Bloomberg News

William D. Hartung in Bloomberg News | 'U.S. Exported $33.7 Billion in Arms, Most in 15 Years'

Articles — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:01:00 -0400

New America in the News:

``The last big surge was after the first Gulf War'' against Iraq in 1991, when the U.S. helped countries in the region upgrade their military, William Hartung, an arms analyst for the Washington-based New America Foundation, said in an interview.

``It's possible that a quarter to one-third of this year's sales could be arming up Iraq, and with the oil price rise, Gulf states can afford to make purchases,'' said Hartung, who is based in New York. LINK

Health Policy Program in Bloomberg News | 'Save Lives Instead of Bankers' Bloated Pay: Michael R. Sesit'

Communications — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:56:00 -0400

New America in the News:

A comprehensive national-health program also makes good business sense for three reasons. First, the lost productivity associated with the poor health and shortened life spans of the uninsured cost the U.S. economy $102 billion to $204 billion in 2006, according to a March report published by the Health Policy Program of the New America Foundation.

``The economic cost imposed on the nation by the uninsured is as much as, and perhaps greater than, the public cost of covering them,'' the authors said. LINK

Len Nichols in Bloomberg News | 'Peabody Pays Mayo Clinic Prices to Save on Health-Care Costs '

Communications — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:53:00 -0400

New America in the News:
Many U.S. businesses try to contain health spending by encouraging smokers to quit or opening at-work clinics. The two coal companies are pioneers in trying to boost quality of care by directing employees to nationally ranked hospitals, according to Len Nichols. Nichols is head of the health policy program at the New America Foundation in Washington and worked in President Bill Clinton's administration.

Reihan Salam's book in Bloomberg News | 'Republicans Seek to Restore Reputation as Source of New Ideas'

Communications — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:51:00 -0400

New America in the News:
Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, two authors in their 20s who wrote Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, argue the party can woo such voters by championing tax breaks for families with children and promoting vocational education, while leaving much of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal intact. LINK

Next Social Contract in Bloomberg | 'Tame Health-Care Gorilla With New Medical Plan'

Communications — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:52:00 -0400

New America in the News:
...Health expenditures consume about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Translated to an individual family, medical insurance claims 20 percent of median income. That's compared with 8 percent in 1987, according to the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington...

``If we do not make health insurance more affordable, a majority of working Americans will be uninsured by 2020,'' it says in its ``The Next Social Contract'' report... LINK

Maya MacGuineas in Bloomberg News on WH 2008 Candidates, PAYGO

Communications — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:27:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Hillary Clinton and her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are promising new domestic programs, tax cuts for the middle class and a return to balanced budgets. One problem: Their numbers don't add up.

The top candidates, Clinton, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, all propose more than $150 billion a year in tax breaks for middle- income earners and new federal spending on health care, energy and education. They also pledge "fiscal responsibility,'' a phrase Clinton used seven times during an Oct. 30 debate.

While vowing to rein in the alternative minimum tax, they won't say how they would fix the levy, which is set to raise $400 billion over five years, increasingly ensnaring the middle class. They also rely too much on rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy and overestimate savings from closing loopholes and improving health-care technology...

Exaggerated Claims

Experts say the campaigns also suffer from exaggerated claims of savings from making health care more efficient and reaping more revenue from closing tax loopholes, potentially adding billions more to a 2012 deficit. Clinton, 60, says her plan to modernize health systems would save $35 billion a year.

CBO Director Peter Orszag said a health-modernization plan of that kind would probably not achieve that much savings. "That would likely be substantially above anything you would see in a CBO score,'' he told reporters on Nov. 13, while not speaking specifically about Clinton's approach. ...

Pay-Go

"All the Democrats say they are supporters of pay-go,'' or rules that require offsets for new spending, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "If you support pay-go, you can't say that you are going to repeal the tax cuts after 2010 and use that savings for something else, because there are no tax cuts to repeal. This is a case of wanting to have it both ways. None of that is real money.''

Clinton campaign aides say they took a conservative approach to estimating savings from health-care programs and are comfortable with their figures; they also point out that the Bush tax cuts are part of the White House budget estimates and argue that makes them fair game for offsets. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link. Both Peter Orszag and Maya MacGuineas spoke at an event this week at New America Foundation.

