Matt Bai of the New York Times writes about how some liberals in Congress are taking another look at how much we are spending.

“Is there a strong liberal argument to be made for attacking the federal debt?

The question is a critical one for Democrats, because the party is drawing ever closer to an internecine, once-in-a-generation war over whether to seriously scale back the federal budget.

President Obama’s bipartisan panel on the national debt won’t issue any recommendations for reshaping the budget until after the November elections, but that hasn’t stopped liberals from mobilizing to discredit the panel’s work. This month, more than 70 organizations, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and MoveOn.org, formed a group, Strengthen Social Security, to pre-emptively oppose the panel’s findings, starting with any reduction in Social Security benefits it might propose. And they are calling on Democrats in Congress to pledge the same.”

To read more click here.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution writes on NPR.com about how cutting spending is the only real way to reduce the federal deficit.

“Sometime in the next week or so, the U.S. national debt will exceed $13.4 trillion.

To put that in perspective: If you earned $1 every second, it would take you 425,000 years to earn enough money to pay off that debt. And it’s not likely to get much better any time soon. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States will run up more than $1 trillion in debt next year as well, and for years to come. And with entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare facing more than $100 trillion in future unfunded liabilities, we may look back on this level of debt as representing the “good old days.”

Yet, as frightening as those numbers are, focusing on the deficit and debt is to confuse the symptom with the disease. As Milton Friedman often explained, the real issue is not how you pay for government spending — debt or taxes — but the spending itself. In other words: Don’t just look at the deficit, look at why we have a deficit. And the reason we have a deficit is pretty simple: Government spends too much.”

To read more click here.

Julian Pecquet writes in the Healthwatch section of TheHill.com - “Insurance agents and brokers, afraid of being rendered irrelevant in the post-health reform world of simplified insurance shopping, are fighting for their very survival.

The agents want lawmakers’ and regulators’ support in getting the Obama administration to recognize their role in the federal insurance Web portal, which lets consumers compare coverage options online.

They’ve also been making their case to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which is tasked with ironing out the details of many of the insurance market reforms required by the healthcare law.”

To read more click here.

The Tax Foundation has updated its interactive calculator at www.MyTaxBurden.org to include the Democrats’ plan for the expiring Bush-era tax cuts recently scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Now, taxpayers may compare their 2011 federal income tax liabilities under four policy scenarios:

(1) All the tax cuts expire completely at the end of this year;
(2) All the tax cuts are extended into 2011 or made permanent;
(3) President Obama’s budget is adopted, which would allow the tax cuts to expire for families making over $250,000 a year (singles making over $200,000), extend some stimulus measures and impose new limitations on itemized deductions; and
(4) Congressional Democrats’ recent proposal is adopted, which is similar to the Obama plan but does not extend stimulus measures or include additional limits on itemized deductions.

Taxpayers can type in basic information – such as filing status, wage income and number of dependents – along with optional more detailed information – such as capital gains and dividend income, state and local taxes paid and other itemized deductions – and determine what their federal income tax burden would be in 2011.

“Congressional leaders have said they plan to schedule a vote on the fate of the Bush-era tax cuts before the November elections, but for now, the outcome remains uncertain,” said Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge. “Regardless of what happens, our tax calculator at MyTaxBurden.org can help give taxpayers a better sense of how these policies will affect them – whether all the Bush tax cuts are extended or just those affecting families earning less than $250,000 a year, or if all the tax cuts expire.”

The calculator is available here.

The Associated Press reports - ” Legislation to provide cash-strapped states with $16 billion in Medicaid money and $10 billion to reduce layoffs of teachers and other public-school employees roared back to life in the Senate Wednesday.

A 61-38 procedural vote moved the bill closer to Senate passage, expected Thursday. It also set the stage for vacationing House lawmakers to return to work next week for a final vote that would send the bill to President Barack Obama.

Wednesday’s breakthrough took place after two moderate Republican senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, joined Democrats in voting to move the bill forward. Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska also dropped his earlier opposition to the bill.

The procedural vote advanced a major piece of congressional Democrats’ agenda. It was followed several hours later by an announcement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that she would call the House back into session early next week.”

Meena Hartenstein of the Daily News writes from Washington -”A broad financial reform bill, designed to remedy the mistakes that led to the economic meltdown of 2008, officially passed the Senate Thursday by a vote of 60-39.

A 60-38 vote earlier in the day on Thursday allowed the bill to clear the Senate’s last procedural hurdle, though support was split sharply along partisan lines.

