Paul Krugman wrote this email to Greg Levine in December of 2008. Krugman's view of Geithner has grown harsher. Krugman savaged Geithner's book "Stress Test" in a colulm titled Springtime For Bankers. The title is a play on the song Springtime For Hitler from The Producers.
Krugman's review of Stress Test.
One reason for sluggish recovery is that U.S. policy “pivoted,” far too early, from a focus on jobs to a focus on budget deficits. Mr. Geithner denies that he bears any responsibility for this pivot, declaring “I was not an austerian.” In his version, the administration got all it could in the face of Republican opposition. That doesn’t match independent reporting, which portrays Mr. Geithner ridiculing fiscal stimulus as “sugar” that would yield no long-term benefit.
It is fascinating how Krugman has soured on Geithner. Krugman was correct that President Barack Obama was never an economic progressive.
I am Facebook friends and a Twitter follower of economist Bruce Bartlett. I am not a bit surprised by Bartlett's contempt for the tea party. Bartlett is viewed as a conservative. However, Bartlett has been blasting the GOP establishment and the tea party for years.
Bartlett is a wonk who cares about policy. The current conservative movement denies basic scientific facts and proposes economic policies that neither stimulate job creation or create a fiscal surplus. Bartlett is even defending Paul Krugman from conservatives.
Bartleet's quote came from an appearance on MSNBC.
The Florida legislature is taking the rare good first step of working on a bill that would raise the pay of state workers. The Florida House proposal would raise pay by $1,400.00-a-year.
Republicans have loved to bash state workers. The GOP narrative would have you believe that state workers are making Fortune 500 money off of government salaries. The truth is the best paid state workers are staffers for the governor and members of the legislature. By July of 2011, Gov. Rick Scott had laid off 1,295 state workers. Firing state workers increases unemployment, cost government more by having its services run less efficiently. Yet, Republicans like Senator Rand Paul argue to economist Paul Krugman that there are more government workers than ever.
PAUL: The thing I don't understand is that you're arguing that the government sector is struggling. Are you arguing that there are fewer government employees under Obama than there were under Bush?
KRUGMAN: Of course. That's a fact. That's a tremendous fact.
PAUL: No, the size of government is enormous under Obama.
KRUGMAN: If government employment had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Bush, we'd have a million and a half more people employed right now - directly.
PAUL: Are there less people employed or more people employed now by the government?
The fact that Paul doesn't know is what happens when Republicans live inside their talking points and make no effort to educate themselves on policy. Unfortunately, these brain dead policies by Republicans have hurt state workers in Florida and across America.
Lawrence Summers and Paul Krugman were on were in Canada in 2011 to talk about the slow recovery of the United States economy. Summers was slightly more optimistic thanKrugman about the recovery. Both Summers and Krugman agree that the recovery has been horrible.
Connie Mack IV made the mistake of telling the truth during a Republican primary. The truth is the Paul Ryan budget would not balance the budget anytime in the near future.
"I was here in Florida campaigning," Mack said Saturday, according to an undisputed quote reported by the conservative Florida Political Press. "You know that budget was a joke, doesn't balance the budget for years."
Mack is exactly right. The tea party base is too economically illiterate to crunch the numbers. They believe that Ryan's budget will balance the budget. They have the power of truthiness on their sides.
Ryan's plan is short on specifics. Ryan claims trickle down economics is the answer.
The reform plan, which was first advanced by the House Ways and Means Committee, would broaden the tax base, lower marginal rates and flatten the tax structure from six rates to two: 10 percent and 25 percent. The plan would also lower the U.S. corporate tax rate from 35 percent down to 25 percent and would transition to a terroitorial system of international taxation, which would put U.S. competing businesses competing abroad on a level playing field with their foreign competitors and incentivize the repatriation of funds, currently held offshore for tax reasons, to be to use in the U.S. economy.
Starting a tariff war with China will not make Fortune 500 companies suddenly want to invest in the United States. If Ryan is lowering taxes on corporations and the top 1 percent, exactly who is he broadening the tax pool on.
Ryan doesn't explain what tax loppholes he would close. Economist Paul Krugman notes Ryan projects unemployment will drop to a magical 50 low. Ryan fail to mention how he will use his magic wand to make unemployment disappear. The most telling fact about the House GOP budget not being serious is that Ryan never asked the CBO to do a revenue estimate.
