Ezra Klein - Economic and Domestic Policy, and Lots of It - February 21, 2010

Reconciliation

Today, I blogged about Republicans using philosophical language to obscure political differences; a world in which President John McCain attempted health-care reform; Republican Senator Judd Gregg's impassioned defense of reconciliation; and Jim Bunning's decision to be the Manchurian candidate for...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 7:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (29)

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The dangers of demanding consistency

My colleague George Will is not very impressed with the concern over Senate rules. "Such talk occurs only when the left's agenda is stalled," he writes. "Do you remember mournful editorials and somber seminars about 'dysfunctional' government when liberals...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 5:47 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Senate
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Jim Bunning's campaign to end the filibuster

On Sunday, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits will expire for millions of laid-off workers. The Senate is expected to pass a package extending the help in a month or so. In the meantime, an emergency extension was proceeding smoothly through...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 3:55 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (50)
Categories: Senate
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What do we want?

Justin Fox was annoyed to hear Sen. Tom Coburn claim that "We all want the same thing." In response, Fox lists 18 separate, and occasionally contradictory, things that various people want out of health-care reform, and comments: If all you...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 2:54 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (39)

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Judd Gregg: 'If you've got 51 votes, you win'

"The point is this," Sen. Judd Gregg says in this 2005 defense of the Republicans’ use of the budget reconciliation process. "If you've got 51 votes, you win." The idea "that it is outside the rules to proceed within the...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 1:33 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (29)
Categories: Senate
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Chat transcript

alternative plan during the POTUS state of the union, he said that if someone had a better idea for HCR than what was being proposed, then they should let him know. Has anyone come forward with a different possible plan?...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 1:28 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (8)

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Lunch break

Koalas have a reputation as adorable little balls of coziness. That's undeserved, as you can see in this slightly unsettling video of two of them fighting. No one gets hurt, but the battle cries are fierce. See more funny videos...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 12:55 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (4)

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Re: Philosophy and politics

Reader JS is more cynical than I am: I think your 'philosophical vs political divide' gives far too much respect to what Republicans say and too little to what they actually think in healthcare reform. What they say: They have...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 12:12 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (40)

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A government that works well is a government that taxes easily

Eric Felten makes the conservative case against government efficiency: The easier the government is to use, the less resentful people will be over its costs. Make it easier and more convenient to collect fines and fees, and soon you'll be...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 11:58 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (23)

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Live chat today

It's at noon, and the tech people tell me it's using some awesome new interface. V-forum rather than Z-forum. Submit questions here. If you don't, I'll make you watch another seven-hour health-care summit....

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 11:27 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Could Crist bolt?

The big political news today is that Florida's Charlie Crist might be readying to leave the Republican Party and run for Florida Senate as an independent or a Democrat. That would be a huge coup for Democrats. The best possible...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 11:19 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (18)

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What if?

Imagine that John McCain had won the 2008 election. Confronted with a Democratic majority and interested in recapturing his reputation as a politician far above partisan politics, he decided to co-opt a longtime Democratic priority and reform the health-care system....

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 10:39 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (29)

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Tom Toles is worth a thousand words

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 9:56 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (4)

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Political differences masquerading as philosophical ones

"There's a philosophical difference in how we do this," Sen. Tom Coburn said at the Blair House Summit. "It does have to do with the philosophical difference," Rep. Eric Cantor agreed. "There are very deep philosophical differences in how...

By Ezra Klein | February 26, 2010; 9:52 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (124)

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Obama doubles down on health-care reform

George W. Bush was known for his tendency to think in terms of black and white, good and evil, us and them. This was in opposition, supposedly, to the nuance favored by Democrats. But Barack Obama has his absolutist...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 7:30 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (65)

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The best health care for the most powerful people in the world

There's a difference between the statements "America has the best health-care system in the world" and "With enough money, you can purchase the best health care in the world in America." But that difference gets run over in political...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 4:16 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (68)
Categories: Health Reform
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Competition is important for health-care insurance, but loosening regulations won't achieve it

Among the main Republican talking points today is that the health-care system needs more competition, and the way to get that competition is to let insurers sell across state lines. Rep. Marcia Blackburn hit this particularly hard: The way...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 4:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (86)
Categories: Health Reform
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Strange world

Growing up, I never really considered the possibility that my job would one day entail Skype chats with Diane Sawyer....