Only three Republicans — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts — voted with Democrats in the initial vote to end the debate, reported The Associated Press. Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who has blasted the bill for not being strong enough, voted against it along with most Republicans.

The bill is now making its way to President Barack Obama, who has publicly demanded sweeping financial reform.”

To read more click here.

New York Times columnist David Leonhardt has a five step prescription to help the economy.

He writes: “For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Senate refuses to take the most obvious steps to help the economy.

These steps — like preventing layoffs of teachers, police officers and other government workers — are especially important now that the recovery has lost some steam. But we’re going to imagine a world in which the Senate is incapable of distinguishing between the long-run budget deficit (a big problem) and the near-term deficit (quite manageable, according to financial markets). So even modest, short-term spending bills can’t pass.

In that unpleasant world, could Congress still do anything to help the economy?

Yes, it could.

It could clear up some of the uncertainty about future government policy and, in the process, persuade companies to spend some of the $1.8 trillion in cash they have hoarded. Congress could agree to help struggling states if, and only if, they took steps to reduce their own long-term deficits. And Congress could push two opaque bureaucracies on opposite sides of the world — the Federal Reserve and the Chinese Communist Party — to do more for global growth.

Direct stimulus, important as it may be, isn’t the only option. Here are five relatively cheap ways to lift growth:”

Read the column.

Gloria Park writes in Politico that many states are resisting federal attempts to set health insurance rates.

‘Some state insurance commissioners are pushing back against a renewed effort on the Hill to centralize the authority of health insurance premium rate reviews under the secretary of Health and Human Services.

The Health Insurance Rate Authority Act, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on March 4, would grant the HHS secretary the power to approve, deny or modify premium rate increases in states — 23 at the moment — where insurance commissioners do not already have that regulatory authority. Feinstein has crusaded for this cause since the omission of an amendment in the recently signed health care law.

“This legislation we have introduced simply creates a federal fallback,” Feinstein said in a June 21 speech on the Senate floor, emphasizing the limited jurisdiction of her bill. “In some states, insurance commissioners already have that authority, and that is fine. The bill doesn’t touch them.”

California, which would be affected by Feinstein’s proposal, opposes the measure, according to Darrel Ng, press secretary for the California Department of Insurance. “First of all, our insurance commission is Republican and opposes prior approval for health insurance rates at a philosophical level.”

On a practical level, he added, federal prior approval would not be a welcome idea. “The people who are in charge of making sure companies have enough money to pay their claims should be the same people that review premium rates.”

California has a bifurcated regulatory system in which the Insurance Department regulates preferred provider organization policies, while the Department of Managed Health Care oversees health maintenance organization policies. The Insurance Department has been in the limelight after Anthem Blue Cross increased its premium rate by 39 percent.

Industry lobby America’s Health Insurance Plans opposes centralizing rate review authority in the federal government as well, said spokesman Robert Zirkelbach.

“States have the infrastructure, experience and expertise to review premiums,” said Zirkelbach, citing Massachusetts as a replicable scenario if premium rates cannot keep up with “skyrocketing medical costs and the impact of younger and healthier people dropping their insurance during a weak economy” — the driving factors behind rate increases, according to Zirkelbach.

Read the article.

The New York Times points out how many states will be affected if Congress fails to pass some version of a jobs bill.

“Financially struggling states, already facing record budget shortfalls, are now confronting the possibility of losing out on billions of dollars in federal aid that they had been counting on, if Congress does not revive a jobs bill that stalled in the Senate this week.

The result, governors and state budget officers are warning, could be hundreds of thousands of layoffs at the state and local levels, as well as draconian spending cuts…

At issue is money from the federal government to help states foot the bill for Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, which had been part of last year’s federal stimulus package.”

To read more click here.

In a Buffalo News editorial they point out a number of things that can be done that could actually reduce the cost of health care without reducing the quality of care we receive.

“One of the reasons why real health care reform has seemed such a tough nut to crack is that it involves two seemingly contradictory goals.We want better care. And we want it to cost less.

But, in at least one area of medicine, there is reason to believe that cost-cutting, intelligently done, will actually improve the long-term health prospects of many Americans.

As outlined in an Associated Press investigation that ran on the cover of Sunday’s Viewpoints section, doctors in the United States order, and their patients receive, many more X-rays and CT scans than do their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

These methods of looking inside the body without making incisions or resorting to wild guesses are rightly considered among the most useful miracles of modern medicine.”

To read more click here.