Former Reagan administration budget directer David Stockman said that trickle down economics was designed to create deficits, that would justify cutting entitlement programs. The Reagan administration never expected trickle down economics to increase economic growth. Stockman also notes that trickle down economics was renamed supply-side economics because voters would not believe that they would somehow benefit from the wealthy getting tax cuts.
Gregory Mankiw served as Chairman of Council of Economic Advisers, under President George W. Bush. Paul Krugman noted that Mankiw has little respect for the Reagan economic team creating supply-side economics.
Consider Mr. Mankiw, in particular. Modern Republicans detest Keyes; Mr. Mankiw is the editor of a collection of papers titled "New Keynesian Economics." In an early edition of his best-selling textbook, he dismissed supply-side economics - the doctrine embraced by the sainted Ronald Reagan - as the creation of "charlatans and cranks." And, in 2009, he called for higher inflation as a solution to the economic crisis, a position anathema to Republicans like Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, who warn ominously about the evil of "debasing: our currency.
Even Republican economists admit that supply-side economics is bullshit. Remember that the next time you hear Gov. Rick Scott and GOP presidential candidates talk about how tax cuts for the rich will magically create jobs for the middle class.
"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"
According to Los Angeles Times columnist Richard Wolffe, a White House senior adviser told him that Obama called a meeting with the economic team about the level of unemployment. Obama called this meeting the day before the election. The goal of the meeting was not to find a solution for unemployment. The meeting was an intellectual debate on if the cause of unemployment was structural or cyclical.
I find this hard to believe. Obama has never exhibit economic policy wonkery. If Obama did he would have never hired Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner. Obama is not going to take time out of his schedule to have academic debates. Obama wants new jobs created so he can get re-elected. The details are secondary.
Economist (and Lawrence Summers protege) Brad Delong calls the White House adviser quoted a "liar."
Given who they were and what I know of how they all think, all the members of Obama's original economic policy team--except, I suspect, Peter Orszag--did indeed have different views of what would be the best policy to try to generate jobs in the short run, but they all agreed that anything was better than nothing. (Peter thought, I think, that only policies that promised credible long-term deficit reduction were better than nothing.)
Orszag is no longer serving in the Obama administration. Orszag has advocated in his New York Times column to extend the Bush tax cuts and gushed about the deficit commission's recommendations. Summers will soon be out the door. Geithner is hoping quantitative easing by devaluing the dollar will increase exports. Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke sees short-term inflation, created by QE, helping job gains.
The action by the Obama administration on quantitative easing and signing the Recovery Act of 2009 suggests the economic team does not believe unemployment problems are structural. Paul Krugman comes to the same conclusion.
What I want to know is, who was arguing for structural? I find it hard to think of anyone I know in the administration’s economic team who would make that case, who would deny that the bulk of the rise in unemployment since 2007 is cyclical. And as I and others have been trying to point out, none of the signatures of structural unemployment are visible: there are no large groups of workers with rising wages, there are no large parts of the labor force at full employment, there are no full-employment states aside from Nebraska and the Dakotas, inflation is falling, not rising.
The real question is why did the Obama senior adviser tell Wolffe that the White House economic team hasn't figued out if the increase in unemployment is structural or cyclical? Either the Obama economic team is clueless or the Obama adviser has an axe to grind. Either possibility doesn't fill me with hope. What seems to be clear is Team Obama is falling apart and the finger-pointing has begun.
Paul Krugman wrote a blog post claiming people protested too much about inflation.
And for those who insist that we need to look at inflation in stuff like gasoline, bread, and milk: well, the BLS has convenient average price data, so let’s compare some of those prices to what they were, say, three years ago, when Bush was in the White House and all was well with the world. Over those three years, the price of gasoline has soared by … well, actually gasoline is a bit cheaper now than three years ago. OK, but milk … actually, milk prices are down substantially since three years ago. But it’s true: bread has gone up in price.
Krugman writes that people weren't complaining about deflation lowering the cost of gasoline. That is because consumers were complaining about gas being high and they were right. I'm sure many small businesses were feeling the pinch of deflation. A mom and pop convenience store can see the prices of milk, food and other products decrease. This same mom and pop store owner still haas to pay the same cost for his lease, workers and utility bills.
