March 24, 2011
On Obamacare’s first anniversary, let’s give the president his due: It wouldn’t be in law today without his persistent push for its passage. Not that his policy arguments carried the day or were persuasive. They weren’t. No, in the end, Obamacare was passed because the president had so tied his political fate to...
March 23, 2011
One year ago, on March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. To mark the occasion, I have an op-ed in Investor’s Business Daily, cowritten with Newt Gingrich and John Goodman. Here’s a snippet: In the year that has passed since the law was forced through Congress, most...
March 22, 2011
Last week I testified before the House Budget Committee as part of a hearing on “Fulfilling the Mission of Health and Retirement Security.” My written testimony was posted last week here. Now the audio and video of the entire hearing are available online, including questions posed by committee members to the...
March 17, 2011
[NOTE: Earlier today I testified before the House Budget Committee as part of a hearing on Fulfilling the Mission of Health and Retirement Security. The text of my written testimony appears below. When a link to video becomes available, I’ll put that up, too.] Mr. Chairman, Mr. Van Hollen, and members of the Committee, thank you...
March 7, 2011
I have a new column up on National Review Online today describing Obamacare’s hidden tax hikes and rationing. Here’s how it starts: President Obama’s 2012 budget has rightly been lambasted as completely detached from fiscal and economic reality. Even under the budget’s own rosy assumptions, the country would...
February 25, 2011
Those who conducted the campaign to force Obamacare through Congress in 2009 and 2010 made a whole series of fraudulent arguments. “You can keep the plan you have today if you like it.” “Premiums will go down, not up — by $2,500 per year for those with existing coverage.” “We can cover 32 million...
February 23, 2011
The folks at the New York Times invited me to contribute another short piece for one of their “Room for Debate” discussions, this time on the possibility of a government shutdown if the current continuing resolution is not renewed next week. The piece is short enough that I won’t excerpt it here. I’ll...
February 17, 2011
It’s not unusual for a budget submission from a president to be declared “dead on arrival,” especially from members of the opposition party in Congress. But it is unusual for the president to join his opponents in proclaiming the early demise of his own, months-long handiwork to establish priorities. But that’s...
February 15, 2011
I have a new column up at Kaiser Health News about the president’s failure to seriously address the debt crisis in the newly-released 2012 budget proposal: It’s like the president and his team woke up after the November 2010 mid-term election with a bad case of political amnesia. What deficit? What debt commission? This...
February 10, 2011
Slowing the pace of rising health care costs is the holy grail of domestic and economic policy. It’s pretty much the key to everything that’s desirable. For starters, it’s central to heading off the debt-induced economic calamity that is fast approaching. If health care costs in the future were to rise at something...