Sarah Babbage

Medicare has become the pivotal political issue in Washington, not just in the deficit debate but in the Republican 2012 election as well. GOP primary candidate Newt Gingrich has spent his week furiously backpedaling from his observation on Meet the Press last weekend that Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan amounts to “right-wing social engineering.” The incident […]

As Jamelle described yesterday, California just cut its deficit in half, not through dramatic spending cuts but through an unexpected tax windfall, the result of improved economic growth in the state. It’s not unique in experiencing this – Michigan and New Jersey also reported higher-than-expected tax revenues this week. Jamelle rightly says that these windfalls […]

As expected, the JOBS Act we [previewed](http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=05&year=2011&base_name=how_to_eliminate_322000_jobs) earlier this week received a passing vote in the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday, giving states the option to use the money they receive from the federal government for extended unemployment benefits elsewhere. GOP lawmakers expect cash-strapped states will divert the cash toward deficit reduction, which they […]

Despite the fact that a deficit-reduction deal probably won’t be reached through the adoption of a comprehensive budget package, lawmakers continue to produce them, tweaking the available deficit-reduction mechanisms to just their liking. So far this week, Sens. Pat Toomey and Kent Conrad have both released budgets, although Conrad’s has yet to go public. What […]

Soon, the House Ways and Means Committee will vote on legislation that would allow states to divert the money they receive from the federal government for extended unemployment-insurance benefits toward other uses that would help them get their financial houses back in order. While states will eventually have to deal with their deficits, doing so […]

When President Obama signed the tax deal last December that extended the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a Social Security payroll tax holiday, he seemed confident it was in the best interest of the economy and the American people. “This is real money that’s going to make a real difference in people’s lives. That’s […]

Lawmakers are now refocusing to the budget debate, with Joe Biden hosting representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties at Blair House yesterday. While it was out of the headlines, Republican uneasiness with their party’s deficit plan, Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, seems to have grown, and now many are abandoning at least parts of […]

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing this morning on the various budget gimmicks that Congress is considering, including in a vote on the debt ceiling. As the Prospect previewed earlier this week, the chief proposals up for debate were the Corker-McCaskill CAP Act, which reduces government spending to an arbitrary 20.6 percent of GDP, […]

As we enter the weeks before Congress is finally forced to vote on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, hopes of passing a clean bill – one that lets the U.S. add to its debt without attached riders to make it also cut spending – seem all but [vanished](http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_senates_debtceiling_wild_cards). Instead it’s [looking](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/will_the_white_house_lose_control_of_democrats_on_the_debt_ceiling/2011/04/13/AFFdBSEF_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein) like […]

Gallup released some counter-intuitive numbers this morning in a new poll that finds that people over 30 favor Paul Ryan‘s deficit plan over the one proposed by Obama, with even higher support from those over 50. This is the same Ryan plan that proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher system in 10 years, when […]