What Is Obama Thinking?

Memo To Obama: It's Government That Is Doing Fine

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 06/12/2012 08:01 AM ET

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President Obama's claim Friday that "the private sector is doing fine" sparked a firestorm of attacks from Republicans and prompted a quick retraction, of sorts, from Obama, who later said "it is absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine."

But what has gone largely unnoticed was Obama's complaint that it's the government that's hurting these days. "Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy," he said Friday, "have to do with state and local government."

Even when he tried to walk back his comment later that day, Obama said that the private sector is showing "some good momentum" but the bigger problem is state and local government cutbacks.

And over the weekend, Obama's top adviser, David Axelrod, argued that the private sector is "certainly doing better than the public sector."

But a review of data from several government sources paints a different picture. State and local government spending and revenues are up, and while state and local government jobs are down slightly, these losses pale in comparison with the damage done to private-sector jobs over the past four years.

Here's a rundown:

State spending: Despite the deep recession and the slow recovery, annual state spending overall hasn't dropped once. In fact, by fiscal 2011, total outlays at the state level were 14% higher than they were in 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. (See nearby chart.)

State general-fund spending: Meanwhile, states' spending from their general funds — which is more than a third of total state spending — climbed in 2011 and  2012, and is expected to rise again in 2013. While still not back to 2008 levels, general-fund spending in 2012 will be slightly higher than 2007, NASBO reports.

Midyear state budget cuts: Another sign of the improving health of state governments is the fact that the number of states making cuts to their budgets in the middle of the year has declined sharply. Last year, just 19 states did. So far this year, only eight have.

Combined state and local spending: Annualized state and local current expenditures were almost 10% higher in Q1 2012 than just before the Great Recession started, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

State and local tax revenues: According to the Census Bureau, state and local tax revenues climbed 4.5% in 2011 — a year when the overall economy grew just 1.7%. Tax revenues are now above their previous peak of 2008.

Federal grants: Even as the $830 billion stimulus program — which pumped huge sums into state and local government coffers — runs out, federal grants to these governments in 2012 will be almost 23% higher than they were in 2008, even after adjusting for inflation, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

State and local jobs: While President Obama has focused on job cuts at the state and local level, even this measure is less dire than the president suggests. Overall, state and local jobs are down just 490,000 — or 2.5% — from January 2008, the month national employment peaked, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By contrast, private-sector jobs are still down 4.6 million — or 4% — from that peak, despite the fact that the recession ended three years ago.

What's more, that recent drop in state and local government jobs came after eight years of sharp increases, which saw these jobs climb 10% — double the private sector's hiring pace.

Education jobs: The same holds true for education jobs. They've declined slightly over the past four years — 1.2%. But those modest cutbacks came after a 12% jump from 2000 to 2008, a time when public-school student enrollment climbed just 4.4%, according toDepartment of Education data.

As a result, even with the recent decline, the ratio of public education jobs to students is still higher today than it was a decade ago.

Of course, none of this touches the federal government, which has seen employment (not counting postal workers) climb by a whopping 11% since January 2008.

Why the U.S. Can't WORK!

Memo To Entrepreneurs: Obama's Just Not That Into You

Posted 06/08/2012 06:21 PM ET

Regulation: Two studies suggest the "head winds" that President Obama says are holding back employers are of his own making. His policies have sidelined a key job creator: the entrepreneur.

Historically, young startup firms have been a major job engine for the economy, particularly as the nation has emerged from recessions. But new federal data show the rate of business startups continues to fall in this recovery.

According to the Census Bureau, the startup rate, measured as a share of all firms, has plunged to 7% from 9% in 2008 and from 11% in 2006. The pace, moreover, is almost half the 1980s' peak of 13%.

Of all the negative trends tracking this administration, this may be the most disturbing.

As startups have hit an all-time low, we've seen an accompanying decline in job creation from startups, which explains the jobless recovery.

The data, which go back to the early '80s, show that the share of new job creation from startups has fallen from over 40% in that decade, when business formation exploded and the economy saw huge gains in payroll employment, to under 30% today.

