Entries for June 2009

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal today in reaction to a USA Today/Gallup Poll showing that nearly half of Republicans and those leaning Republican couldn't name a leader for the party. The biggest vote-winner among Republicans was "nobody," followed by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Dick Cheney. This vacuum has allowed the Democrats to brand the Republicans as the "party of no" as well as the "party of angry white men." Noonan notes that part of this is due to the fact that Republicans are out of power, which has happened before. Only this time, she says, the media infrastructure is very different:

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

It doesn't sound like the Democrats have much interest in fiscal restraint when it comes to healthcare reform. Here are a reporter's questions for Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and his answers from the June 9 White House press briefing regarding the Democrats' healthcare proposals. Excerpted from the official transcript:

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

David Leonhardt writes a great explanation in today's New York Times of where the deficit came from, and how big it is. It's in plain English and it makes it clear that the reckless spending of the Bush years made things bad, the current recession made things worse, and Obama's massive stimulus spending continues the mess. I highly recommend it to you. There's also a terrific graphic that conveys the information visually.

Why do we need to spend even more money to lower healthcare costs? With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit, it's time to stop the spending and cut costs. I don't get it. In our family budget, we don't spend more money in order to save it. We just stop spending so much money. It doesn't cost us more money to do that. The federal government isn't any different—except for the crazy attitude among politicians and interest groups that a "cut" is really a slowdown in the rate of growth. We don't need slowdowns in the rate of growth. We need real cuts before we're driven into bankruptcy.

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

"The Great I Am." That's what Dorothy Walker Bush, the matriarch of the Bush family, used to call it when one of her children used too many "I's" in a sentence. Casting it in biblical terms, she'd tell them, "Nobody likes The Great I Am. Don't be talking about yourself."

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Today's Wall Street Journal lead editorial is a long examination of the White House's argument that we must enact healthcare reform immediately because we need to control costs. But what if there isn't any cost savings? What if healthcare becomes a new entitlement that is impossible to repeal while further bankrupting our government? Before we nationalize healthcare, the Journal argues, we need to look at the arguments being used to "rush through the greatest social spending program in American history."

Rather than a single payer system—in the mumbo-jumbo language of healthcare, "single payer" means "the government"—providing "free" universal healthcare, here's what the Journal argues:

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

In Washington, there's a phrase—"slow-walking"—to describe deliberately taking one's time in order to drag out the effects of a policy. That's what the Obama administration is doing with the massive $787 billion stimulus package. So far, only a fraction of the outlays has been spent, and according to a roundup in Politico this morning, the White House is leveraging every dime of that money in states that Obama won. In fact, 52 of 66 recent events to hand out stimulus money took place in states such as California, New York, Ohio, and Colorado—a "veritable map of Obama's election-night victories." Eamon Javers continues:

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I watched most of the president's speech at Cairo University this morning live on television, while getting the kids ready for school. It was remarkable in many ways. I hope that it gives people within Muslim countries the ability to openly debate some of the ideas in it, and maybe to move forward within their own societies—toward less violence and more tolerance. It's probably supper time right now in many of those nations, and I wonder what the conversation is like around some of those dinner tables tonight.