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 3:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (18)

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How does Washington decide what insurance is?

The best exchange of the day came moments before the attendees at the Blair House summit broke for lunch. "There is a philosophical difference," Rep. Eric Cantor said. "There is a fear that if you let Washington define what...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 2:13 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (25)
Categories: Health Reform
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Sen. Lamar Alexander explains why there'll be no compromise

Much of Sen. Lamar Alexander's statement this morning was a reprise of the argument he made in this interview earlier in the month: Congress can't do comprehensive, and shouldn't try. Put aside whether you think that's true (Republicans certainly weren't...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 12:02 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (174)

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Did the Congressional Budget Office find that premiums costs will go down?

Lamar Alexander and Barack Obama just had a contentious exchange on this point, so it's worth settling the issue: Yes, the CBO found health-care reform would reduce premiums. The issue gets confused because it also found that access to subsidies...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 11:17 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (28)

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Facts and figures

This morning, Lamar Alexander said that reconciliation has never been used for anything as big as health-care reform. Health-care reform has a 10-year cost of about $950 billion. The Bush tax cuts, which passed through reconciliation, had a 10-year cost...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 10:47 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (76)

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A summit only a cameraman could love

I expect that today's summit will do an excellent job demonstrating why you don't want television cameras (either C-SPAN's or anyone else's) in the final negotiations on controversial bills. In the days leading up to the summit, my reporting, and...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 9:54 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (8)

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Summitry

The fun begins at 10 am. You can watch it on C-SPAN.org. But I'm getting a much clearer picture watching it at YouTube. I'll of course be blogging on this throughout the day. Snarkier observations will be happening over at...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 9:36 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (10)

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There's no plan B for health-care reform

The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House's plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry...

By Ezra Klein | February 25, 2010; 12:25 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (44)

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People hate all of the names I've come up with for this feature

Today I blogged about the ingenious strategy Republicans have hit upon for extracting policy concessions without making political compromises, the major bills that have gone through the reconciliation process, and the amazing similarities between the Senate health bill and the...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 7:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (28)

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A viewer's guide to the Blair House Summit

Some of us will be watching tomorrow's summit because six straight hours of televised health-care reform wonkery sounds like a little slice of of heaven. But we're a rare breed. For everyone else, here's what to watch for: Is...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 5:32 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (30)
Categories: Health Reform
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Don't get Rep. Anthony Weiner angry

You wouldn't like him when he's angry. Watch this through to at least the third minute, by which time a Republican has pulled a parliamentary maneuver to stop Weiner and give him a chance to take back his words, and...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 4:40 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (46)

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Applying negotiation theory to health-care reform

"The most basic predicate for success in any negotiation," writes Gerald Seib, "[is] that both sides, at the outset, think reaching an agreement is preferable to failing to reach an agreement." As he notes, that isn't true for tomorrow's negotiations,...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 4:04 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (42)

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A cartoon is worth a thousand words

Gotta love Ted McCagg:...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 3:50 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (9)

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Stupid stimulus tricks

I like it when Jon Chait stops being polite and starts getting real. Lucky for me, that's pretty much all of the time: In response to the Congressional Budget Office's calculation that the stimulus increased employment by somewhere between 1...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 3:16 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Stimulus
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Why does Rahm Emanuel want a budget wonk all to himself?

Guess we're going to find out: The deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Rob Nabors, is leaving the agency for a White House post, with a longtime Obama adviser, Jeff Liebman, moving up to take his place...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 2:25 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (7)

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Why Republicans don't have an alternative health-care bill

The worst thing that could happen to Democrats at tomorrow's summit would be for Republicans to arrive with a credible compromise. If they put the Coburn-Ryan-Nunes-Burr proposal on the table, that could split Democrats pretty neatly. It's not a...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 2:12 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (10)

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Is majority rule illegitimate?

One talking point Republicans sometimes use about the reconciliation process is that if Democrats "jam through" a bill with only 51 (or, more likely, 56 or so) votes, that bill will be illegitimate in the eyes of the American...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 1:40 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (31)

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When Democrats become Republicans and Republicans become conservatives

To put a finer point on my earlier post about the compromises in the health-care bill, check out this Kaiser News Network table comparing the Senate bill, Boehner's bill, and the bill that moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee developed as an...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 1:03 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (23)

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Lunch break

Temple Grandin talks about autism, and how autistic qualities are both feared and prized....

