New America Network (Affiliated Blogs)

Yesterday, the House passed legislation permanently updating physical payments on a deficit-financed basis (against our urging). Although passed separately from their health care bill, it is worth looking comprehensively at the cost of health care reform, as passed by the House of Representatives so far...

Today, a Wall Street Journal editorial discussed Senator John Thune’s introduction yesterday of a bill that would prevent Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner from extending TARP. The bill would prevent the Treasury from making any new loans, equity purchases, or transfers to financial institutions, but would not affect the $386 billion in outstanding investments...

I interviewed former UK Ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer on his new book Getting Our Way: Five Hundred Years Of International Diplomacy. I have begun the book -- and it's a terrific review of five centuries of the world's big moments and how competitive statecraft in very difficult circumstances turned out. Here is a review from The Guardian.

Meyer has important insights into Afghanistan, stating that the "penny is dropping in London that the democracy project in Afghanistan is a fool's errand." He is increasingly of the view that the entire Afghanistan exercise is a disastrous mess without any "clarity" of objective. He offers a logic-led critique of matters rather than just asserting the Afghanistan War is doomed...

Information about the Senate health care bill is trickling in -- word is that coverage provisions will cost $849 billion over ten years and the bill will reduce the deficit by $127 billion. The Joint Committee on taxation has also released its analysis of the bill's $370 billion in taxes.

Compared to the Senate Finance bill, this bill would reduce the tax on high-cost insurance plans so it raises around $150 billion instead of $200 billion, and make up the difference with an increase in the Medicare payroll tax for high earners. At least from a fiscal perspective, this is a big mistake.

We've discussed, before, all of the advantages of an excise tax on high cost plans. For one, since the tax is on health insurance, it grows as fast or faster than health care costs, and therefore makes it a sustainable revenue source.

CRFB has updated its health care chart, comparing the ten-year costs of the most recent legislation passed by the House and the bill introduced by Senator Reid in the Senate yesterday. To compare the most recent Senate bills with the previous HELP and Finance Committee bills, click here...

Courtesy of Andrew I see that Afghanistan just beat out Somalia as the most corrupt country in the world (by the way, this is two points worse than last year). This sort of reminds me of the old joke about Alabama's state motto - "Thank God for Mississippi."

But let's not cower in fear at the notion that a counter-insurgency with a government that is the second most corrupt in the world is a fool's errand - Hamid Karzai is about to clean up his act...

First of several updates on the fly:

On reflection, I still stick with my initial reaction to the Shanghai Town Meeting appearance, rather than being won over by the on-scene complaints of my Shanghai friend Adam Minter as described here. If you combine Obama's opening statement (White House version here), with his answers to the questions about the Great Firewall, it seems to me that he said just about as much on censorship and liberties as a visiting dignitary could say, in the circumstances...

On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a report estimating the effects of the House health care reform bill. Looking only at the spending side of the ledger, they estimate both greater costs and greater savings than does CBO -- netting to roughly $60 billion less overall. We have compiled the differences here, but it is important to note that CBO and CMS work off of different Medicare baselines, meaning that greater savings need not mean lower overall federal spending...

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R-IN) and House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) have jointly written a compelling case to end the travel ban for all Americans desiring to go to Cuba....

I just published an article at The Daily Beast on White House Counsel Gregory Craig's resignation.

For the record, I am an admirer of Greg Craig's. I think that Craig is one of the few people on the progressive side of things who has a deep grasp of the complexities of America's GITMO problems hatched by the last administration. In my view, he is the White House lawyer tasked with closing GITMO, not the PR machine and political operator who was supposed to seduce Congress in permitting detainees to be moved into the justice and prison system of the United States. The President and White House Chief of Staff were AWOL when it came to laying the political groundwork for what Craig was tasked with doing...