Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Ruben Navarrette Picks His Pork

Well the true colors are beginning to show. Navarrette is a San Diego columnist whose work appears on CNN.com. His stimulus piece is called Ridiculous Items in Stimulus Plan Out of the whole plan which items stood out for our man Ruben? I’d settle for removing more of the ridiculous items that House Democrats slipped […]

Results of the Pick your Pork Wonkathon

by Bruce Webb Disappointing from the point of view of participation, yet not unexpected. Because I just don’t think they have the numbers on their side. On Friday I invited AB readers, and particularly those critical of HR.1 aka the House Stimulus Bill, to dig into the numbers and develop lists of spending items that […]

More KISSing the income inequality

by Divorced one like Bush So, I’m listening to Saturday Night Fish Fry as I’m composing. It’s the blues, though the station is a jazz and folk station. Public broadcasting at it’s best! Maybe if the economy sinks enough, we’ll return to the big bands and swing. No more solo acts of Rockband. And, maybe […]

Pick Your Pork: an Open Invitation

These tables from CBO show the actual breakout by category of both spending and tax cuts in HR.1 the House version of the Stimulus Bill as introduced (some things were stripped out for passage). I’d like to invite everyone to compile their own list of what they consider to be pork or mistimed (i.e. too […]

Will the stimulus package be a pork fest?

by Bruce Webbreader Buffpilot in comments insists the answer is clearly yes on the grounds The Dems, have NEVER, shown fiscal responsibility when in charge of the purse strings (or at least since before LBJ). So you have zero track record to back you up on thinking that the Dems will suddenly cut back government […]

CBO Director Testifies on Economic Impact of HR1

by Bruce Webb Movie Guy further requested some discussion on CBO Director Elmendorf’s testimony to Congress from yesterday. The whole text is here Elmendorf testifies before House Budget Comm I didn’t have time to thouroughly review the whole thing but these tables were interesting enough to put up for comment.

CBO Letter to Rep. Ryan re Stimulus Debt Service

by Bruce WebbReader Movie Guy suggests that the following letter and table merit some discussion. It seems to speak for itself but the whole thing is short enough simply to post (I deleted some returns and added some commas to save space, the original PDF is here CBO Letter to Rep. Ryan). Please add any […]

CBO Estimate for HR 1: Jan 26th, 2009

(UPDATE: For some reason the detailed outlay tables vanished from the PDF linked to here. Leading some to put on their tin foil hats. Fear not, I have uploaded them and they appear under the fold). (UPDATE 2: Larger images at CBO Tables)Via Prof. K. It turns out the ‘suppressed’ CBO ‘Report’ turned out to […]

Boehner is still wrong (even though the CBO ‘Report’ maybe kind of exists)

by Bruce Webb(IMPORTANT UPDATE: REAL CBO REPORT RELEASED h/t Prof. KCONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE COST ESTIMATE January 26, 2009 H.R. 1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (oops link fixed) Reader m.jed points us to this PDF ESTIMATED COST OF AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009 AS PROVIDED ON THE APPROPRIATION COMMITTEE WEBSITE ON […]

Senate Stimulus Package: Tax Cuts, Social Security & SSI

A reader in comments asked why the Bears had not posted on Obama’s stimulus plan. Well, speaking for myself, that was mostly because we didn’t have a plan and still don’t. What we have is the shifting outline of a plan subject to negotiation between the Admin and the Congress, leaving no solid starting point […]