Winning Progressive

(By NCrissie B)

The Preemptive Freakout du Jour is, of course, whether President Obama is about to “cave” in tax and budget negotiations with House Republicans. Last weekend, senior White House advisor David Plouffe said that successful negotiations would require concessions from both Republicans and Democrats:

The only way that gets done is for Republicans again to step back and get mercilessly criticized by Grover Norquist and the Right, and it means that Democrats are going to have to do some tough things on spending and entitlements that means that they’ll criticized on by their left.

Cue the Angst Mongers:

Okay. Deep breath.

Note the speculative scare words, such as “could be a raw deal for the middle class,” and “We have a lot of questions here about where this is going to end up, don’t we?”

Never mind that President Obama has plainly stated that Social Security is “off limits” in these negotiations. Never mind that the math is the math and, despite the chart Ed Schultz showed about the current deficit, a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows that our long-term deficit is driven almost entirely by rising health care costs for seniors:

The aging of the baby-boom generation portends a significant and sustained increase in coming years in the share of the population that will receive benefits from Social Security and Medicare and long-term care services financed through Medicaid. Moreover, per capita spending on health care is likely to continue to grow faster than per capita spending on other goods and services for many years.

If progressives criticize conservatives for ignoring data they don’t like – and we should – then we can’t ignore data we don’t like … and the CBO’s data are very solid.

To solve our long-term deficit problem, we must flatten the growth curve on health care costs, and President Obama began working on that with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included funding for computerized medical records and comparative studies of treatment outcomes. The Affordable Care Act also includes provisions to reduce Medicare costs, but Christina Romer – former head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers – wrote in June that Obamacare was only the first step in addressing the health care cost curve:

A natural approach is to strengthen measures already enacted. Once the payment advisory board has a track record, for example, perhaps it could be empowered to suggest changes in benefits or in how Medicare services are provided – say, along the lines of successful demonstration projects.

Likewise, the Bowles-Simpson bipartisan fiscal commission recommended, as part of overall tax reform, limiting the amount of health insurance benefits excluded from taxation. Like the excise tax on high-priced plans, this change would probably increase pressure to keep costs down.

Even larger departures from the current system may be needed. The law creates health insurance exchanges where individuals and small businesses can buy coverage. Including a reasonably priced public plan as an option could exert downward pressure on the price of private health insurance policies by increasing competition.

Yet Dr. Romer did not expect progress anytime soon, concluding:

Sadly, serious debate over further cost-savings measures may be a long way off. Some Republicans seem more interested in just limiting the government’s share of health care expenditures than in slowing overall spending. And some Democrats seem more interested in just preserving existing government programs than in making the entire health care system more efficient.

For the sake of the nation’s fiscal health, and the health and economic security of American families, it’s time to embrace cost containment in health care as the next great legislative challenge.

These are real challenges that demand serious discussions of alternatives and their benefits, costs, risks, and tradeoffs. President Obama and leaders in Congress will debate those. I don’t like all of the options currently on the table. I may or may not like all of the solutions eventually adopted. It’s too soon to know.

But it’s a whole lot more entertaining to have a Preemptive Freakout because … well … President Obama always caves in to Republicans anyway, right? Except he doesn’t:

In policy terms, Obama clearly had gotten the better deal. The trouble was that the political world and the public had been conditioned to see this episode as primarily a clash over the top-tier tax cuts – and on that Obama had not gotten what he wanted. Consequently, the media depicted the compromise as a loss for Obama, and progressive Democrats squawked mightily about the continuation of the tax cuts.

As Corn concludes:

In a recent White House meeting with labor leaders and progressive activists, Obama signaled he is ready to fight the GOPers – and this time dare the Republicans to block continuing the tax cuts for the middle class. But no one ought to forget that Obama, a progressive in his policy preferences, remains a pragmatist. What happened two years ago is not an indication that Obama is likely to yield in the new face-off, but that he will be assessing the political dynamics in gridlocked Washington and be willing to bargain hard for a good deal with true benefits. That’s not caving in. It’s governing.