The difference is incentives: President Reagan slashed taxes and unshackled entrepreneurs from burdensome government rules, while Obama strangles them with new red tape and threats of tax hikes.

Obama cynically invokes the memory of Reagan, but he doesn't get what Reagan got — that small private businesses, not government, create jobs and household wealth.

And they do so through incentives, not browbeating.

Under the low-tax, low-regulation climate created by Reaganomics, the rate of business formations hit an all-time high of 13.02% in 1987 — nearly double today's clip, the Census Bureau found. Entrepreneurs started 544,109 new firms in 1987 compared with 394,632 in 2010 — a drop of 28%.

Almost 50% of companies back then were young — in business five or fewer years — vs. only 35% today.

And in the 1980s, these young entrepreneurial firms accounted for 20% of total private-sector U.S. employment vs. just 12% now. Entrepreneurs created two-fifths of all new jobs during the 1980s recovery compared with under a third during this recovery.

As a result, the Reagan recovery churned out 8 million jobs. In just one month — September 1983 — more jobs were created than in the past six months under Obama.

A separate study, prepared by the OECD, reveals that the U.S. has fallen behind most of its global competitors in promoting entrepreneurship.

Based on a ranking of regulations, it's now easier to start a business in Slovenia, Estonia and Hungary — three former Iron Curtain countries — than in America.

Canada, our liberal northern neighbor, is now head and shoulders above America in entrepreneurial friendliness. It requires the least number of procedures to start a business of any of the OECD nations.

The OECD also measured cultural attitudes toward entrepreneurship and found that far more Chinese think starting their own firm is "a good career option" than Americans. The Chinese also think they have more "opportunity" to start their own companies and have less "fear of failure" than Americans.

What does it say about America under Obama when people living under communism are more jazzed about opening a business?

Black entrepreneurs are especially sour on their prospects under Obama.

"When Obama became president, we were all happy about the symbolism—America's first black president," said National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford. "We didn't really care about his position or views on anything. We just wanted a black president no matter what."

But "we should have been more careful," he added, "as his views on small business are counter to ours."

Complained Alford, as quoted in the new best-seller "The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House": "His view of business is that it should be a few major corporations which are totally unionized and working with the government, which should also be massive and reaching every level of American society."

In short, Obama has little use for entrepreneurs.

The OECD urged member nations to "promote entrepreneurship to exit the crisis," since "startups are an important source of job creation." It singled out pre-socialist France for doing an especially good job.

With new health care mandates and the heaviest bank regulations since the 1930s, the U.S. is going the wrong way. One author of the census study, published last month with the Kauffman Foundation, told us regulations are a factor in the recent drop in startups.

It's plain from federal data that startups are critical to job creation. And their alarming dearth under Obama helps explain why this recovery is so anemic.

If the president really wants to get America working again, he'd stop blaming state budget cuts and congressional Republicans and adopt Reagan's pro-entrepreneurial policies.

Unfortunately, he's a rigid leftist ideologue who'd rather stand in the way of new business formation and jobs.

Where Are We Going? and How Did We Get Into This Hand Basket?

Rep. Joe Wilson Was Right: Obama Has Deceived Us

By HENRY I. MILLER
Posted 06/08/2012 05:50 PM ET

He was correct. Prescient even. But one politician's invective directed at President Obama early in his administration seems to have been forgotten.

On Sept. 9, 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., received widespread attention when he interrupted a speech by the president to a joint session of Congress by shouting, "You lie!" The incident resulted in a formal rebuke, essentially along party lines, by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Wilson may have been indecorous, but he was right. And the president has continued to deceive. As the economy has failed to rebound, the president has been desperately blaming everyone but himself — George W. Bush, European advocates of fiscal austerity, and especially Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

He fails to mention that for the first two years of his administration, his party's majority in the House and filibuster-proof majority in the Senate gave him a blank check for huge "stimulus" programs and for his socialist agenda.

Supremely arrogant and uncollegial, the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid routinely rolled the GOP. (Recall Pelosi's extraordinary arrogance when queried about the proposed ObamaCare legislation: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.")

