Ezra Klein

Earlier today, Ron Pollack, the director of Families USA, made a nice point before the Senate Finance Committee. “We keep on talking about a level playing field,” he said, “but in Medicare, we don’t have a level playing field. The payments to private plans in Medicare Advantage are considerably larger than they would be for […]

My, err, soon-to-be-colleague Richard Cohen has an op-ed today arguing that Obama’s next Supreme Court justice should face a “litmus test.” But not on abortion. Rather, the next nominee to a Supreme Court that’s 88 percent male and 77 percent white male should have to agree that “there is no need to cling to such […]

I should probably feign surprise that yet another study, this time from the University of Illinois, has emerged showing that union intimidation not only isn’t a problem, but doesn’t appear to exist in any measurable quantities. This bit of research — which was, in part, funded by the AFl-CIO, but uses public records in ways […]

Chuck Schumer just forced the Senate Finance Committee’s Health Care Coverage Roundtable to address the public plan. And give Schumer some credit. He didn’t hedge. “Just as bad as a public plan with an unfair advantage,” he said, “is no public plan at all. My colleague from Kansas said the American people don’t want the […]

It’s looking like swine flu doesn’t have the genetic capability to mutate into anything especially lethal. The high death toll in Mexico may simply be evidence that the disease was much more widespread than was initially understood. All of which is very good news. But it’s also a teachable moment of sorts. The influenza might […]

For a bit more on the administration’s changes to the corporate tax code, check out this post from real life tax lawyer Daniel Shaviro. In particular, he offers a depressingly realistic take on the difficulties facing any effort to force corporations to pay higher taxes on investment abroad: The efficiency gains from equalizing domestic and […]

Generally speaking, I’m a big Robert Reich fan. But his explanation for why the president is going after a variety of tax breaks that help corporations hide international income makes very little sense. The president needs the cooperation of many big corporations if he’s going to get universal health insurance enacted this year. Many of […]

Don’t underestimate the importance of Chuck Schumer’s proposed compromise on the public plan. The Senior Senator from New York is not freelancing on this. Max Baucus asked him to work out the details of the public insurance option. And so he did. The public plan he has proposed will not be subsidized by the government […]

There’s a tendency to treat Senator James Inhofe as the Republican Party’s crazy uncle. You invite him to dinner. You listen to him rant about global warming. You wait out his stories about asking Michael Crichton to testify before his committee as a climate expert. You try not to look away from your peas. But […]