Yes, it’s governing. But governing is messy, and full of compromises and deals that look icky as we watch them happen. As John Godfrey Saxe famously said: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”

Or Saxe would have famously said that, if so many people didn’t wrongly attribute his quote to Otto von Bismark and Mark Twain. Those mistakes happen when people substitute ‘sounds true’ rumors for actual facts. Just sayin’.

And yes, Ed Schultz, I’m sayin’ it to you, and the others who are busy with their Premptive Freakout. Enough. Go climb a tree and nibble on a macadamia. It’s a lot better for your blood pressure. And mine.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

(By NCrissie B)

This week I am exploring Simon Johnson and James Kwak’s White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters To You. Previously we considered the history of our federal debt and the relationship of government, money, and credit. Today we look at our long-term debt outlook. Next we’ll conclude with the authors’ proposals for a sustainable budget that preserves essential programs and services.

Simon Johnson is a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is a member of the CBO’s Panel of Economic Advisers and of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. He was previously the chief economist of the IMF.

James Kwak is an associate professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. In 2011–2012, he is also a fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance. Before going to law school, he was a management consultant and co-founded a software company.

Johnson and Kwak founded The Baseline Scenario economics blog and also wrote 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.

The Party of Fiscal Responsibility

If the debate over our federal debt were really about the risks of debt, President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress would not have passed budget-breaking tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Economic growth in the 1990s – fueled by Baby Boomers in their peak earning years, boosting both tax revenues and our overall economy – left a budget surplus in 2000. A fiscally responsible party would have recognized those Baby Boomers would soon be retiring, and proposed saving the current budget surplus to pay for the Social Security and Medicare benefits those Baby Boomers would soon need.

Indeed a fiscally responsible party recognized and proposed exactly that in the 2000 presidential election campaign. The party of fiscal responsibility were Democrats, as Vice President and presidential nominee Al Gore said:

We will balance the budget every year, and dedicate the budget surplus first to saving Social Security. Putting both Social Security and Medicare in an iron-clad lock box where the politicians can’t touch them – to me, that kind of common sense is a family value.

Texas Governor and Republican nominee George W. Bush proposed not fiscal responsibility to prepare for the future, but tax cuts to boost current consumption:

I believe that cutting the taxes will encourage economic growth. I believe cutting all marginal rates will keep the economy growing. I believe we ought to get rid of the death tax. I believe we ought to get rid of the earnings test on Social Security. I believe we ought to mitigate the marriage penalty. I believe we ought to use this time of prosperity to get money out of Washington and into the pockets of the taxpayers.

That pattern has not changed over the past twelve years. While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan howl about our federal debt, their budget proposal is vague and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that it could push the debt up to 96% of our GDP by 2021.

How did Republicans become the party of fiscal irresponsibility?

Two views of government

Conservatives often call for a “return” to our nation’s true roots of: limited government, little regulation, and low taxes. Yet as we saw in E.J. Dionne’s Our Divided Political Heart, that history is more myth than fact.

However, Johnson and Kwak note that scientific and technical advances increased the scope of government. We learned how public utilities could reduce disease and improve public health, and the need to weigh the risks from pollution against corporate profits. The Great Depression highlighted the need for insurance to ease the suffering of market failures and allow seniors to retire with dignity. Science and technology also increased the need for a better educated population who could both develop and use new technologies. And as advances in medicine pushed health care costs beyond families’ budgets, we saw the need for effective, affordable health insurance to pool the risks. This was less a “government takeover” than increasing awareness that the often brutal hardships of middle- and low-income families’ lives were not inevitable.

Faced with that choice, the authors write, the inevitable result is redistribution of wealth. The only question is who the redistribution favors:

In a low-tax/low-benefit world, your bank account is a little bigger (if you make enough to pay taxes), but you face more risk of running out of money in retirement or not being able to afford health care; in a high-tax/high-benefit world, your bank account is a little smaller, but you face less risk. Since rich people are better able to self-insure, they gain less by pooling their risk with other people, so they might be better off in a low-tax/low-benefit world; poor people cannot self-insure, so they gain the most from risk pooling, and they will be better off in a high-tax/high-benefit world. Compared to current policy, reducing benefits so we can keep our low tax rates is a form of redistribution from the poor to the rich; raising taxes so we can maintain today’s benefit levels is a form of redistribution from the rich to the poor (assuming that the tax increases are progressive).

