Ezra Klein

The guy is good. In particular, he’s developing that trick where you answer a question and then…stop. No babbling. He also argues, as fairly few Daily Show guests do, that “the banking crisis is crucial to these next few years. But when you go out over time, over five, ten, fifteen years, the thing that’s […]

Conor Clarke is confused by some of the graphs in the Republican budget. “As near as I can tell,” he writes, “Paul Ryan and his staff just took the CBO projections that ended in 2019 and drew a random line, extending upward at about a 45 degree angle, until 2080. There’s no real attempt to […]

Speaking of crummy tax numbers, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities catches the Tax Freedom folks touting the 20.2 percent “average federal tax rate.” That’s all well and good, except this is one of those times when average” means “less than 20 percent of the population.” As the CBPP points out, the CBO data […]

About a week ago, House Republicans emerged with a budget that was widely mocked because it contained no numbers and made no sense. This week, Representative Paul Ryan is proposing a budget that will be widely mocked because the numbers it contains make no sense. That’s an improvement, to be sure, but it’s the difference […]

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 — otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill — is not a cap and trade bill. Nor is it energy legislation. It’s not about modernizing the grid or promoting efficiency or encouraging renewables. Instead, it’s everything. Call it the Big Bill Strategy. And Waxman and […]

Alright, April Fool’s Day over, as I can’t figure out how to handle the House’s 600-page cap and trade bill in sarcastic code. The full text is here. Human beings, given our puny brains and inability to recall previous subsections referred to be their numerical identifier, will probably prefer the summary document. The bill — […]

I don’t understand this post by Jonathan Cohn. It seems to imply that responsibility for a bipartisan legislative process rests with both sides. But at no point does he mention that Republicans have already proven their desire to work with Democrats on health reform. How else do you explain the filibuster? Here we have a […]

Last July, Spokane County passed a regulation banning dishwasher detergent with phosphates in an effort to reduce water pollution. The bureaucrats had their rationalizations: Phosphates supercharge algae growth which robs water of oxygen. This kills fish and, in sufficient quantities, renders water poisonous for children. Whatever. Predictably, the hippy dishwashing liquids without phosphate — think […]

John Cochrane is a professor of finance at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. The man has been described to me as “a big deal in his field of finance and macroeconomics” and “a visionary when it comes to competitive health insurance markets.” And his op-ed in yesterday’s Investor’s […]

I disagree with this policy.