Senate Health Care, Rising Deficits and Food Safety on Thanksgiving
The Senate advances prepares for a floor debate on health care legislation after Thanksgiving.
The rising federal budget deficit and national debt raise concerns about the financial future of the United States.
Families and aid agencies prepare for a memorable meal on Thanksgiving.
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.
1. HEALTH
The Senate advances prepares for a floor debate on health care legislation after Thanksgiving.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on how proposed cost-cutting plans could harm medical innovation:
“Currently, there are hundreds of innovative and expensive medical technologies in the research pipeline. These include highly sophisticated imaging and diagnostic tools, as well as promising new treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and many other life threatening or debilitating conditions. There will be no roving ‘death panels’ to decide which patients should live and which should die. But, if each new medical product must pass a population-wide cost benefit test before a critical mass of patients could get access, there will be little incentive for investors to finance the next generation of technologies that could provide the cures Americans will expect in coming years.”
2. ECONOMY
The rising federal budget deficit and national debt raise concerns about the financial future of the United States.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Journalism Fellow Ryan Young on economist Paul Krugman’s deficit flip-flop in the New York Times:
“Correctly noting in 2005 that the Bush deficits were ‘comparable to the worst we’ve ever seen in this country,’ Krugman worried that investor confidence would wilt under the difficulty of paying back such massive obligations. Now that President Obama has tripled the Bush deficits, he has a column poo-pooing deficit worriers as ‘being terrorized by a phantom menace — a threat that exists only in their minds.’ Investor confidence will be just fine. Would he be so sanguine if a Republican president ran up a $1.4 trillion budget deficit in his first year in office? The party in power has nothing to do with whether deficits are good or bad. Deficits are either a problem or they aren’t.”
3. SAFETY
Families and aid agencies prepare for a memorable meal on Thanksgiving.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Risk and Environmental Policy Angela Logomasini on why you shouldn’t let food nannies spoil your holiday:
“A typical Thanksgiving meal contains such horrors as: acrylamide, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural, dihydrazines, d-limonene, psoralens, quercetin glycosides, safrole. And that’s just what you will find in your typical stuffing! To see what other “horrors” await you, check out the American Council on Science and Health’s Holiday Dinner Menu and you will see that chemicals are in everything we eat. Fortunately, you have as much to fear about these chemicals as you do about the ones green lament – which is very little. ACSH points out: low dose exposures are of little concern; it’s the dose that makes the poison. Humans consume myriad chemicals every day at levels too low too matter. This is true for man-made as well as naturally occurring chemicals. So the next time you see greens hyping the risks of a nutritious food item – worry not.”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.