Thus we get then-Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), now chairman of FreedomWorks, admitting why Republicans really talk about deficits and the federal debt:

Balancing the budget in my mind is the attention-getting device that enables me to reduce the size of government. Because the national concern over the deficit is larger than life. [...] If you’re anxious about the deficit, let me use your anxiety to cut the size of government.

Or, at least, to cut taxes. Tax cuts are usually popular, but spending cuts are not. So the Republican playbook has been to cut taxes but not spending while a Republican is in the White House, then howl about deficits and force fiscally responsible Democratic presidents to take the political fallout for raising taxes or cutting spending.

A long view of debt

That understanding sets the stage for the authors’ long-term outlook for our federal debt. Our current $11 trillion debt is partly due to the 2001 Bush tax cuts ($3 trillion), partly due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ($1 trillion), and mostly due to the 2008 financial collapse that cost nine million jobs and wiped out an estimated $7.8 trillion in projected GDP growth from 2008-2018. That lost revenue coincided more families eligible for unemployment benefits, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and tax expenditures such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. Many displaced older workers also chose early retirement and applied for Social Security benefits.

Our current fiscal crisis will pass, but the long-term debt dangers lie in our primary government insurance programs: Social Security and Medicare. For Social Security, the issue is simply that more people will soon retire and they will live longer. Thus, their benefits will exceed then-current Social Security revenues and deplete the program’s existing trust fund.

For Medicare, those issues are compounded by rising health care costs. That is partly a function of medical advances that offer new tests, new drugs, and new procedures, such that treatment for a given illness costs more now than it did even two decades ago. It’s also partly a function of our fee-for-service model that spurs providers to prescribe as many tests, drugs, and procedures as insurers will reimburse. The authors acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act attempts to limit the growth of health care costs, but argue there isn’t yet enough data to know whether or how well those provisions will work. Their projections assume health care costs will continue to rise as they have the past two decades, and that would create a serious, long-term debt Medicare debt risk.

But as the authors emphasize, privatizing Social Security and Medicare would not eliminate or even reduce those costs. Indeed, turning those tasks over to private, for-profit investment firms and health insurance companies would likely increase net spending for retirees, with the costs borne by retirees and their families or – for those who could not afford it – other public programs that shelter and care for the indigent.

The Baby Boomers will retire, and will need health care in their senior years, and we will all pay for it, one way or another. Given that, the authors argue, both moral and economic factors suggest we should preserve Social Security and Medicare in their current forms, which are less expensive and far less cruel than the alternatives.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch … and tomorrow we’ll see how they propose to pay for the government we need.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

For this weekend’s reading list we have articles on the impact of the 2012 elections on our judicial system and health care policy, Paul Ryan’s reactionary budgets and bad debate performance, and how Mitt Romney dodges taxes and failed to be a bipartisan leader in Massachusetts.

The Hidden Stakes of the Election – While the fate of the Supreme Court gets almost all of the attention in talk about what is at stake this November, the differences in the judges that President Obama would appoint to lower courts versus those that Mitt Romney would appoint is critical to determining whether our judicial system will uphold or overturn important public health and safety regulations.

The Health Policy Election – an overview of the differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney on health care reform, Medicare, and Medicaid, and what those differences would mean for each program.

Ryan Meets Reality – a great summary of the Vice-Presidential debate explaining how it appeared that “one vice-presidential candidate [was] speaking from knowledge and experience and the other from index cards.”

Ryan Roundup: Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan’s Budget - While Paul Ryan may be trying to hide his reactionary fiscal and tax policies, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have offered a helpful reminder of what Ryan really stands for by collecting all of their articles about Ryan’s proposals to abolish Medicare, eviscerate Medicaid, and slash the safety net in order to finance more tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations.

