A Mile Wide, An Inch Deep

A compendium of all of my thoughts on... OBAMACARE aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)  aka the Affordable Care Act (ACA) History of Health Reform: A Legislative Timeline of Obamacare At some point, I hope to come back and flesh out a fuller history of U.S. healthcare reform attempts prior to passage of the ACA ("Obamacare"), but for now, I’m going to skip over some of the more interesting details. That back story includes Pres. Richard Nixon’s role in shaping how the vast majority of us get healthcare and his work with Sen. Ted Kennedy on a proposal that shares some similarities to today’s ACA, the political collapse of Pres. Bill Clinton’s proposal (known derisively as “Hillarycare”) before ever receiving a vote [1] , and the Heritage Foundation’s counter proposal which became the basis for the Massachusetts reform which in turn became the basis for the ACA. Until then, a timeline: In March 2009, congressional committees begin holding

A Mile Wide... Working for the U.S. House of Representatives for much of my adult life, I liked to say that being a congressional staffer made me great at cocktail parties: thanks to the nature of the job, I have a knowledge base that’s a mile wide but only an inch deep.  This blog is my opportunity to write about those areas of focus where I have been able to dive deeper.  It is, theoretically, a chance to spend less time terrorizing friends on Facebook in disposable policy debates that get lost among Dexter discussions and kid photos (I’m a fan of both) and to spend more time putting my thoughts into one nice, coherent, semi-permanent place.  But I suspect it's probably more about the latter than the former: I envision a repository that grows with me as I learn and think about new things, or think about old things in new ways--one that allows me to keep all of those thoughts together so that I'm not reinventing the wheel every time I write a new memo or want to track down

Republicans like to say we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. We don't need to tax more, we need to spend less. Sure, sure, and how exactly are they going to cut spending? According to Mitt Romney on October 22 : "First of all, we're going to cut about 5 percent of the discretionary budget excluding military." To which I say: bwah ha ha ha ha ha. The budget he wants to cut by 5% is $623 billion. The deficit is $1.3 trillion. Don't stop at 5%, Mr. Romney. With no new revenue, you could cut 100% — the entire non-defense discretionary budget, every last dollar of it — and still end up with a deficit of $677 billion. On top of those cuts, you could also cut the entire budget for welfare and Medicaid and still end up with a deficit of $117 billion. Since Romney has promised not to cut defense, but rather to grow the defense budget, and since he has promised to restore every single dollar of wasteful spending in Medicare overpaymen

When people complain about the national debt accumulated during Barack Obama's first term, it's worth remembering that nearly all of our current annual deficit (the gap between the amount of income we raise through taxes and fees and what we spend on goods, services, and interest payments), and therefore the growth of the debt, is the result of: 1- policies initiated by George W. Bush: 2001 and 2003 tax cuts 2003 prescription drug benefit for seniors wars in Iraq and Afghanistan very deserved health, education, and retirement benefits that troops will rightfully receive long after those wars have concluded Wall Street bailout and government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac none of which were "paid for" through tax increases or spending cuts;* and 2- the Great Recession: millions of people who don't need food stamps, unemployment benefits, or Medicaid when the economy is good, do need them when the economy goes south, making those progra

I usually hate it when politicians compare the federal budget to a family's budget. Do the Jones have their own nuclear arsenal and print their own currency? No. But sometimes it's helpful to take the big complex abstractions of the federal budget and humanize them a little. Therefore I give you: The Budget, A Brief History of the Last Decade As Experienced By: The Jones Family The Federal Government About a decade ago, you voluntarily reduced your income.   You: Took a lower-paying job to spend more time with your kids Cut taxes (and then cut them again) But you didn’t stop spending.   You: Bought a new car, a big screen TV, and renovated your home. Engaged in two wars overseas, promised to pay for seniors’ prescription drugs, and created a big new bureaucracy to protect the homeland. Then the recession hit and your income suddenly dropped for