Congressional Quarterly Weekly

In Student Loan Market, A Direct Approach (CQ Weekly)

. . . But private lenders who need help face a dilemma. "Lenders are sort of putting themselves in this weird spot, where on the one hand they're raising huge alarms on the viability of their program, and on the other hand are trying to make sure they don't scare schools into the direct loan program," said Steven Burd, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. more

Congress' Role: Help Or Hinder (CQ Weekly)

"Giving the economy a temporary sugar high of trying to boost consumption will not sustain an economic growth path," said Sherle R. Schwenninger of the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. "We see a longer-term program being required, which involves public infrastructure. It's more efficient and effective in stimulating both investment and demand and creating jobs." ...

Candidates' Plans Sketched in Red Ink (Congressional Quarterly Weekly) "You can't say you're going to repeal something that you're already going to let expire," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal policy watchdog group. Obama and Clinton both describe their policies as paying for themselves. But the candidates' definition of paid-for differs from the definition used by the Democratic leadership, which reintroduced the pay-as-you-go concept when it took over Congress a… more

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has held only one hearing on Iran this year; its House counterpart has held five. ...

The hearings that have been held have exposed lawmakers to some alternative views of Iran’s intentions. Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, told House Foreign Affairs that Iran might want nuclear weapons to deter attacks and enhance its power rather than to actually use them, and that its support of Shiite militias has historical roots and… more

Last week, the New York hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management disclosed that it was selling a $1.3 billion ownership stake to an investment firm controlled by the government of Dubai. In September, another Dubai-controlled fund announced that it was buying about a fifth of the Nasdaq stock exchange. A Chinese government bank just entered into a partnership with the investment bank Bear Stearns Companies Inc. And the Blackstone Group private equity firm recently sold a $3 billion ownership stake to… more

Coll, a writer for the New Yorker and a former Washington Post managing editor, takes over next month as the new head of the nonpartisan public policy institute. He's following the footsteps of other journalists turned policy wonks, such as Walter Isaacson, the former Time magazine editor who runs the Aspen Institute, and Strobe Talbott, a former Time journalist who was Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of State and now presides over the Brookings Institution.

Q. How did you come to… more

International occupation forces in Afghanistan recently drew unwelcome attention to one of the dirty secrets of that country's post-war economy: The opium poppy trade, a linchpin in global heroin traffic, is very much alive and flourishing.NATO inadvertently touched off a new firestorm in the battle over Afghan poppy cultivation with propaganda it broadcast over the radio in the poppy-rich province of Helmand, vowing to leave farmers' fields intact."Respected people of Helmand," the radio spot reportedly said,… more

If Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of the biggest state, with one of the most diverse economies in the nation, can bring about a program of universal health insurance, then it stands to reason that other states can as well. Or can they? California does represent a broad cross-section of the country. But the Schwarzenegger plan is a delicately hung chandelier of federal matching dollars and mutual sacrifice, much of it carefully arrayed about that state's unique political… more

Democrats railed against the high cost of education during the elections and proposed cutting interest rates on federal student loans in an attempt to connect with debt-laden students and their families. But so far, the Democrats haven’t come up with a clear-cut plan for following through on the promise. What’s even less apparent is how they would find the money to finance what is likely to be a hugely expensive undertaking.

“We don’t necessarily have exactly what we’re going to… more

The common perception of an uninsured American has long been that of a low-wage worker unable to obtain employer-sponsored health coverage or a jobless person who must rely on hospital charity care when ill. And for good reason: The vast majority of uninsured citizens have always come from low-income families.

But the lack of health coverage is becoming a far more complex problem that cuts through socioeconomic strata. New census statistics show that the fastest-growing segment of the uninsured is, in… more