Mitt Romney’s Tax Dodge – a helpful summary of all of the ways that quarter-of-a-billionaire Mitt Romney manages to pay a lower effective tax rate than most middle class Americans.

Romney Claims of Bipartisanship as Governor Face Challenge – a closer look suggests that there is little to back up Romney’s claims that he was a bipartisan leader in Massachusetts.

As has been widely reported, Mitt Romney revealed his disdain for 47% of Americans during a $50,000 per person campaign fundraiser held at the mansion of Marc Leder, a controversial private equity hedge fund manager.   A secretly recorded video of the event shows Pink Slip Mitt saying, among other things:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. . . . . [M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Unpacking this statement a bit, Romney essentially categorized the nearly half of Americans who benefit from social programs and/or pay no federal income taxes as moochers who are failing to take personal responsibility for their own lives.  And while this statement is phrased more harshly than what Romney typically says in public, it is consistent with the Romney/Ryan campaign’s rhetoric and plans regarding abolishing Medicare, starting down the road to privatizing Social Security, eviscerating Medicaid, etc.

Given that tens of millions of hard-working Americans benefit from sensible and popular government programs, it is important to find out exactly who Romney considers to be a “dependent . . . victim” who needs to be convinced to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives” presumably by taking away the benefit they have been received.  As such, in this latest installment of Questions for Mitt Romney, we urge reporters, debate moderators, and voters to ask and demand answers from Romney and his campaign on the following questions:

* Is an 89 year old with late stage dementia who relies on Medicare to pay for her medical care  a “dependent victim”?  Should that dementia patient be deprived of the guaranteed coverage of Medicare so that she can instead “take personal responsibility” by seeking insurance in the private market?

* Are our service members who return home from Iraq or Afghanistan with physical, mental, and/or emotional injuries that necessitate the use of the Veteran’s health benefits or disability compensation failing to “take personal responsibility”?

* Is the parent who works two minimum wage jobs yet still needs food stamps to make ends meet and Medicaid/CHIP to ensure her child has health care failing to “take personal responsibility”?

* Is the young adult who uses federal student loans to be able to afford to be the first person in her family to attend college failing to “take personal responsibility”?

* Is the senior citizen who uses his Social Security benefits to help him be able to afford to stay in his own home failing to “take personal responsibility”?

* Is the laid off factory worker who collects unemployment benefits to make sure her family does not become homeless while she is looking for a new job failing to “take personal responsibility”?

Conservatives are correct that the number of people who receive government benefits of some sort has increased considerably over the past 50 years, and spiked over the past few years.  But those increases are not a sign that Americans are somehow too dependent on government or failing to take personal responsibility.  Instead, the increase is due to three facts.  First, we realized in the days of the New Deal and Great Society that individuals, our economy, and our society are better off when we have a basic social safety net and government efforts to support a strong middle class through Social Security, Medicare, etc.  As such, we expanded and strengthened those programs to serve additional people who need the assistance. Second, the vulture capitalism practiced by companies like Bain Capital caused many middle class Americans to lose their job security and pensions, thereby forcing them to turn to Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs to help sustain our middle class.  Third, conservative economic policies led to the Bush Recession in 2008, which created a short term spike in people needing food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc.  Romney’s alternative explanation that nearly half of Americans are just irresponsible victims who do not take personal responsibility is offensive and disconnected from reality.

Romney’s statement regarding 47% of Americans paying no federal income tax is similarly off-base.  Romney should be required to answer the following questions about that statement:

* Do you realize that those 47% pay other taxes besides income taxes, including sales tax, property tax, payroll taxes, etc.?  Does the payment of such taxes rule these 47% out of the category of people focused on dependency and victim hood rather than on independence and personal responsibility?

* If payment of income taxes is a sign of personal responsibility rather than dependency, what does that say about the fact that you paid only 13.9% in taxes in 2010, while most working people pay a higher rate?

* Do you believe that taxes should be raised on the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income tax?  Would raising these people’s taxes make them less focused on dependency and victim hood and more focused on independence and personal responsibility?