Tas noted today that another unintended side effect of the Federal Reserve $600 billion is that it could raise the cost of living faster than pay increases. Right now it is an employer's market and there is less worries from companies that they have to give pay raises in order to retain employees.
Krugman is supporting a policy called quantitative easing. The Federal Reserve will buy more buying government bonds, private bank bonds and printing more money. The Federal Reserve needs a bigger cash revenue stream. In economic terms quantitative easing is a "hail Mary" pass. The practice is used after near zero interest rates have not received the intended results. The Federal Reserve have kept interest rates at historic lows and banks aren't lending.
Tas tweeted me that Obama is hoping that a cheaper dollars will increase exports from the United States. China has been so good at increasing their export business by devaluing the yen. If Obama is expecting exporting to take off and banks to start giving out loans before the 2012 general election then he is in for a big surprise. My attitude is much like Tas's. If quantitative easing works then great. Let's just not kid ourselves about the possible side effects.
Paul Krugman tells Jeffery Brown the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration is not doing enough to help the economy. Krugman explains that policymakers have become complacent.
We need to do something to make this economy stronger, not five years from now, not 10 years from now, but now. We need to prop this up. Yes, it's true that the aftermath of financial crises is usually a long period of poor economic performance. But that's not something to just accept.
We're supposed to do something different. When Japan had a somewhat similar situation in the 1990s, after its bubble burst, American economists, American officials were caustic about the unwillingness of the Japanese to take strong action to deal with their problem, the way they were just sitting there. And now we're doing the same thing.
We are turning Japanese in our economic policy. This is not something we should be accepting. This is -- it's very easy for comfortable people, like all of us, right, in this discussion to say, well, you know, these things take time. Not necessarily. And -- and we should be trying to do better, not just sitting and accepting this prolonged period, when -- when productive workers, men and women who want to work, can't find jobs.
Former John McCain campaign economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin pushes the nonsense that the free market will take care of all. Holtz-Eakin was annoying during the campaign and his solution is during nothing about what is being described as a growth recession. The economy is slowly starting to grow but not enough to offset unemplyment. I recently read an economic report explaining how unemployment may increase.
So, take the tax increases off the table. Don't rely on government spending. Let the private sector drive this thing. And it's not imaginary to -- to look at things the administration wants credit for, increased emphasis on clean technologies, increased health I.T. Those aren't stimulus. Those are costly changes in the American economy they're trying to do in the name of stimulus. That's not helpful.
Encouraging the free market to invest in clean energy technology. Holtz-Eakin does not like free market solutions when they are proposed by Democrats.
Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com testified to the Joint Economic Committee. Zandi said the stimulus spending saved the economy.
The fiscal stimulus is also working. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed early this year has reduced payroll tax withholding, sent checks to Social Security recipients, and provided financial help to unemployed workers whose normal benefits have run out. The cash for clunkers program revved up vehicle sales, and the housing tax credit has boosted home purchases.iii It is no coincidence that the Great Recession ended just as the stimulus began providing its maximum economic benefit (see Chart 1).iv The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do: short-circuit the recession and spur recovery.
Zandi and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman note jobs are not coming back. Krugman makes the case for more stimulus spending. Krugman stresses the need for more stimulus spending.
Suppose that the economy were to keep growing at 3.5 percent. If that happened, unemployment would eventually start falling — but very, very slowly. The experience of the Clinton era, when the economy grew at an average rate of 3.7 percent for eight years (did you know that?) suggests that at current growth rates we’d be lucky to see the unemployment rate fall by half a percentage point per year, meaning that it would take a decade to return to something like full employment.
Companies are scared to hire. Small businesses are not getting loans from banks. Cunsumers are spending less. The Federal Reserve offering zero percent interest has not been able to kick start the economy. The current economic climate is not creating jobs. Zandi testified that 17 percent of the workforce is unemployed or underemployed. America is on economic life support. The conservative answer is less spending and to let businesses fail. Gleen Beck and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman propose just that.
GLENN: Well, let's just use GM because everybody knows it.
