office estimates Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

The Sequester from a business prespective

With the Dow Jones hitting all-time highs, I thought that it would be instructive to see what Wall Street thought about the sequester.

A few thoughts from Goldman Sachs:

In 2011, Congress passed and the President signed the Budget Control Act, which raised the debt limit by $2.1 trillion and cut $2.1 trillion from projected spending over the following ten years. Caps on discretionary spending levels were estimated to reduce spending by $900bn compared with baseline projections that assumed spending would growth with inflation. The remainder of the savings was to be achieved by the congressional “super committee.” To motivate the super committee, and to ensure deficit reduction even if it failed, the legislation established $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts through 2021 by means of sequestration if the super committee could not agree on at least that much in deficit reduction. The super committee failed to agree on a deficit reduction package, leaving sequestration to take effect….

The cuts are not that large in the context of the $3.5 trillion federal budget, but sequestration will nevertheless cause real disruptions because the law to implement the cuts is very prescriptive and because they must be phased in relatively quickly once triggered …

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Tuesday Night Grab Bag

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has created between one and 2.07 million jobs. Sweet!
It’s been several days, but I’m not sure I understand the Department of Justice’s conclusions in the Anthrax Report. The only suspect happens to have committed suicide. I just don’t know.
Vice President Cheney remains in the hospital. I wish him well. I’m hoping that he can get out of the hospital and explain why he was so wrong about this report.
Some people make a big deal out of Canadian Premier Danny Williams’s decision to come the United States to get his heart surgery. This is in spite of the evidence that there is no difference in outcome between the United States and Canada in cardiac surgery. There are at least 50 centers in the United States that perform the operation that he needed. Yet he went to Miami. Miami isn’t known as the best cardiac center in the United States. I don’t even think it’s in the top 10. Maybe, just maybe, he wanted his pillows fluffed and a sweet atmosphere for recovery. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that — if you can afford it.

From Political Animal:

Rough day for Toyota on Capitol Hill: “The president of Toyota’s U.S. operations acknowledged to skeptical lawmakers on Tuesday that the company’s recalls of millions of its cars may “not totally” solve the problem of sudden and dangerous acceleration.” (Ed. It seems to me that Toyota has learned from the Americans how to cut corners. See the Ford Pinto.)
White House officially calls for health insurers to lose their anti-trust exemption.
Dick Cheney apparently suffered his fifth heart attack yesterday, but is expected to be discharged from the hospital within a couple of days.
Good to see House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) condemn Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) for his tacit support for last week’s suicide bomber in Austin.
In light of Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) bizarre remarks about having been misled about TARP policy in 2008, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called the conservative senator’s comments “pathetically untrue” and “cowardly.” Harsh, to be sure, but true.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is unimpressed with his party’s talking points on health care policy.
This may not turn out well: “GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham confirmed Monday he is working with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to break the logjam on closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bringing the prisoners to trial.”