Research desk is open

Under the 1974 budge act, congress can adopt two budget resolutions per fiscal year, though since the late 1970's they've generally only done one. Is there any reason why Congress could not adopt a budget resolution post-haste that contains nothing but reconciliation instructions (so that they can then get a robust jobs bill through the senate), and then in December pass a second budget resolution that incorporates the recommendations of the deficit commission or whatever?

Many say that increasing the number of doctors in an area increases costs, while basic economics suggests that cost goes down when supply goes up.

Can you shed any light on this?

Hey Dylan, loved the Fair Elections Now Act getting some coverage.

Are there any examples of public funding systems like this or similar around the world? I know we have Arizona, Maine and a few other cities to look at. But, what about the rest of the world?

Or more broadly, how does the rest of the world finance their campaigns? To hear most campaign finance advocates you'd think Sweden must have a small donor dominated system or they never would have gotten such a progressive welfare state.

Thanks!

In Australia, people are required, by law, to vote. Obviously Americans wouldn't go along with that.

Would it be legal/constitutional, instead, for the govt to give people a refundable tax credit of $1000/year if they had voted at the last federal election? That would reward those who (1) vote and (2) pay taxes (not to mention be a benefit for those who are citizens). It would also massively boost turnout.

It is often said on this blog that the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit, not increased spending. Could you please show goverment revenues and spending as a percent of GDP over the Clinton and Bush years? If tax cuts were the problem then you would expect to see revenues drop after the tax cuts. Thanks.

This New York Times chart from June 2009 shows that Bush's policies and Bush's economy are contributing more to the current deficit than Obama's policies. Would you be able to update this chart?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/06/09/business/economy/20090610-leonhardt-graphic.html

"It is often said on this blog that the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit, not increased spending."

Both Bush's unfunded spending AND Bush's unfunded tax cuts increased the deficit. Fiscally, he's like a guy who loses his job and decides to take a 6-month vacation. The commitment of Bush and his Republican Congress to unfunded spending AND unfunded tax cuts are what caused the spectacular deficits we face now.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/your_deficit_in_charts.html

Nice try, though, to pretend the Republican Party's only contribution to the deficit was tax cuts. No, they cut and spent like drunken sailors.

How many houses are actually available for rent in the suburbs?

Now that we are saying that some people should never own a home are we also saying that they should never live a house with a yard, dog, fence, etc. and simply stay in the city where rental stock is high?

If there is any way to produce a handy summary of fiscal forecasts made prior to enactment of the PPACA with comparisons to post-enactment fiscal forecasts, it would be handy. There have been so many agencies -- HHS, IRS, and CMM, to name just a few -- which have offered upwardly revised cost estimates, it's difficult to keep them all together. What's the current total forecast cost overrun of the PPACA and does this overrun exceed original deficit reduction forecasts?

Right now Racine, Wisconsin has a 14.5% unemployment rate. Why have only 6 jobs been created in Racine by the TARP stimulus, even though Racine was awarded $46 million in TARP stimulus money? $46 million dollars seems like it should have created a lot more than 6 jobs. The website www.recovery.gov shows TARP fund spending and job creation for every zipcode. Racine's zipcodes are 53402, 53404, 53405, and 53406.

As a mail carrier I recently noticed that my local county was purging long-gone voters by sending out letters with "address service requested" on them.
My question is whether the percentage of eligible voters who vote in a given election is usually determined by comparing eligible voters with actual voters.
If so, wouldn't this percentage reflect a population that is much more mobile in modern times? In other words, the percentage of eligible voters who actually vote might be depressed by, say, 5-10%, if compared to 5-6 decades ago, as the country's population has become increasingly mobile and prone to leave their names on the voting rolls, despite having long ago moved away.
I noticed that a good chunk (maybe as many as 30-40%) of the letters sent to voters who failed to vote in the past election (perhaps past 2-3 elections) were long-goners who had moved away, rather than those who had probably failed to vote.

The recession caused a big drop in the employment-to-population ratio, knocking it down from around 63 to 58 percent.

http://tinyurl.com/3xtexc2

Between 1950 and the late 1970s, that would have been a high number. But from the late 1970s until 2000, the ratio rose to over 64%. My question is: is anything over the high 50s sustainable, or was that yet another bubble?

The main explanation I've found for that big increase was the rise of feminism and more women entering the workforce. I'm all for that, but until this recession it seems like a corresponding number of men weren't leaving it. Can we get back over 60% without reversing the gains for women?

I've looked around but I've rarely seen this discussed. Matthew Yglesias asked the question last year:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/how-many-people-belong-in-the-labor-market.php

"Many say that increasing the number of doctors in an area increases costs, while basic economics suggests that cost goes down when supply goes up.

Can you shed any light on this?"

This occurs because the price mechanism is broken. If price is zero, demand increases until additional units purchased make the buyer worse off outside of cost. Third party payment pushes the effective price of health care services towards zero. In addition, there is information asymmetry and so providers can easily convince patients that they need additional tests and procedures.

Under this type of environment, costs go up because the quantity supplied is continually increased, leading to ever greater total dollar expenditures, and price per unit can rise as marginal costs typically increase as more units are produced.

In particular, demand for high cost but low benefit procedures isn't actively being restrained by either prices or government fiat, and we're developing new high cost / low benefit procedures everyday. Using government fiat to 'just say no' to these kinds of treatments reduces both supply and cost.

Justin84: that's part of it, but in principle its hard to see why either a) hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes or b) health insurers would not be able to take advantage of an increases supply of doctors to lower prices. This, after all is what Dean Baker has been advocating for some time, and these concentrated purchasers of doctor services would not be subject to the "zero price" issue you describe (which would arguably explain why patients demand unnecessary care). Anyway, the second issue you point to gets at part of the problem, but its still not clear to me if the information asymmetry would be powerful enough to overwhelm the effect of a sizable increase in the number of doctors available in a market. In so far as US doctors make at least 50% more than doctors in similarly wealthy countries, this is a pretty big deal as far as health care costs go.

We have been told that the Deepwater Horizon spill was anomalous, and it is certainly unprecedented in the US. But we also hear about the spills in the Niger Delta (which mainly seem to come from pipelines?) and the Timor Sea.

So here is my question: taking a global perspective, how frequent have different classes of oil spills (from pipelines, tankers, platforms etc.) really been?

In recent days, both David Brooks and David Leonhardt have argued that federal aid-to-states should be contingent on states improving the long-run sustainability of their budgets.

Is this feasible? How might it be done?

How about a comparison of nations by square foot of housing per person? Or, if not available, of US cities by the same?

Compare the health and budgetary benefits of a soda tax vs. to changing agricultural subsidies to match the food pyramid.

I've read that the US subsidizes medical research for the world (~30 billion from NIH and another 30 or so from pharmaceutical companies). Could you do a comparison of medical research spending by nation?

In a message today, outgoing OMB Director Orszag states that the PPACA might produce a deficit reduction if its provisions remain in place, unchanged, for 75 years.

If the term "change" is defined to include both amendments by Congress and modifications by the Courts, how many acts of Congress signed into law in 1935 and prior years have remained in place, unchanged, until today?

Dylan, in the past several days the preponderance of conservative opinion has been that increased stimulus spending signals higher rates of future taxation to the business community. In that vein, wouldn't the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts also signal a similar increase in future tax rates?

Given that most conservatives favor the extension of said tax cuts, is there a legitimate, deficit-conscious argument for extending Bush-era tax cuts? Based on past posts, stimulus spending has a higher multiplier effect than tax cuts.