HOFFMAN: Right.
GLENN: They come to you and they say GM is going under. If we don't save it, we're going to lose all of these jobs. It's going to be an economic nightmare. As GM goes, so goes America, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they give you a million great reasons for saving it. Do you step in and bail GM out?
HOFFMAN: I don't think so, Glenn. I think that's what's getting us into this problem. All the bailouts from last year, spending money that we don't have. And certainly we can't save every business in this country and if it was a small business, the small businesses generate over 80% of the jobs in the country. We can't save every small business.
GLENN: Now when you say I don't think so, because for me that answer is, no. What do you mean you don't think so? What would come to play where you would where that would change your mind?
HOFFMAN: Well, let me be more emphatic and agree with you. I would say no, absolutely. I don't think we should save mismanagement. We shouldn't save any corporations that can't effectively run in the free enterprise system.
GLENN: See, America, this is the passion that I think you are hearing.
Passion about economic illiteracy. Those corporations and small businesses Hoffman and Beck wouldn't save provide millions of jobs. Bush and Cheney implemented every Laffer Curve and trickle down theory conservatives held dear. The result was the worst economic meltdown since the depression. Conservatives should try taking a few economics classes before running for office.
"The question now is how Mr. Obama will deal with the death of his postpartisan dream.
"So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away."
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, on President Barack Obama's reaction to Republican opposition to health care reform.
Reactions to Bobby Jindal's State of the Union Response
Bobby Jindal gave the worst State of the Union response in recent memory. Jindal's wooden response. Jindal used hurricane Katrina as a reason the government should not get involved in emergency management. Has Jindal remember Michael Brown's and Michael Chertoff's role in Katrina? Jindal is disingenuous about Obama's stimulus bill. As a member of Congress, Jindal voted against moving FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security.
To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and not to just put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you, the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.
A "making work pay" refundable tax credit championed by Obama of up to $400 per individual and $800 for couples in 2009 and 2010. It is calculated at a rate of 6.2 percent of earned income and is phased out for individuals with adjusted incomes over $75,000 and couples with incomes over $150,000.
* A one-time payment of $250 to Social Security beneficiaries, railroad retirees and veterans receiving benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. State government retirees not eligible for Social Security would also get the $250 payment.
* Increases the earned income tax credit for low-income workers with three or more children.
* Increases eligibility for the refundable child tax credit to more low-income workers. The bill reduces the income floor to $3,000 in 2009 and 2010 from the current floor of $8,500.
* A new $2,500 tax credit for college education expenses. The credit phases out for individuals earning more than $80,000 and couples with incomes over $160,000.
An $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers for homes purchased between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2009. The tax credit phases out for individuals earning more than $75,000 and couples earning more than $150,000.
* Temporary relief from the alternative minimum tax for millions of middle-class taxpayers who otherwise would be ensnared by the tax originally meant for the very wealthy.
FOR BUSINESSES
* Small businesses with gross receipts of up to $15 million can write off 2008 losses against five previous tax years. Current laws allows a two-year carryback of losses.
Businesses will also be allowed to immediately write off more of their investments in computers and other equipment.
* Businesses that repurchase debt at a lower amount than when it was issued will be able to defer taxes on it. Usually reduced or canceled debt is treated as income and taxed. The break applies to debt repurchased adjusted after Dec. 31, 2008, and before Jan. 1, 2011.
* A tax break on capital gains from the sale of stock held in a small business for more than five years.
* The bill raises about $7 billion in revenues by repealing a Treasury Department decision last year to liberalize rules that were intended to prevent companies in a merger from taking huge tax breaks on losses of firms they were acquiring.
Jindal invokes 9-11. That didn't work for Rudy Giuliani. Jindal spoke about cleaning up corruption. He took money from Tom Delay, Roy Blunt, Jerry Lewis, and clints of Jack Abramoff. How can anyone whom took money from indicted men and is married to a lobbyist be a role model for anti-corruption.
The media reactions to Jindal's performance are hysterical. Rachel Maddow is literally speechless.
Conservative columnist David Brooks praised Obama's speech and panned Jindal's rhetoric.
Brooks called Jindal's reponse the worst ever by a Republican. Ouch.