* Do you believe that big corporations and billionaires who pay little to no federal taxes and/or who benefit from federal programs should similarly be categorized as entities more interested in dependency and victim hood rather than independence and personal responsibility?  If so, what specific loopholes or tax increases would you propose to ensure that corporations and billionaires contribute their fair share? And what specific programs would you end or curtail to ensure that big corporations and billionaires are not becoming dependent victims?

There is no doubt that we can and should be having as part of the 2012 Presidential campaign a careful debate about where government social programs are headed, how much we should spend on them, who should be enrolled, who should pay, etc.   Romney’s statement at the fundraiser, however, shows that he is not the person to lead such a debate in a serious and productive way.  Instead, as with his opportunistic grandstanding on the Libya embassy attacks, Romney’s crass dismissal of 47% of Americans shows that he is simply not qualified to be President of a nation where the vast majority of people are in far harder economic straights than Romney ever has been or ever will be.

(By NCrissie B)

Yesterday we parsed the legal issues of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, and how each judge voted on each issue. Today we look at what the decision will likely mean, in terms of precedent, policy, and politics.

Precedent Winners and Losers

Since the Court’s decision was released, there have been both concerns and celebrations about whether Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion set “conservative traps” for future cases. We’ll discuss the political issues below, but the legal argument for a “conservative trap” presumes the ACA fell within Commerce Clause precedent, thus this decision “narrowed” Congress’ authority to regulate commerce.

I disagree. There are reasonable arguments for why health care presents a unique case for Congress to require people to buy health insurance. Yet this fact remains: there was no Supreme Court precedent reading the Commerce Clause as giving Congress authority to compel demand for a private good or service. The Court has long held that Congress can regulate the supply of goods and services, from production to distribution to marketing to whether some businesses can refuse some customers. Chief Justice Roberts’ holding did not “narrow” those precedents. He and the dissenters refused to extend that Commerce Clause regulatory power to demand, holding that Congress cannot make it illegal to not buy a private good or service. (Note: In a separate opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas would have narrowed Congress’ regulatory power under the Commerce Clause. His lone opinion is not binding.)

Instead, Chief Justice Roberts and the majority held the ACA can be read not as compelling demand, but rather as using the tax code to induce demand, an authority the Court has long recognized in the Taxing and Spending Clause. Congress could not order people to buy health insurance under penalty of criminal prosecution, but Congress could (and did) make health insurance more attractive by offering premium subsidies for median- and lower-income Americans, as well as by imposing a “shared responsibility payment” – a tax – on people who could afford insurance but refuse to buy it.

The “shared responsibility payment” prescribed in the ACA will not be more than the cost of health insurance, and it may be less depending on one’s income and other factors. As Chief Justice Roberts noted, some families may decide their best economic course is to forgo insurance and pay the tax. If they stay healthy, that may be indeed be their best choice. But if they get seriously injured or suddenly ill, the insurance they buy might not cover costs incurred before they bought the policy, and they may find that paying the tax rather than having insurance wasn’t so smart after all. If they can’t pay those pre-insurance costs, losses incurred by the hospital and other health care providers will be offset, in part, by the “shared responsibility payment” the uninsured person had been paying.

Here are my winners and losers, in terms of legal precedent:

• Winners: Congress, Supreme Court, Nudgers, Voters – Congress won, as the Court recognized that the ACA fell within long-standing constitutional precedent. The Supreme Court did not interpose themselves as a super-legislature, and issued a reasoned opinion. Nudge advocates won, as the Court reaffirmed Congress’ authority to use the tax code to encourage socially beneficial behavior and discourage socially harmful behavior. And voters won. Chief Justice Roberts and the majority held that, so long as Congress and the president do not transgress the Constitution, elections and their consequences must be respected.
• Losers: Paul Ryan, Republicans – The surprising losers are Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Republicans, whose Medicare ‘reform’ plan would have given vouchers to seniors and required them to buy their own health insurance. Unless the plan is rewritten to make private insurance an option and/or include a tax penalty for seniors who don’t buy insurance, I don’t see how it would survive Court scrutiny under this precedent.

