GOP: Creating a New Health Entitlement in 2003 Has Nothing to Do With Creating a New Health Entitlement in 2010

The Republicans blasting the Democrats’ health reform proposal as an unaffordable new entitlement are continually running smack into the tiny inconvenience that, just seven years ago, GOP leaders enacted the Medicare prescription drug benefit — a new federal program projected to cost taxpayers $550 billion dollars through 2016 alone. And More…

Boehner: We’ve Been Fiscally Responsible — When It Didn’t Matter

The obvious thorn in the side of Republicans — who’ve made a habit of blasting the deficit spending of the Democratic majority under President Obama — is that the GOP majority under President George W. Bush never once balanced its annual budgets. As a result, the national debt More…

What It Means for House Democrats to Adopt the Senate Health Bill

First of all, take all the weeks of merger negotiations and throw them out the window: It’s looking more and more like the only way the Democrats can pass health care reform — and they must pass health care reform — in the wake of yesterday’s election in More…

Pharma Deal Haunts Democrats

Senate Democratic leaders won quick praise from seniors this week when they vowed to close the nettlesome coverage gap in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit.

“I am committed to fully closing it, once and for all,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday. “We will More…

‘That Dumb Cowboy Bush’

Matthew Yglesias, making another version of his argument that the multiple veto points in the legislative branch overly empower the minority and make America “ungovernable,” drew a quip from Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds: “Funny, that dumb cowboy Bush seemed to get a lot done with fewer votes in Congress.” Yglesias More…

Health Reform Should Have Broad, Bipartisan Support? Really?

Following up on Dave’s post, Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the Republican point-man on Senate health reform legislation this year, says he’s still interested in forging a bipartisan health reform deal — so long as the bill can win an overwhelming majority in the upper chamber. More…