Of course, I'm just in that first flush of puppy love, when a journalist meets a handsome young politician who just might be The One. Soon enough, I'll undoubtedly find things about him to hate. But frankly, it's rare enough to meet one I like. True love may have to wait.
I'm speechless. I wonder if Tas or Litbrit have a response to McArdle. This is too good to pass up.
"Does the governor have a volcano in his backyard?" Royce Pollard, the mayor of Vancouver, Washington, said on Wednesday. "We have one that's very active, and it still rumbles and spits and coughs very frequently."
Jindal singled out a $140 million appropriation for the U.S. Geological Survey as an example of questionable government spending during the GOP response to President Barack Obama's address to Congress Tuesday night.
The governor, a rising Republican star, questioned why "something called 'volcano monitoring' " was included in the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed earlier this month.
Perhaps Jindal should find out before mentioning volcano monitoring in his speech.
Update: Fox News pans Jindal's speech.
Update:Paul Krugman perfectly mocks the stupidity of Jindal's speech.
And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.
The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.
Apparently, Mr. Steele believes the private sector created his former position as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. Steele would not hold the RNC chair, if fellow anti-government conservatives weren't trying to win public office. Steele benefitted more than most from government job creation.
I find it amusing people who ran for government believe government does not create jobs. John McCain spent his adult life on public health care. The Maverick's policies would make it less affordable for companies to supply health care. Workers would be pushed to find their own health packages.
Public health care is good enough for McCain, but not the American people. Steele has no problem receiving a check from a government job. By his strange logic, the government shouldn't should attempt to create jobs. This goes beyond ideology. Steele's and McCain's "it is only good enough for me" attitudes reeks of hypocrisy.
Paul Krugman provides a graph showing the disparity between George W. Bush' and Bill Clinton's disparity in job cration. The Clinton years added 22.7 million jobs. Bush has the worst job growth rate of any modern president. Private sector job growth was a mere 0.14 percent.
Is Paul Krugman smoking crack? Federal spending has gone up for more besides Iraq, Medicare, and Medicaid.
But where did that increase come from? Three words: defense, Medicare, Medicaid. That’s the whole story. Defense up from 3 to 4% of GDP; Medicare and Medicaid up from 3.4% to 4.6%, partially offset by increased payments for Part B and stuff. Aside from that, there’s been no major movement.
Behind these increases are the obvious things: the war McCain wants to fight for the next century, the general issue of excess cost growth in health care, and the prescription drug benefit.
The following month, the administration announced the program would actually cost $534 billion to implement, nearly 40 percent more than advertised. "Had people known that real price, the bill wouldn't have ever made it to the House floor for a vote," says Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. (Similarly, the administration refused to even submit an estimate for the war while Congress was debating whether to give the president authorization to use force.)
Then, last month, Richard Foster, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the top independent Medicare cost analyst, revealed he had been threatened by the Bush administration that he would be fired if he told Congress the true cost of the policy. He received orders in June 2003 from his boss, Thomas Scully, the Bush-appointed director of the Medicare program, instructing him to ignore information requests from members of Congress who were drafting the drug bill. In the past, lawmakers had free access to the actuary's estimates. And they assumed they were getting a true statistic as they considered the bill this time.
Iraq, Medicaid and Medicare hardly explains why Bush didn't veto a spending bill until Democrats took over Congress. The chart below shows that nondefense spending went up 28 percent during Bush's first term.
Matters got worse in 2006. Discretionary spending does not count Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs. Nondiscretionary spending went up to 35.8 percent from 2001 to 2006.
Defense was taken out of the first numbers I cited. Medicare and Medicaid in the second. Bush's spending increases are still the worst since LBJ's administration.
Bush has cried for an end of earmarks. During the Republican Congress of 2006, earmarks rose by $16 billion. Krugman is wrong. Budget increases can not by blamed solely on Iraq, Medicaid and Medicare. It is a greater challenge to find where the budget has decreased.
What I love about John Edwards is he is running such a wonkish campaign. That probably won't make a great deal of difference to the voters. But it is refreshing to see a presidential candidate make clear policy proposals.
He focused his day on an aggressively un-flashy subject, the 14th anniversary of the passage of NAFTA, condemning the deal as a "particularly clear example of... big corporate powers getting exactly what they want in Washington, at the cost of over a million American jobs and incredible damage to the middle class in this country."
