The Big Light

Waived
Administration officials, labor unions and consumer advocates plan to celebrate the first anniversary with a week of events highlighting benefits of the law to consumers. But Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the senior Republican on the Senate health committee, asked, “If the law is so good, why are so many waivers needed?”  (NYT, 3/20/11)

Just another one of those questions that never gets answered.

Short Read
Governor Cuomo has vowed to make the tough decisions and not to be swayed by special-interest pleadings. But he is refusing to impose any new taxes or even continue a current surcharge on New York’s wealthiest and least vulnerable citizens. (NYT, 3/20)

Taking a page from Bernie Sanders’s playbook, the New York Times goes after fellow Dem Cuomo on his failure to tax the rich. (Note that Bernie’s playbook has two pages: page one – blame Bush; page two – tax the rich. This is the sum total of his contribution to the political dialog.)

That’s With a T
A new assessment of President Barack Obama's budget released Friday says the White House underestimates future budget deficits by more than $2 trillion over the upcoming decade. The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama's February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years—an average of almost $1 trillion a year. (Breitbart.com, 3/18/11)

Obama and the Dems basically gamed the CBO during the healthcare debate. It is basically a garbage in – garbage out exercise. They fed the CBO ten years of revenue and seven years of expenses and got the result they wanted. Apparently he thinks that no one noticed and so tries it again with his budget.