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 12:56 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (2)

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The Republicans' genius compromise strategy

David Leonhardt has a nice piece running through the basic dynamics of not only tomorrow's summit, but health-care reform from here on out. A lot of the piece is a discussion of compromises: What's blocking them, and what's possible...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 12:35 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (85)
Categories: Congress
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What the Senate proved

"Senate proves bipartisanship possible," tweets an exultant Robert Gibbs. The occasion? The first of the Senate jobs bills passed with 70 votes. This would be the same jobs bill that only got 62 votes to break the filibuster. Eight Republicans...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 11:09 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (14)

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The recent history of reconciliation

NPR's Julie Rovner has a fantastic article explaining that the reconciliation process has actually been used for almost all major pieces of health-care legislation passed over the past 20 years. COBRA -- which stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 11:05 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (25)
Categories: Congress , Government
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The Fox News/David Brooks tag team

Jon Chait points out an important dynamic here: Obviously, delaying the Cadillac tax increases its political vulnerability to some degree. But I wonder why Brooks and Douthat can so casually blame Obama for this change. Unions argued against the tax...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 10:27 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (19)

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What can Obama trade?

In Roll Call, Norm Ornstein games out Thursday's health-care summit: Here is my suggestion for how the summit and its aftermath might go. First, the president could explain the core components of this plan in ways that will reassure Americans...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 8:04 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (16)

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The selling of the president's policies

I noticed this tidbit while reading Michael Kelly's epically long profile of David Gergen: In the selling of the Administration's health plan, politics, policy, advertising and journalism have become, finally, a single organism. Speaking before Congress to introduce the health...

By Ezra Klein | February 24, 2010; 7:17 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (6)

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Fin.

Things I blogged today: Jay Rockefeller's being inconveniently honest about the public option, there are at least five reasons congressional Democrats might vote against health care, it's hard to say whether health-care reform is popular or unpopular, and I'm hoping...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 6:33 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (5)

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Malpractice reform

Most talk of medical malpractice reform explains it as a concession Democrats might make to Republicans. But as Jonathan Cohn explains, a real compromise on this would be good policy, too: While malpractice may not be a major factor in...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 5:50 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (37)

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Reid: GOP should 'stop crying' over reconciliation

That's more like it: "I would recommend they go back and look at history. Since 1981, reconciliation has been used 21 times," Reid told reporters after the weekly lunch with his Democratic caucus. [...] "Realistically, they should stop crying about...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 5:31 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (35)

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Is health-care reform popular?

It's pretty common for Republicans to say that health-care reform is wildly unpopular. It's not even untrue. But nor is it true, exactly. Rather, it depends on the numbers you look at, and how you interpret those numbers. I want...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 5:15 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (33)
Categories: Polls
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What will become of Emanuelism?

Brad DeLong reports on his conversations with people who work with Rahm Emanuel: For what it's worth, I haven't heard complaints about Rahm Emanuel from anybody: smart, energetic, highly effective, reality-based. If there is a flaw, it is that...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 3:40 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (21)
Categories: Obama administration
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Contest: Rename the reconciliation process

Rachel Maddow spent last week looking for a less-boring word to describe the filibuster. She settled on the "Tarantino," "because it kills bills." Predictably, the Tarantino now has a Twitter feed. But I don't think we need a new word...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 2:47 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (91)

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Numbers take time

CBO director Doug Elmendorf says he won't have an estimate of the White House's health-care proposal before next week....

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 2:43 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (1)

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That looks sort of, but not exactly, like White House leadership

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess. The White House came out with their clearest statement yet on the effort to achieve the public option through the reconciliation process: “There are some that are supportive of this,” Robert Gibbs...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 2:41 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: Health Reform
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Just for the record

The administration is raising expectations for Thursday's summit, not lowering them. At the same time, I'm hearing from Democratic Hill staffers who are upset that the White House hasn't given them a clearer idea of what the president wants to...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 2:01 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (17)

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Lunch break

There's no restaurant in America that I want to eat at as much as Alinea....