I'm more sympathic to free trade. One reason is so developing countries can lift themselves out of poverty. Longtime NAFTA proponent Brad DeLong notes that the agreement has not helped many Mexicans out of poverty. Wages have not kept pace with the nation's productivity.
Creating a National "College for Everyone" Initiative: Edwards will create a national initiative – based on the Greene County program – to pay one year of public-college tuition, fees, and books for more than 2 million students. In return, students will be required to work part-time in college, take a college-prep curriculum in high school, and stay out of trouble.
Overhauling the Student Loan Program: Edwards will let all students borrow directly from the Department of Education. By eliminating bank subsidies on student loans, he will free up billions of dollars to make college more affordable.
Simplifying Financial Aid: Edwards would dramatically simplify the application process by using information the federal government already has, eliminating two-thirds of the questions.
Giving Students the Tools They Need to Apply for College and Aid: Edwards will help every low-income high school eligible for Title I hire a new college counselor, helping students choose college-track courses and navigate the admissions and financial aid process.
Financial aid has become a corrupt system that enriches universities and lending companies at the expense of students. Conservatives make the argument that the market takes care of itself. This kind of conservative told Hebert Hoover not to do anything during the stock crash.
The 'leave-it-alone liquidationists' headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellonfelt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: 'Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate'.He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: 'It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people'
Regulation is needed because human nature involves people lying, cheating and stealing from others. Lending companies don't care if students get an education. They are concerned about profit. As a society, America should be concerned it will produce a workforce that can maintain it's status as a leading industry nation.
Plan For Opportunity For All Americans is a plan to increase education spebding for prodominetly black schools and provide health care for the African American community. Edwards wants to reform criminal sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders. The Left and libertarians will agree will that. Conservatives will frame Edwards as soft on crime.
A proposal I love is Edwards wanting to restore voting rights for felons. It's nice to know Edwards has been paying attention to what is going on in places like Florida.
Edwards believes we should allow voters to register on Election Day, ending the fiasco of purge lists, provisional ballots and voter registration intimidation, and he opposes voter photo identification legislation, which disproportionately disenfranchises racial and ethnic minorities.
Stuff like this is why I haven't jumped on the Obama bandwagon. I can't stand Obama's Social Security rhetoric. The Obama campaign is now attacking Paul Krugman for pointing out that his health care proposal won't work if everyone doesn't pay into it.
And it’s not just a matter of principle. As a practical matter, letting people opt out if they don’t feel like buying insurance would make insurance substantially more expensive for everyone else.
Krugman gives Edwards props for making people require to show proof of health insurance when they go to the doctor.
Well, John Edwards has just called Mr. Obama’s bluff, by proposing that individuals be required to show proof of insurance when filing income taxes or receiving health care. If they don’t have insurance, they won’t be penalized — they’ll be automatically enrolled in an insurance plan.
That’s actually a terrific idea — not only would it prevent people from gaming the system, it would have the side benefit of enrolling people who qualify for S-chip and other government programs, but don’t know it.
Obama is proposal a shiny happy people version of universal heath care. Americans can have health care and not having to pay for it. The only problem with Obama's plan is reality.
Still, a lot of loose ends have yet to be pulled. We now know exactly why Mr. Iglesias was fired, but still have to speculate about some of the other cases - in particular, that of Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for Southern California.
Ms. Lam had already successfully prosecuted Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican. Just two days before leaving office she got a grand jury to indict Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor, and Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the former third-ranking official at the C.I.A. (Mr. Foggo was brought in just after the 2004 election, when, reports said, the administration was trying to purge the C.I.A. of liberals.) And she was investigating Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, the former head of the House Appropriations Committee.
Was Ms. Lam dumped to protect corrupt Republicans? The administration says no, a denial that, in light of past experience, is worth precisely nothing. But how do Congressional investigators plan to get to the bottom of this story?
The top FBI official for San Diego said that Lam's dismissal would jeopardize several ongoing investigations. "I guarantee politics is involved," special agent in charge Dan Dzwilewski told the paper. He did not speculate further.
“It will be a huge loss from my perspective,” Dzwilewski said.
