House Republicans have decided against using savings from war funding to offset a permanent “doc fix,” which means that Medicare doctors could see their reimbursement rates fall as much as 27% by the end of the month. In addition, this only extends the cost of a permanent doc fix over time, because the cost of [...]

Democratic operatives are pouncing on Mitt Romney’s statement to CNN that he’s not concerned about the “very poor.” His context is that we already have a safety net for the very poor, and he wants to focus on the middle class. This may be unstated, but it’s the dominant perspective of everyone who runs for [...]

The latest in a series of jobs measures that will get a Senate vote offers a twist on what we’ve seen over the past several weeks. First of all, the bill is not paid for with a surtax on millionaires. Democrats have enough votes from their counterparts on that for their point to be made. [...]

Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has not been traditionally opposed to a deficit reduction plan. The CBPP supports chained CPI, for example. So it’s quite something to see Greenstein, along with Paul van de Water and Richard Kogan, savage the Democratic opening bid in the Catfood Commission II, describing it [...]

The Obama Administration approved cuts to California’s Medicaid program that will slash reimbursement rates and potentially cause providers to reject treatment for the program for the poor. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will allow the state to cut reimbursement rates by 10 percent this fiscal year for a variety of Medi-Cal [...]

The House bill eliminating the 3% withholding rule, making it easier for government contractors to cheat on their taxes, a small part of the American Jobs Act and supported by the President, passed today, on a near-unanimous vote of 405-16. The bill was paid for through a separate measure, which changes the calculation of modified [...]

The Democratic offer of a “grand bargain” on the deficit, including Medicare benefit reductions, was soundly rejected yesterday by Republicans. The GOP members of the catfood commission offered their own plan, which predictably consisted of all spending cuts. We’re on a path to gridlock, because Republicans just won’t agree to tax increases. However, the points [...]

Yesterday, I mentioned that Republicans laid a trap for the White House. They took the most GOP-friendly idea in the American Jobs Act – a permanent elimination of the 3% withholding rule, which would mandate that government contractors have 3% of their invoices withheld until they prove that they are current on their taxes – [...]

Brian Beutler reports on the House GOP’s next trick. Their plan is to find the two worst parts of the President’s jobs bill and deficit plan, and combine them for a package that sounds almost comically silly, but that gives them the talking point that the President supported the component parts: The piece of the [...]

It’s sad that it took the demise of the CLASS Act for the media to take notice that the problem the measure was trying to solve, long-term care, is both serious and growing. But whether or not the CLASS Act comes off the books, the problem it was meant to address remains: A gap in [...]

Michele Bachmann told a crowd over the weekend that Americans can rely on charitable organizations if they cannot afford health care. I actually saw evidence of this over the weekend in Los Angeles. But even this charitable foundation understands that there is no substitute for getting Americans enrolled in some mechanism that can get them [...]