Shortly after he was elected president, Obama promised substantial budget cuts.

He said officials would "go through our federal budget — page by page, line by line — eliminating those programs we don't need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible, cost-effective way."

We haven't gotten that. Government regulation is one of the nation's few growth industries, and the impacts of the Obama administration's policies have been disastrous to some of the nation's most innovative and productive industries, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and oil and natural gas exploration.

Whatever they might say, whomever they wish to blame, Obama and his party now own the woes of the economy — and the misery of so many Americans.

Does anyone believe the remonstrations of the president and his surrogates that they are not really responsible for the enormous deficits incurred over the past three years?

Following recessions, especially one as deep and prolonged as our recent one, the economy usually comes roaring back, but in spite of Obama's claims to the contrary, his policies have prevented that. A recovering economy can only create private sector jobs if it engenders confidence and encourages innovation and the creation of wealth.

Obama's appointments, policies and decisions often have done exactly the opposite. Once again, instead of owning up to his decisions, the president denies responsibility.

Obama's attempts to increase taxes on "the wealthy," for example, discourage businesses from expanding and consumers from spending.

Many taxpayers already feel that taxes are extortionate and, fearing even higher levies, have withheld their spending, thereby reducing demand for goods and services.

Only recently has Obama even acknowledged that taxes on the wealthy are more about "fairness" than actually improving the nation's finances.

Moreover, there have been recent "hidden" tax increases such as burgeoning "user fees" paid by industry — which now encompass drugs, biologics, medical devices and food—just to get regulators to do their job, and a potentially catastrophic 2.3% excise tax on medical devices. (The excise tax is particularly pernicious because it is exacted not on profits but on revenues. Thus, the very existence of start-up entities that are not yet realizing profits or companies that work on very thin margins could be jeopardized by such taxes.)

At least part of these taxes inevitably will be passed along as higher prices to consumers, who then will have less disposable income. (This scenario is one of many that give the lie to Obama's promise not to increase taxes on individuals who make less than $200,000 a year.)

The president has repeatedly promised regulatory reform, but instead we have seen more uncertainty and the imposition of greater burdens on industry, including on some of the nation's most productive and competitive sectors.

His administration's policies — not the legacy of George W. Bush or the actions of the Republican-controlled House — have made it increasingly less likely that The Next Big Thing in high-tech will come from a U.S. company.

As the president revs up his campaign by claiming his policies have put us on the road to economic recovery, the facts tell a different story. GDP growth over the past five quarters has been a dismal 1.7%, and the U.S. jobless rate is 8.2%, with under-employment around 18%.

The 2012 Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum is ominous: "The United States continues the decline that began three years ago, falling one more position to 5th place." The report highlights eroding transparency in government, wasteful spending, burdensome regulation and waning trust in the integrity of the public sector.

In spite of all of this, Obama insists we are on the right track, that he has been a good steward of our economy, and that his policies are not the cause of the nation's miasma.

The appropriate reaction would be for the House to offer Joe Wilson an apology. To coin a phrase, we desperately need hope and change.

• Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was an official at the FDA from 1979 to 1994.

The Man Is Just An Embarassment

Obama's "Hope And Change" Has Become President's "Us Versus Them"

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Posted 06/08/2012 05:50

Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.

Recently, the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that his signature achievement, ObamaCare, could be readjusted in the second term — something Republicans have promised to do for the last three years.

What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love Obama-Care, to granting exemptions to favored companies from it, to private assurances to modify it after re-election — all before it was even fully enacted.

Obama's calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. The vow to "punish our enemies" and the intimidation of Romney campaign donors are a long way from the soaring speech at Berlin's Victory Column and "Yes, we can."

Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney's dog, his great-great-grandfather's wives and a roughhousing incident some 50 years ago in prep school.

The "hope and change" slogan for a new unity gave way to a new "us vs. them" divide. "Us" now means all sorts of targeted appeals to identity groups like African-Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, gays for Obamas, greens for Obama, or students for Obama.

