Democrats and many economists were none too happy last week when President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team announced plans to include $300 billion in tax cuts as part of its economic stimulus blueprint — and the number of critics just keeps growing.
In his column in The New York More…
With this morning’s news that employers laid off 524,000 workers in December, at least one prominent economist has some news of his own: “The economy is the jaws of a depression,” Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland, wrote to reporters this morning.
What’s the criterion? Morici More…
Too late to slip into this morning’s story on the tax cuts being floated as part of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein emails to add his name to the growing list of skeptics. Workers given a $500 payroll-tax credit, Feldstein writes, will likely use it More…
Since some Democrats like Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota are starting to complain that President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus package is too heavy on tax cuts — Harkin has called them “trickle-down” — I asked Brian Darling, the More…
As the unemployment lines grow longer by the month, a report released today reveals why many jobless folks will likely soon lose their health coverage as well.
On average, the cost to cover families under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) — the federal arrangement allowing laid-off workers More…
It’s not impossible. In an interview with CNBC yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama threw out the $1.3 trillion figure as the upper-end of the suggestions his economic team is hearing from experts.
[I]t’s important to note that every economist, conservative or liberal, at this point agrees that we have to
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy analysis group, just issued its take on the recent GOP suggestion that states should be given loans, not grants, as part of the Democrats’ soon-to-be-unveiled stimulus package. A point we missed earlier: Because 49 states have some form of More…
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced what will likely be a major GOP talking point as the debate over the Democrats’ economic stimulus package evolves: Republicans, it seems, will be pushing for states to take their cash in the form of loans in lieu of direct aid. More…
Not sure how this is going to fly with Democrats (read: it’s not), but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the chamber floor today and, in the middle of a long speech about the importance of bipartisan cooperation in confronting the sunken economy, suggested that the hundreds of More…
Following up on Matt’s nice post about the states tapping Obama for help with enormous budget shortfalls…
Few are saying it out loud, but the issue has a ring of class distinction surrounding it. That is, the White House has been quick to secure hundreds of billions of dollars More…
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