Half done on health reform

David Broder's column in the Washington Post defines the conventional wisdom in Washington. He relaibly reflects what the Inside the Beltway crowd think about politics, and even he is acknowledging that the numbers used to justify the House-approved health care bill don't add up.

But, as many sympathetic voices have been telling them: Unless you find more realistic ways of paying for the promises included in the bill, you are simply setting up the public for more frustration -- and yourselves for a political backlash.

At least a dozen health and budget experts have filled the Web and the airwaves with warnings that the House bill simply postpones the cost controls needed to finance the vast expansion of insurance coverage and Medicaid benefits envisaged by its sponsors.

Broder on Novak

In the Washington Post, David Broder looks at the loss Bob Novak, the last of a generation of political reporter.

And before that, he was one of the three best political reporters of the 1960s. The other two were Alan L. Otten and Paul Duke, and the remarkable thing is that all three of them were working at the same time in the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

Duke, who became the beloved moderator of PBS's "Washington Week," died four years ago. Otten, who adopted me on my first presidential campaign in 1960 and became the best mentor anyone could ever have, died two weeks ago.

And now Novak is gone. When I heard word of his death on Tuesday, it struck me that we are not likely to see their likes again. Collected from separate corners, Illinois (Novak), New York (Otten) and Virginia (Duke), they were assembled here by editors who had a passionate commitment to covering Congress and politics as if the decisions being debated really mattered. (more)

Broder exposes PAYGO loophole

In the Washington Post, columnist David Broder shows why the recent move to reinstate Pay-As-You-Go budget controls has been built to fail:

It could do just the opposite. The bill says that at the end of the year, if Congress has spent more on new entitlements or tax cuts than it has saved, the president can roll back or sequester the excess. But the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper, warned in a July 14 memo that, as introduced, the bill might allow spending to increase -- and by a staggering amount.

"In effect," it said, "that rule would allow the Congress to enact legislation that would increase deficits by an amount in the vicinity of $3 trillion over the 2010-2019 period without triggering a sequestration." (more)