"Them," in contrast, means almost everyone else who cannot claim hyphenation or be counted on as a single-cause constituency. In 2008, the Obama strategy was supposedly to unite disparate groups with a common vision; in 2012, it is to rally special interests through common enemies.

Remember the Obama who promised an end to the revolving door of lobbyists and special-interest money? Then came the likes of Peter Orszag, who went from overseeing the Obama budget to being a Citigroup grandee, and financial pirate Jon Corzine, who cannot account for more than $1.5 billion of investors' money but can bundle cash for Obama's re-election.

If you told fervent supporters in 2008 that by early 2012 Obama would set a record for the most meet-and-greet fundraisers in presidential history, they would have thought it blasphemy.

Obama is said to go over every name on his Predator drone targeted-assassination list — a kill tally that is now seven times larger in less than four years than what George W. Bush piled up in eight. Guantanamo is just as open now as it was in 2008.

If Obama supporter and former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh was once accusing President Bush of being "torturer in chief," he is now an Obama insider arguing that bombing Libya is not really war and that taking out an American citizen and terrorist suspect in Yemen is perfectly legal. Previously bad renditions, preventive detentions and military tribunals are now all good.

Some disgruntled conservatives jumped ship in 2008 for the supposedly tightfisted Obama when he called for halving the deficit in four years and derided George Bush as "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. Yet Obama already has exceeded all the Bush borrowing in less than four years.

What accounts for the radical change in mood from four years ago?

The blue-state model of large government, increased entitlements and high taxes may be good rhetoric, but it is unsound reality. Redistribution does not serve static, aging populations in a competitive global world — as we are seeing from California to southern Europe.

"Hope and change" was a slogan in 2008; it has since been supplanted by the reality of 40 straight months of 8%-plus unemployment and record deficits — despite $5 billion in borrowed priming, near-zero interest rates and vast increases in entitlement spending.

Obama's bragging of drilling more oil despite, rather than because of, his efforts is supposed to be a clever appeal to both greens and business. Private equity firms are good for campaign donations but bad when a Republican rival runs them. "Romney would do worse," rather than "I did well," is the implicit Obama campaign theme of 2012.

To be re-elected, a now-polarizing Obama believes that he must stoke the fears of some of us rather than appeal to all of our hopes by defending a successful record, while smearing with the old politics rather than inspiring with the new. That cynical calculation and constant hedging and flip-flopping may be normal for politicians, but eventually it proves disastrous for the ones who posed as messianic prophets.

How To Fix Healthcare in America

Dr. Lee Hieb

Lee Hieb is an Orthopaedic Surgeon, in solo private practice.
Her first-hand experience in medicine began in the 1950s,
when she accompanied her father on his housecalls in Iowa.

Healthcare Bill Takes Away Our Liberty

by Dr. Lee Hieb (03/30/10)

When this law is in full force, individuals cannot choose to
self insure, no matter how much they may be able to
afford to do so.

AMA Doesn't Speak for Most Doctors

by Dr. Lee Hieb (01/05/10)

Obama used the AMA's endorsement to claim "doctors"
support his health care takeover. But that's not accurate.

Immoral Medicine

by Dr. Lee Hieb (11/09/09)

Government-pay medicine cannot be moral medicine.

Obama’s $25,500 Error

by Dr. Lee Hieb (08/24/09)

Obama's recent claim on doctors' payment is inaccurate
and seems to demonize doctors.

Medicine and the New Slavery

by Dr. Lee Hieb (08/10/09)

After working as a highly trained spinal surgeon for
five years, I realized I could not get financially ahead.

How Will Doctors Handle Uncle Sam Health Care?

by Dr. Lee Hieb (07/14/09)

From 130,000 pages of Medicare regulations to a new
Twilight Zone health care plan...

Did Natasha Richardson Have to Die?

by Dr. Lee Hieb (03/24/09)

Lack of medevac and shock-trauma treatment in
government-run medicine may have played a part in the tragedy.

