National Journal

The first budget expert to use the $1 trillion number was Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, based on a guess about declining revenues and some simple addition involving the proliferating obligations of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in trying to unfreeze the financial system. Some of these costs are known -- at least $120 billion has already been drawn by insurance giant American International Group, for example -- but other expenses, such… more

After this Congress's failure to renew the six-year-old law, Obama and McCain will face the same grassroots pressure to act. No Child Left Behind requires states to set increasingly tough annual standards to ensure that all students are proficient in reading and math by 2014. With the deadline closing in and standards getting higher, more schools are failing and consequently more teachers, parents, school administrators, and state officials are pressing for an overhaul.

"Congress as a whole is committed to [reauthorizing] NCLB. This is on people's mind," said… more

...Taxpayers' generosity toward the nation's infrastructure, however, took a dive during the 1980s. President Reagan's aversion to using taxes for domestic spending, exacerbated by Wall Street's obsession with quarterly earnings, encouraged a shortsightedness in assessing the public good. According to Sherle R. Schwenninger, the director of the New America Foundation's Economic Growth Program, the money that government at all levels has devoted to infrastructure, as a proportion of the nation's total economic output, slipped from 3 percent during the 1950s… more

...[Eric] Schmidt's involvement with New America is personal rather than corporate and predates his move to Google. Still, Google recently collaborated with New America on a topic of mutual interest--wireless policy. Since 2001, New America has run a Wireless Future Program, which describes its mission as promoting "fair and efficient use of the airwaves" to help allow more Americans, especially low-income individuals, to connect to the Internet. Greater Internet access is a goal that Google has also championed, and in May, New America hosted an event at which… more

. . . Although sharp contrasts are evident in the policies and philosophies of McCain and Obama on the economy, Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, sees one fundamental similarity: To a surprising extent, especially when compared with other recent presidential campaigns, “what we’re hearing from both candidates, at this point, seems so out of touch with the reality” of looming budget problems.

Surprising, because both candidates early on seemed quite aware of the… more

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New Moves on Wealth Funds (National Journal, subscription only)

. . . Some analysts suggest that the likely ineffectual nature of the forthcoming IMF code of conduct and the reluctance of the Bush administration to take a tougher line reflect the impotence of the United States -- the world's largest debtor nation -- in regulating sovereign wealth funds.

"The leverage is not with us," said Doug Rediker, co-director of the New America Foundation's Global Strategic Finance… more

Full article (subscription only) . . . "The president won," said Maya MacGuineas, director of the fiscal policy program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. . .

Phony Budget Tells All (National Journal, subscription only)

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, ongoing indexation of the AMT would add nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars to the projected deficit over the next 10 years. ...

The Preacher Vs. The Warrior? (The Hotline - National Journal) Meanwhile, TAPPED's Mark Schmitt offers Obama some advice: [Obama] is falling into the tendency that many 'wine-track' candidates do of talking about his candidacy as if it were some sort of other-worldly cause: 'something happening,'...'it's about you,' etc.