Orszag: Some who are advocating delay on health care are just trying to kill it.
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 20th, 2009 4:34 am by HL
Orszag: Some who are advocating delay on health care are just trying to kill it.
Late this week, a group of Blue Dog Democrats in the House and six “centrist” Democrats urged their leadership to delay action on health care reform. The White House has been insisting that Congress send him health care legislation by August, a deadline that seems to be fading. CNN’s John King asked White House budget […]
Late this week, a group of Blue Dog Democrats in the House and six “centrist” Democrats urged their leadership to delay action on health care reform. The White House has been insisting that Congress send him health care legislation by August, a deadline that seems to be fading. CNN’s John King asked White House budget director Peter Orszag about these developments:
ORSZAG: We have to remember: there are some who are advocating delay simply because they don’t have anything to put on the table. The typical Washington bureaucratic game of — ‘if you don’t have a better alternative, just delay in the hope that that kills something’ is partly what’s playing out here.
Orszag clarified that he wasn’t speaking about Blue Dog members or other “members of Congress and Senators who are actually actively participating in the debate.” But, he cautioned, “there are those who are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try to kill this.” Watch it:
A strategy memo authored by GOP consultant Alex Castellanos suggests that “it is crucial for Republicans to slow down what it calls ‘the Obama experiment with our health.’” The memo concludes, “If we slow this sausage-making process down, we can defeat it, and advance real reform that will actually help.”
Krugman: White House treatment of Stiglitz reveals lack of respect for ?progressive-economist wing.?
Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh reports that progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz, “the man who predicted the global financial meltdown,” is not getting his due respect from the Obama administration. Hirsh writes that the Nobel Prize-winning economist has “heard barely a word from the White House.” For his part, Stiglitz has been critical of the Obama administration: Stiglitz had […]
Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh reports that progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz, “the man who predicted the global financial meltdown,” is not getting his due respect from the Obama administration. Hirsh writes that the Nobel Prize-winning economist has “heard barely a word from the White House.” For his part, Stiglitz has been critical of the Obama administration:
Stiglitz had been hammering at Obama’s economic team for its handling of the financial crisis. He wrote that the stimulus program was too small to be effective—a criticism that has since swelled into a chorus, though Obama says he’s not adding more money. Stiglitz also had called the administration’s bailout plan a giveaway to Wall Street, an “ersatz capitalism” that would save the banks’ investors and creditors and screw the taxpayers. […]
Despite the Obama team’s occasional efforts to reach out to him, Stiglitz remains deeply unhappy about the administration’s approach to the financial crisis. Rather than breaking up or restructuring the big banks that failed, “the Obama administration has actually expanded the notion of ‘too big to fail,’” he says.
Paul Krugman, himself a Nobel Prize-winning economist who has had his differences with the Obama administration, writes that “the real story is more about excluded points of view than excluded people.” Krugman observes “the absence of a progressive-economist wing” in White House economic discussions.
