Health Care, Climate Change and Nobel Economics
The Senate Finance Committee approves major new health care legislation.
Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) write an op-ed for the New York Times endorsing climate change legislation.
Economists debate the “message” being sent by the choice of recipients for this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics.
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.
1. HEALTH
The Senate Finance Committee approves major new health care legislation.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on why the current compromise won’t stick:
“Sen. [Olympia] Snowe should be commended for trying to eliminate the worst aspects of the committee’s initial proposal, but her efforts to produce a compromise are at risk of being for naught, since liberal Democrats remain committed to the public option and have even taken to demonizing Baucus for his willingness to compromise. Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the Finance Committee bill would trim the federal budget deficit by $81 billion over ten years is laughable, since most Democrats still want to expand many other benefits and have made no serious attempts to control the growth of health care costs.”
2. ENVIRONMENT
Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) write an op-ed for the New York Times endorsing climate change legislation.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on the likely results of the Kerry and Graham plan:
“Kerry and Graham support a border tax to protect American jobs from products produced in countries that don’t commit to reducing their emissions. That is an admission that energy prices are going to go up and so are the prices of goods and services that are produced with or use energy. Consumers will be poorer as a result and hence will be able to afford fewer goods and services. Bye-bye manufacturing jobs. They also claim that their as-yet-to-be-written bill will reduce our imports of foreign oil. That’s plausible, but not exactly correct. As our economy declines, we will need less oil. But it will reduce U. S. and Canadian production first because the production costs are much higher here than in Saudi Arabia..”
3. FINANCE
Economists debate the “message” being sent by the choice of recipients for this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: President Fred L. Smith reacts to the announcement:
“After the weird ‘future’ award to President Obama of the Nobel Peace Prize, another Nobel committee has made a brilliant choice – awarding the Economics prize to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. Their work follows the lead of Ronald Coase (himself a Nobel prize winner years ago), which showed that the institutions of liberty are far richer than the atomistic market concepts of buying and selling.”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.