Atlas Is About to Shrug

by Dr. Lee Hieb (12/01/08)

Why did Obama win? Because most Americans do not
understand the system that feeds them...

No, Barack, Medical Care is Not a 'Right'

by Dr. Lee Hieb (10/08/08)

Does Obama think Tom and the boys accidentally left
that one out of the Constitution?

Fix American Health Care By Fixing the Market

by Dr. Lee Hieb (09/02/08)

In a democracy, we do not shoot our "class enemies"
-- we label them "rich" and tax them out of productivity.

Massive Government Intrusion and Regulation

New federal agency OFR stirs 'Orwellian' fears

By James Rosen

Published April 19, 2012

It is the most powerful federal agency you’ve never heard of -- and lawmakers from both parties on Thursday vowed to keep abreast of its astonishing growth and rein it in, if necessary.

The Office of Financial Research, or OFR, was created by the Dodd-Frank financial services overhaul that President Obama signed into law in July 2010. Technically housed under the Treasury Department, the agency has until now received its funding not from the Congress, but directly from the Federal Reserve. 

Starting in July, the OFR Fiscal Year 2013 budget, estimated at $158 million, will be funded entirely through assessments -- also known as taxes -- on bank-holding firms with consolidated assets worth at least $50 billion.

But as became clear at Thursday’s hearing by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, a close reading of the law the president signed provides no limit on the growth of OFR’s budget, nor on the taxes the agency can impose on big banks to fund it.

“We’ll call you on it,” said Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., warning what would happen if he and his colleagues see the agency growing too large. 

Yet the Congress’ prospects for doing that are at present limited, as it holds no power of the purse over OFR. Detractors call it "the CIA of financial regulators,” and conjure "Orwellian" visions of "an omniscient Soviet-style central risk manager."

The agency’s official mission is to collect financial data and funnel it to another Dodd-Frank creation: the Financial Stability Oversight Council. These agencies were designed with the idea of preventing another systemic shock of Lehman Brothers magnitude. 

Toward that end, OFR was invested with virtually unlimited subpoena power. It can compel just about any company in America to turn over to the federal government sensitive internal data, even proprietary information.

“We're only going to be collecting the data that we absolutely need, to fulfill our mission,” testified Michele Shannon, the new agency’s chief operating officer. “We're trying to fill data gaps. We're not going to be collecting for collection's sake. We're going to be making sure that only those people who absolutely need to have access to sensitive data have that access.”

But Republicans on the panel remained skeptical about the potential for abuses of power.

“You're able to tax corporations without any oversight by the U.S. Congress,” said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mex. “Our Constitution is pretty clear, and so if we're a little scratchy on our side, just understand it's because you're conducting things that we feel like are completely unconstitutional.”

Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., questioned both the need for OFR to exist and its ability to protect adequately the sensitive data it will collect through its subpoena power.

“Your agency…seems to think it can outsmart Wall Street, if they have enough extra people and enough software, that they can see where the next problem is going to be,” Posey said at Thursday’s hearing. “But everyone with half a brain in this country saw the last problem way before it burst. We knew there was a subprime crisis; it was just a matter of how long it would be before it burst.”

Posey also noted that the computer systems of some national defense agencies have been hacked. “I wonder whether or not you'll be able to have a safer process than some of them did,” he said.

One of the panel’s most liberal members, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., normally alarmed by unbridled expansions of subpoena power, defended OFR, citing the experience of the Great Recession. “I hope that all my colleagues agree that having, consolidating, and understanding this complex financial data would be key to preventing another systemic risk,” she said.

ObamaCare Is Outrageously Expensive - And BAD For You!

BLAHOUS: Health care law cripples U.S. finances

Most affordable outcome would be total repeal

By Chuck Blahous

-

7:23 p.m., Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Illustration Broken Leg by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

One of the motivating principles underlying the passage of comprehensive health care reform was that it would substantially improve the federal fiscal outlook. But many are skeptical of claims that the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, will simultaneously extend the solvency of Medicare, provide subsidized health coverage to more than 30 million new people and yet somehow reduce federal deficits. They are right to be skeptical.

