Doctor Fate wrote:
No good news for the President. His back is up against the wall. What will the distraction be this week?

It seems to be Romney's job record while governor in Mass and equal pay for equal work for women, no?

rickyp wrote:ray

It seems to be Romney's job record while governor in Mass and equal pay for equal work for women, no?

Are they not legitmate issues?

The innovation center is supposed to test better ways to deliver and pay for health care than the current fee-for-service system, and the outfit will spend $10 billion over the next decade on awards, grants and contracts. In a recent letter to Congress defending its work, the center touted its "structured clearing process" and "rigorous evaluation of models." But I found there are few safeguards and little transparency in practice.

This January, I was invited to review grant applications for something called the Health Care Innovation Challenge. Local health systems, state Medicaid programs and the like could apply for awards ranging from $1 million to $30 million, with priority for "projects that rapidly hire, train and deploy new types of health care workers." I was selected to become one of the chairmen overseeing the volunteer panels of outside experts. Our grant application reviews were supposed to help the CMMI in making the final award decisions. There were more than 3,000 grant applications in total.

rickyp wrote:A distinction without a difference?
The economy is stalling... Job creation is stalling.
Romney is campaigning saying he'd do better.
In his only stint in elected office his "governance" resulted in comparatively poor job creation performance. (compared to other states)

The issue of equal pay a distraction? I guess for men it might be...but for women ?

Ray Jay wrote:I think your smoking something Ricky ...

At the same time republicans argue that employment is down because of Obama's policies and yet if they had voted the stimulus in, employment would be 800,000 jobs better. (Private sector jobs have increased dramtically but govenrment jobs, especially at State and municipal are down...)

Doctor Fate wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I think your smoking something Ricky ...

. . . and regularly.

Key points from CBO’s Long-Term Budget Outlook:

The Federal government’s unsustainable government spending increase likelihood of a devastating crisis: The CBO report states that “Growing debt also would increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates.”

The CBO report affirms that the massive health-care overhaul fails to address the explosion in health care costs. Mandatory federal spending on health care will increase by 93 percent from 5.4 percent of GDP today to 10.4 percent of GDP over the next 25 years.

The CBO projects that government spending as a share of the economy will increase by nearly 53 percent between now and 2037, up from its historical average of roughly 20 percent. Taxes are projected to rise to the historical average in the years ahead, yet the unprecedented growth in government spending is projected to rise much faster, driving an unsustainable explosion in debt.

The long-term budget outlook continues to worsen with each passing year Congress fails to act. While total debt already eclipsed the size of the entire US economy, debt held by the public is on pace to eclipse the economy shortly after 2022.

The crushing burden of debt is driven primarily by the nation’s largest entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – along with the compounding growth in interest payments on the debt. Government spending on health care entitlements, Social Security, and interest on the national debt will consume 100 percent of total revenues by 2025.

According to the CBO report, the federal government’s interest payments alone are projected to consume 9.5 percent of our entire economy by 2037, up from about 1.4 percent today.

The CBO reports warns of the economic consequences of the President and his party’s leaders insistence on increasing tax rates and raising barriers to job creation and economic growth. With the respect to counterproductive efforts to reduce the deficit by increasing tax rates, CBO states that “the extent that additional tax revenues were generated by boosting marginal tax rates, those higher rates would discourage people from working and saving, further reducing output and income.”

To read the full report: http://cbo.gov/publication/43288

Ray Jay wrote:I also take issue that private sector jobs have increased dramatically. They should be increasing by over 3% per year in a recovery. That's the long term trend. What's the current rate (I won't look it up and I'm hereby giving you an opportunity to teach me something.)

This was my favorite part: How do you know that we would be 800,000 jobs better? Because that's what Obama said? I also take issue that private sector jobs have increased dramatically

I also take issue that private sector jobs have increased dramatically

Impossible to compare the performance of governors