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 1:08 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (12)

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Five reasons to worry about health-care reform

Jonathan Chait makes the case for continued optimism on health-care reform. I basically agree: I view American politics through a structural lens, and almost all of the relevant forces are pushing Democrats toward completing a bill. But in the...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 12:34 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (125)
Categories: Health Reform
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Why David Brooks should support health-care reform

David Brooks is right to worry that the further the excise tax gets pushed into the future, the less likely it is to ever happen. But that's an argument for supporting the health-care reform bill, not opposing it. "There is...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 12:01 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Health Reform
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There is no inflation

Next time you hear people warning that we need to cut the deficit or pull back the Federal Reserve's spending in order to avoid inflation, remember this: Right now, there is no inflation: Because of a spurt in energy prices,...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 11:35 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Economy
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A failure of White House leadership

One other point on the public option: This has been a complete and utter failure of White House leadership. They need to give this effort their support, or they need to kill it by publicly stating their opposition. But...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 11:24 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (93)

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Jay Rockefeller's inconvenient honesty on the public option

Sen. Jay Rockefeller did something very strange last night: He was honest. He said, publicly, that he does not support adding the public option to the reconciliation bill. And he's going to pay for it today. Rockefeller isn't a...

By Ezra Klein | February 23, 2010; 10:58 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (30)
Categories: Health Reform
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Wrap-up

I've been thinking of changing the format of tab dump a little bit. I write a lot of posts during the day, and not everybody gets to all of them. My hunch, in fact, is that some of you only...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 7:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (43)

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Scott Brown uses his independent voice

Scott Brown joined Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Kit Bond and George Voinovich in voting with the Democrats to allow the first Senate jobs bill -- which is mostly a tax cut for businesses that hire new employees --to come before...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 6:04 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (24)

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Our radical Senate

Here's a fun fact: The Senate filed 214 cloture votes (votes to break a filibuster) between 2007 and 2010. That's more than it held between 1919 and 1976. And during that period, it was actually easier to filibuster, as...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 5:22 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (15)
Categories: Senate
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Rush Limbaugh: Health-care reform is 'reparations,' a 'civil rights act'

Rush Limbaugh is partying like it's 1965 ... I think it plausible that racial anxieties are behind some of the opposition to Barack Obama's health-care reform plan. There's even some experimental evidence suggesting that this is the case. But I...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 4:42 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (58)

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Republican ideas

The New York Times asked five conservatives to offer their prescriptions for health-care reform. It's not a bad list, so far as these things go. The partisan bombast is kept to an appreciated minimum (these efforts usually have a...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 4:29 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (79)
Categories: Health Reform
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The Democrats to watch

The talk right now is about what "Democrats" will do on health-care reform. But the truth of the matter is that we know how 95 percent of Democrats will vote. We know what the congressional leadership and the White House...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 3:33 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (15)

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Newsweekin'

My first Newsweek column is up. Not a huge fan of the picture, but readers of the blog will like the topic. Plus, if you all click over to it, then it gets a big audience, and then I look...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 2:59 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (39)

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Re: Natural gas

Josh Nelson provides some possible answers -- and, be still my heart, some charts -- explaining why nuclear power gets so much more attention than natural gas. There were also a bunch of good comments beneath the original post....

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 2:27 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Climate Change
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Low-hanging fruit at the FDA

Perhaps the simplest way to lower costs, speed innovation and even improve health would be to give the FDA the funding it needs to evaluate new treatments and drugs more quickly. Five years ago, the FDA typically approved a new...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 1:34 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (12)

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The politics of nations: France

As the dysfunctions of our political system have become a more prevalent theme on this blog, I've gotten a large number of requests for a series exploring the political systems of other countries. How England runs its health-care system...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 1:03 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: The Politics of Nations
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Lunch break

I sat down and watched "On the Waterfront" last night. I hadn't realized that was where "I coulda been a contender" entered the cultural lexicon. It's a great scene. According to Wikipedia, Marlon Brando actually improvised that scene....

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 12:23 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (22)

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The core of the White House proposal

Igor Volsky has a helpful table showing the difference between the House, Senate and White House proposals. The biggest substantive difference is that the White House's bill has better subsidies than the Senate bill, and subjects unearned income to a...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 12:02 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (31)

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A health-care reform love story

From the New York Times' Vows column: After the year abroad, Ms. Robbins was reunited with her fiancé in New York, where she subsequently joined Healthcare-NOW!. She threw herself into demonstrations and protests, and spent six months on probation after...

By Ezra Klein | February 22, 2010; 11:04 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (7)

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Network News

Ezra Klein: February 21, 2010 - February 27, 2010