Tuesday, January 23, 2007

"a step in the right direction"

That's how Leonard E. Burman, Jason Furman, and Roberton Williams describe the health care proposal that President Bush will propose in tonight's speech. So, yes, there is hope for bipartisanship.

Update: The Wall Street Journal also likes the proposal. Here's a theorem: Any time the Wall Street Journal editorialists and Jason Furman agree, they are right.

Update 2: Steven Pearlstein and Ruth Marcus have nice pieces on the topic in today's Post.

Update 3: Here is a description of the distributional impact of the policy. The U.S. Treasury estimates that it would be a tax cut for the bottom four quintiles and a tax increase for the top quintile.