – probably in excess of $500 billion – and the timeframe short.
“The truth is we don’t have a minute to waste,” Obama said yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Economy | Tagged: Geithnerr, Obama's economic team, Peter Orszag, Robert Rubi, summers | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A15
President-elect Barack Obama has now made three things clear about his plans to bring the economy back: He wants his actions to be big and bold. He sees economic recovery as intimately linked with economic and social reform. And he is bringing in a gifted brain trust to get the job done.
Just three weeks after Election Day, Obama has already expanded his authority by seizing on “an economic crisis of historic proportions,” as he described it yesterday, to call for a stimulus package that will dwarf anything ever attempted by the federal government. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Opinions | Tagged: economic crisis, economic recovery, progressive program | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A02
The next transportation secretary will walk into an agency that oversees an outdated air traffic control system; congested roads, rails and skies; crumbling highways and bridges; and a financing system teetering on collapse.
Transportation experts, both parties in Congress and the current White House agree that the traditional ways of easing congestion and funding transportation are not working and that a fundamental overhaul is needed.
A key problem is the Highway Trust Fund, which generates about $50 billion annually for road, bridge and transit projects. The vast majority of this money — about 82 percent — goes to roads and bridges, while 15 percent goes to transit and 3 percent toward highway safety. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Issues | Tagged: transportation secretary | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
Advisers Will Be Expected to Guide Implementation of Stimulus and Tightened Regulation
President-elect Barack Obama introduces his administration’s economic team in Chicago yesterday. The team will include, from left, Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and Christina Romer as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and second from right, Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council and Melody Barnes as director of the Domestic Policy Council. (Pool Photo By Brian Kersey Via Getty Images) |
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 25, 2008; Page A03
President-elect Barack Obama is assembling a deeply experienced team of top economic advisers whose key members firmly believe that limited government spending combined with free markets can create lasting prosperity.
But those advisers will take over at a moment that Obama says requires just the opposite: New financial regulations and generally unthinkable levels of deficit spending are in the offing as the new administration prepares to battle the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression.
“Right now, our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle. The turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for families and businesses on Main Street, and as folks produce less and consume less, that just deepens the problems in our financial markets,” Obama said in introducing his economic team at a news conference yesterday. “These extraordinary stresses on our financial system require extraordinary policy responses.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com. Posted November 25, 2008.
Why squander our remaining resources on a lifestyle that doesn’t have a future?
Though Citicorp is deemed too big to fail, it’s hardly reassuring to know that it’s been allowed to sink its fangs into the Mother Zombie that the U.S. Treasury has become and sucked out a multibillion dollar dose of embalming fluid so it can go on pretending to be a bank for a while longer.
I employ this somewhat clunky metaphor to point out that the U.S. government is no more solvent than the financial zombies it is keeping on walking-dead support. And so this serial mummery of weekend bailout schemes is as much of a fraud and a swindle as the algorithm-derived-securities shenanigans that induced the disease of bank zombification in the first place. The main question it raises is whether, eventually, the creation of evermore zombified U.S. dollars will exceed the amount of previously created U.S. dollars now vanishing into oblivion through compressive debt deflation.
My guess, given the usual time-lag factor, is that the super-inflation snapback will occur 6 to 18 months from now. And the main result of all this will be our inability to buy the imported oil that comprises two-thirds of the oil we require to keep WalMart and Walt Disney World running. At some point, then, in the early months of the Obama administration, we’ll learn that “change” is not a set of mere lifestyle choices but a wrenching transition away from all our familiar and comfortable habits into a stark and rigorous new economic landscape. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *Economy | Tagged: Bailout, banks, economics, james howard kunstler, suburbs, zombies | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James O'Rourke on November 25, 2008
By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted November 25, 2008.
Obama has picked too many failures who are in the process of recalibrating everything they’ve ever believed.
Three weeks after the election, the markets are rallying behind the president-elect’s picks for his administration’s top economic posts. In an irony that has not escaped observers critical of the selections, yesterday’s appointment of two protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was announced along with a $300 billion federal bailout of Citigroup, the failed financial giant that has become the latest symbol of the eponymous and thoroughly discredited economic philosophy known as Rubinomics.
For those hoping for a progressive transformational presidency, the tapping of Timothy Geithner for treasury secretary and Larry Summers to advise the White House on economic policy is cause for serious concern. Will continuity, more than the promised change, define the Obama administration’s thinking as it confronts the economic crisis? In a New York Times article describing how a “virtual Rubin constellation is taking shape” in the incoming administration, the liberal economist Robert Kuttner spoke for many when he asked, “Where is the diversity of opinion in this economic team? What worries me is there is not one person in the senior group who is the outsider to this club.”
Relax, say others. Policy, not personnel, is what matters, and so far the major policy signals coming from the Obama team are blinking in the right direction. In Saturday’s radio address, the president-elect called for creating 2.5 million jobs by 2011 through heavy deficit-spending on public infrastructure, modernizing the auto industry and developing clean energy. He also praised the decision to extend unemployment benefits and has continued laying the groundwork for an early and successful push for universal health care. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Issues | Tagged: economic council, geithner, Larry Summers, melody barnes, Obama, orszag | Leave a Comment »