Policy Winners and Losers

In terms of policy, the outcomes are a little clearer:

• Winners: – As Paul Krugman and many others noted, the big winners Thursday were most Americans who need health insurance. Once the exchanges and Medicaid expansion are fully implemented, almost all Americans will be able to get health insurance through their employers, or individually in a better-regulated market, or through federal or state programs. While the ACA is not a perfect bill, it is a huge step forward.
• Losers: – Yet not everyone will benefit immediately. Many Republican-led states may refuse to implement the Medicaid expansion, at least until they and voters no longer associate it with President Obama and Democrats, denying affordable care tens of thousands of low-income Americans. While Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) and some other Republican governors have declared they will not implement state insurance exchanges, that is less troublesome. Under the ACA, if a state refuses to create a health insurance exchange, the federal government will create it instead.

Political Winners & Losers

Although pundits and other prognosticators began weighing in on this within seconds after the decision was released, I left it for last. While elections are important, we progressives cannot forget that government must be about something more than who wins the next election. The ACA is a legislative landmark, and a huge step toward ensuring universal access to health care in the U.S.

But there’s also some self-interest involved. I didn’t make a prediction about the Court’s ruling on the ACA, because my experience has been that Court decisions are not very predictable. Likewise with the political responses to Court decisions.

Those on the right have been dancing with joy over Chief Justice Roberts “declaring ObamaCare a tax,” even as some of them say that must have happened in an epileptic fit. In the RedState article linked above, Erick Erickson claimed the Supreme Court “just handed Mitt Romney the White House,” by firing up a dormant Tea Party while lulling progressives into a false sense of security. I wouldn’t measure the drapes yet.

While studying Go in Okinawa, I once asked my sensei if I’d just made a good move. He replied: “Good move, bad move, all is next move.” And here as well.

If President Obama, Democratic candidates, and we activists use this decision as a springboard to discuss the many positive (and popular!) elements of the Affordable Care Act, this becomes a win-win. We should emphasize that the Supreme Court found the ACA is a kind of solution, authorized by an enumerated power, that our federal government has used and our courts have upheld for two centuries.

And we should emphasize that – contrary to spin from Republicans and some on the Professional Left – the Supreme Court did not rule that health insurance premiums are taxes paid to a private corporation. Instead, the Court said people can refuse to buy health insurance, but they can’t be freeloaders. They owe a “shared participation payment,” a tax to offset the inevitable costs when they need health care and haven’t prepared to pay for it. That is called “personal responsibility.”

If progressive Democrats make the right “next moves,” this landmark Supreme Court decision on this landmark Democratic achievement will become a political win-win. It’s your move….

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

For this weekend’s reading list, we have articles about how Rep. Issa’s “Fast and Furious” investigation is a witch hunt, supply-side economic theory does not work in reality, the federal government will pick up the costs of health care reform’s Medicaid expansion, the importance of liberals reclaiming our nation’s historical narrative, and the benefits of the earned income tax credit.

The Truth About the Fast and Furious Scandal – a detailed investigation shows that the alleged gun walking that Rep. Darrell Issa is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of failing to stop never actually occurred.  Instead, ATF agents say that the biggest hurdle they face in stopping gun running from Mexico is our nation’s weak gun laws.

Three New Critiques of Arthur Laffer’s Supply-Side Model Show Tax Cuts as Junk Economics – Three new studies showing that income and estate tax reductions do not lead to the economic growth that conservatives claim they will.

Federal Government Will Pick Up Nearly All Costs of Health Care Reform’s Medicaid Expansion – a study showing that the federal government would pick up 93% of the costs of the Medicaid expansion included in the Affordable Care Act.  Unfortunately, it is widely believed that after the Supreme Court limited the penalty on states that decline to go along with the Medicaid expansion that a number of states, mostly in the South, will likely decline to expand Medicaid.

Why History Matters to Liberalism – an essay arguing that it is critical to the future of liberalism that we push back against the false conservative claim that our nation was formed almost entirely on ruggedly individualistic values.

Studies Show Earned Income Tax Credit Encourages Work and Success in School and Reduces Poverty – a summary of a series of studies showing significant benefits from the earned income tax credit.