Bloomberg Interviews Len Nichols on Hillary Clinton's Health-Care Plan

Communications — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:37:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Hillary Clinton's new plan to provide health care for all Americans differs more from her 1993 proposal known as "Hillarycare'' than it does from ideas offered by her chief Democratic rivals in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Clinton's proposal, presented yesterday in Iowa, draws on the same four principles that opponents Barack Obama and John Edwards already put on the table: Allowing many Americans the option of paying to join a new government-run plan, requiring insurance companies to accept all applicants and not charge more for those who are ill, giving subsidies to help families afford coverage and raising taxes on upper-income Americans to pay for it all.

"The big message is how similar the plans are,'' said Len Nichols, who worked on health-care issues for President Bill Clinton and is now director of the Washington-based New America Foundation's health program. "These are very smart people who are very ambitious, and they are ending up with very much the same rough contours...''

For the complete article, please visit Bloomberg New's web site.

Bloomberg Quotes Steven Clemons on Obama Campaign

Communications — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:41:00 -0400

New America in the News:

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Barack Obama portrays himself as a new kind of leader who transcends conventional politics. Judging by the economists he has enlisted in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he may just be.

Obama's economic brain trust -- a blend of up-and-coming academics and former officials in President Bill Clinton's administration -- displays a fondness for backing innovative solutions to the nation's problems. Among them: offering ailing U.S. automakers aid in return for increased investment in hybrid cars and rewarding doctors for the improvements they make in patients' health...

Three academics -- Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist -- form the core of Obama's economic team...

A trio of seasoned Washington hands bolsters the academics: Karen Kornbluh, policy director in Obama's Senate office; Daniel Tarullo, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, and a former senior economic adviser in the Clinton administration; and Michael Froman, the chief of staff for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who now works with his old boss at Citigroup Inc.

Obama's economic cadre, like the candidate himself, is still evolving. The candidate is shopping for a big-name macro economist to join the group, perhaps one with the cachet of former Bush economist Glenn Hubbard, who recently joined the team of Republican candidate Mitt Romney...

What's more, there's no guarantee that Obama will sign on to every idea his economists advance because a candidate's political aides often dilute economists' suggestions for fear of stirring controversy. "As the campaign gears up, there will be a tension between the right policy response to a problem and the politically expeditious one," said Steven Clemons, senior fellow at the New America Foundation...

For the complete article, please visit the Bloomberg website.

Bloomberg Quotes Michael Dannenberg on Fontana's Stock Holding

Communications — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:09:00 -0400

New America in the News:

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's probe of college lending practices includes a financial- aid official in the U.S. Education Department who held shares in a college student-loan provider.

Matteo Fontana held 10,500 shares of Education Lending Group Inc., now a subsidiary of CIT Group Inc., in 2003, according to a September 2003 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Cuomo's office has issued subpoenas to CIT and Student Loan Xpress, a unit of Education Lending Group, according to his spokesman...

Fontana's holding was reported first on the blog of Stephen Burd on the Web site of the Washington-based New America Foundation, a nonprofit public-policy institute that focuses on education.

"There's a fundamental conflict of interest,'' said Michael Dannenberg, director of the foundation's education- policy program. "And often, students don't get the lowest- available loan rate when they follow the preferred-lender route..."

For the complete article, please visit the Bloomberg website.

Bloomberg Quotes Michael Dannenberg on Sen. Kennedy Proposal

Communications — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:00:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Banks that provide college loans with U.S. subsidies would have to compete for the payments, possibly saving the federal government as much as $7 billion a year, under legislation being drafted by Senator Edward Kennedy.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate Education Committee, plans to file the measure this week, spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner said. One "rough" estimate projects savings of $4 billion to $7 billion a year over the current system, in which Congress sets the reimbursement for handling the loans, Wagoner said.

The legislation is the latest proposal to cut the profits that lenders such as SLM Corp., known as Sallie Mae, reap from government-subsidized student loans. Banks make about $18 billion by helping the government supply about $90 billion a year in tuition financing, federal education officials have said...

The idea didn't have enough political support previously, in part because the government was running budget surpluses, said Michael Dannenberg, a former Kennedy aide who is now director of education policy at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy group based in Washington.

That's changed because of "a confluence of circumstances," including the growth of federal budget deficits, the Democratic takeover of Congress and Bush's own willingness to challenge lender subsidies, Dannenberg said.

For the complete article, please visit the Bloomberg News website.