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Today's TTR looks at how recessions are affecting our economy, how a "pay or play" health-care mandate would work in practice, what the Heritage Foundation thinks about the president's Iran policy, and a new report that raises fears about the budget. Enjoy!
- All eyes on the cities. From housing prices to average wage changes, the Brookings Institution's new MetroMonitor has the skinny on the economic situation of the 100 largest American cities. For instance, Washington, D.C., is one of the 20 cities least affected by the recession, while all of the cities in California fall into the two lowest brackets. The report seeks to explain why cities have fared differently. Two "manufacturing belts" are identified as areas of deep recession and two "sun belts" as areas of relative prosperity, though the report also points out the connection between national drops in tourism with deep hardship in certain cities. Each metropolitan profile compares a city's change within the last year to the 100-metro average and the national average. Going forward, MetroMonitor will offer quarter-to-quarter comparisons as well, which Brookings thinks will make even more apparent the different reactions to the recession from city to city. --CIA
- 'Play or Play': Pretty great, actually [PDF]. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute makes a strong and unique case for why a well-constructed "play or pay" health care mandate for employers will actually create jobs rather than end them, as many critics have asserted. "Pay or play" as currently considered in various congressional proposals would require employers to either offer health care directly or accept a payroll tax to provide public coverage. The report uses a very unlikely worst-case scenario to play out the highest possible job losses -- 166,095 -- assuming no firms currently "playing" decide to pay the payroll tax instead, no benefits occur from the reduced burden on employers, and lawmakers make no exemptions for small businesses. Provided any of those things do happen, the report finds a conservative estimate of 55,365 jobs that would be created. -- CKS
- Dissent 2.0. Amid the floods of Twitter feeds and protest in the streets of Tehran, the United States should see this as a grand opportunity for aggressively proactive Middle Eastern democracy promotion. Or at least the Heritage Foundation is happy to adopt that position while encouraging President Obama to take a unrealistic, hardline stance in Iran. According to their recent memo, the U.S. is not doing nearly enough to support the organic and student-driven democracy movements in Iran, and must go beyond simply facilitating Tweets. With Iranian authorities cracking down on local media outlets and restricting satellite news broadcasts, the memo urges the Obama administration to offer vocal support for Iranian dissidents, demand that the leadership ceases all interference with free media, and utilize Web 2.0 tools to reach out to the Iranian population. -- AS
- Deficit hawks air budget concerns. A report released yesterday by the Tax Policy Center offers a pessimistic view of the budget: the government’s still-unaccounted-for liabilities contribute to what they call the "collapse of the budget." The report adjusts the CBO’s baseline projections of the 10-year cumulative deficit to a number they believe is more realistic: $10.1 trillion by 2019. Even under the Obama administration’s budget, the deficit over 10 years is a projected $9.1 trillion. Despite the fact that projections further than five years are unreliable at best, the report concludes that "the situation is unsustainable." The report brings the need to balance short-term recovery with long-term fiscal discipline into stark relief. -- MD
-- TAP Staff