The legislation greatly exacerbates projected federal deficits and increases an already unsustainable federal commitment to health care spending. Many do not understand these harsh realities because traditional government accounting methods - while useful in many respects - often obscure significant costs. Comparing the health care law to prior law, rather than the “alternate baseline” used by government scorekeepers, gives a complete estimate of the legislation’s fiscal effects.

Based on analyses published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Medicare actuary, I project that relative to prior law, the legislation will add at least $1.15 trillion to net federal spending and more than $340 billion to federal deficits over the next 10 years, and far more thereafter. This sobering outcome arises even if all goes relatively well - that is, if the law’s cost-saving provisions are all successfully implemented. If, instead, future Congresses act roughly consistent with historical precedent, the law will add more than $500 billion to federal deficits in the next 10 years - growing to $600 billion by 2021.

One of the key issues in understanding the law’s fiscal effects pertains to its use of Medicare savings. The law contains several provisions to slow the growth of Medicare costs, and under law, Medicare can spend the full proceeds of these savings. Government scorekeeping conventions, however, ignore this effect. Meanwhile, the law also establishes an expensive new health care benefits program to be financed with these same savings. Together, these provisions spend far more than the law saves and will substantially increase federal debt.

There also is significant risk that the law’s new programs will cost more than originally estimated. Take, for example, its new subsidized health exchanges. As currently designed, the subsidy levels would require low-income people to shoulder a rising share of their health care costs over time. The exchanges also are designed so that one low-income person will get a substantial direct federal subsidy when he buys insurance through the exchanges, but his equally low-income neighbor with employer-sponsored insurance will not. This could create substantial pressure on Congress to expand the subsidies later to address perceived inequities.

Similarly, many of the law’s cost-saving provisions may not produce all of the savings now projected. Already highly controversial is the law’s establishment of a new Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to produce Medicare savings. These might be legislatively overridden, or IPAB itself eliminated. Furthermore, many of the law’s tax provisions are designed, like the current alternative minimum tax (AMT), to capture rising numbers of taxpayers over time. If Congress acts to forestall these tax increases, as it has with the AMT, revenues from these provisions will be far less than currently assumed.

None of this is to assert that these cost-saving provisions are necessarily the wrong policy choices, only that their proceeds cannot safely be spent until we are certain these savings have accrued.

Many have wondered how possible Supreme Court rulings on the law’s constitutionality might affect its finances. As the above analysis shows, the worst-case fiscal scenario would be to uphold the law in its entirety. Similarly, the best-case realistic scenario would be to strike down the law in its entirety. An even better hypothetical outcome from a financial perspective would be to uphold the law’s cost-saving provisions while striking down its coverage expansion, but no one expects this.

A more complicated situation would arise if the court strikes down the law’s insurance-purchase mandate but leaves its other provisions intact. CBO has estimated this would improve the federal fiscal impact by $282 billion over 10 years. This would ameliorate its fiscal damage but not by enough to turn the law into a net improvement. Such an outcome also would have severe adverse effects for consumers and insurers, increasing insurance premiums by 15 percent to 20 percent (according to CBO) if the law is not otherwise modified.

That comprehensive health care reform has made our untenable fiscal situation still worse represents a substantial failure of governance. To fulfill its original promise of bending down the federal health care cost curve, the vast majority of its subsidized coverage expansions would need to be repealed. Alternatively, aiming for a weaker standard in which the law is allowed to add to federal costs but not to deficits, roughly two-thirds of the law’s health exchange subsidies would need to be scaled back or other budgetary offsets found.

Whichever fiscal goal is pursued, it is imperative that corrections be enacted before the law is fully effective in 2014. History shows clearly that it is very difficult to contain the rising cost of a federal entitlement once individuals have grown dependent on it. Only by scaling back the new spending commitments made under the law will health care reform make the positive contribution to the federal fiscal outlook that experts across the ideological spectrum agree is required.

Chuck Blahous is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and public trustee for Medicare and Social Security. He is author of the center’s new study, “The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act.”