Maggie Mahar Health Care Blog discusses some of the rhetoric employed in media on how to pay for health insurance. In other words, when costs are distributed over a large group, older adults save more than younger adults lose. Still, many believe that older Boomers can and should pick up the higher tab for their […]

by Linda Beale Charitable Contribution Deduction–Camp Hearings Feb 14 Rep. Camp’s Ways & Means Committee held hearings today on the charitable contribution deduction. To watch the hearings, you can go to this website. Camp is planning a tax code rewrite, which he says is intended to lower rates, simplify the code, and curb some tax […]

Yesterday, both sides drew their battle lines in the coming war over the minimum wage. After Obama called for a minimum wage hike in his State of the Union speech, House Republicans dug in against it, casting their opposition as grounded in concern for the plight of low wage workers. John Boehner asked: “Why would […]

by Linda Beale Lew’s Senate Finance hearing as Treasury Nominee Jack Lew, former budget director under Clinton and Obama and former Obama chief of staff, answered questions at Senate Finance today in his bid to succeed Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.  See, e.g., Rubin & Klimasinska, Lew Says He Didn’t Know Money-Losing Investment Was in […]

Mr. President, I still live in the same working-class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They’re immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in […]

There are many ways to view the State of the Union address, and perhaps each listener needs to assess how much importance to give to the issues offered for comment.  Most of us are not ‘one issue’ deal breaker sorts of people, but the impulse is strong for those issues we care about personally.  How […]

For the hundredth time the foreign-born Muslim commie Nazi extends an olive branch across the aisle, and for the hundredth time it’s dashed to the floor, stomped on and set ablaze – along with the latest spokes-liars trousers.   It became a conflagration that the infamous water-stop could not staunch. Early in Marco Rubio’s alleged rebuttal […]

The State of the Union ritual is by now familiar to most Americans. President Obama leads the Democratic side of the chamber to a series of standing ovations for proposals that everybody knows won’t become law. Republicans show their seriousness of purpose by smirking or making stony faces — and by inviting as guests to […]

by Linda Beale Let the Wars Start–only when we are willing to pay for them The op-ed page of the New York Times often has some thoughtful items worth reading.  Russell Rumbaugh’s A Tax to Pay for War, New York Times (Feb. 11, 2013), at A17 is one of them.  As Rumbaugh notes, the slight […]

I’m so surprised, and so happy.  There were three or four lines in there early on that I was so happy about, and just so surprised at, that they they brought tears to my eyes.  And that last few minutes of the speech–the part that segued from voting rights to gun violence issues and victims, […]