Entries from July 2009 ↓

“Of those who do not have insurance—and who therefore might be better off—approximately one-fifth are illegal aliens, nearly three-fifths make $50,000 or more a year and can afford insurance, and just under a third are probably eligible for Medicaid or other government programs already. For the slice of the uninsured that is left—perhaps about 2% of all American citizens—Team Obama would dismantle the world’s greatest health-care system.”

- Karl Rove

“With 50% of Golden State income tax revenues coming from the richest 1% of residents, the state needs lower rates to avoid revenue boom and bust. The liberal obsession with income redistribution has destroyed California’s tax base. (Memo to President Obama, if he’s paying attention.)”

- Wall Street Journal

“Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whitehouse won’t themselves join a plan that “will offer benefits that are as good as those available through private insurance plans — or better,” as the Ohio and Rhode Island liberals put it in a recent op-ed. And even a self-described socialist like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who supports a government-only system, wouldn’t sign himself up.”

- Wall Street Journal

“Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.”

“…the increase in spending for Medicare and Medicaid will account for 80 percent of spending increases for the three entitlement programs between now and 2035.”

“Slowing the growth rate of outlays for Medicare and Medicaid is the central long-term challenge for fiscal policy.”

- Douglas Elmendorf, director of the congressional budget office

“If nothing else, a century of vain attempts to break the Post Office monopoly should teach us how welcoming Congress is to competition to one of its high-cost, inefficient wards.”

- George Newman