The brass ring of education reform is to find a way to ensure that the best schools routinely scale-up to serve large audiences, crowding out the mediocre and bad ones. Over the past twenty years, the United States and Sweden have taken two very different approaches to achieving that goal, which I wrote about in a recent op-ed.

In the U.S., our main strategy has been for philanthropists to fund the replication of what they deem to be the academically highest-performing networks of charter schools. In a recent statistical analysis of California, the state with the most charter schools, I discovered that this is not working out particularly well for us. There is no correlation between charter school networks’ academic performance and the philanthropic funding they’ve raised. And, at any rate, charter schools still enroll less than 3 percent of the nation’s students.

In 1992, Sweden introduced a nation-wide public and private school choice program. Private schools went from enrolling virtually no one to enrolling about 11 percent of the entire student population–a figure that continues to grow with each passing year. Moreover, recent research finds that these new private schools outperform the public schools. And which private schools are growing the fastest? The chains of for-profit schools that are in greatest demand, and that have an incentive to respond to that demand by opening new locations. The popular non-profit private schools tend not to expand much over time.

Given that Sweden is universally regarded as a liberal nation, and the U.S. is seen as a bastion of capitalism, one wonders why they got to the brass ring first, and why it is taking us so very long to get there now that they’ve shown us the way.

How Sweden Profits from For-Profit Schools is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

From their editorial the other day:

There is no doubt that Medicaid… has to be cut substantially in future decades to help curb federal deficits. For cash-strapped states, program cuts may be necessary right now. But in reducing spending, government needs to ensure any changes will not cause undue harm to millions.

How would the Times cut Medicaid spending? The magic of central planning!

The best route to savings — already embodied in the reform law — is to make the health care system more efficient over all so that costs are reduced for Medicaid, Medicare and private insurers as well. Various pilot programs to reduce costs might be speeded up….

And if government were smart, rather than stupid, that would work.

I’ve got a better idea for cutting Medicaid that meets the Times‘s criterion of not causing undue harm to millions.

Even the New York Times Wants to Cut Medicaid is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The New York Times reports on a study published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine:

Children with Medicaid are far more likely than those with private insurance to be turned away by medical specialists or be made to wait more than a month for an appointment, even for serious medical problems, a new study finds…

Sixty-six percent of those who mentioned Medicaid-CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) were denied appointments, compared with 11 percent who said they had private insurance…

In 89 clinics that accepted both kinds of patients, the waiting time for callers who said they had Medicaid was an average of 22 days longer.

“It’s very disturbing,” [study author] Dr. [Karen V.] Rhodes said. “As a mother, if I had a kid who was having seizures or newly diagnosed juvenile diabetes, I would want to get them in right away.”…

Another physician not connected with the study…said: “It’s interesting to think you even need a study to prove that. It’s pretty much common knowledge.”…

This month, Dr. Rhodes and her colleagues had a similar study published in the journal Pediatrics, finding that dentists were far less likely to accept children with public insurance than those with private coverage, even for an urgent problem like a broken front tooth. Another study of hers uncovered patients’ difficulties in obtaining psychiatric care.

Here’s a graph from the study, showing how often kids with private insurance and Medicaid got appointments with various specialists:

Half of ObamaCare‘s projected coverage gains (16 million out of 32 million U.S. residents) comes from expanding the Medicaid program.

NEJM Study: ObamaCare’s Main Coverage Vehicle Makes Kids Wait for Care is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Despite the record $1.6 trillion deficit this year, and the consensus that exploding spending and debt is pushing the nation toward catastrophe, the Obama administration has completely chickened out on spending reforms in its new budget.

The president took a “shellacking” in the November elections as a result of his big-government policies. Does his new budget reflect any movement to the fiscal center? Not at all — spending levels in his new budget are virtually the same as in last year’s budget.

Read my post at NRO for full details.

Federal Budget: Obama Chickens Out is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

An indicator of the incoming House Republican majority’s seriousness about cutting spending will be which members the party selects to head the various committees.

Many of the members in line to chair committees leave a lot to be desired from a limited government perspective (see here and here). In particular, the top candidates in line to chair the critical House Appropriations Committee, Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), are about as inspiring as re-heated meatloaf when it comes to their potential for pushing serious spending reforms.

According to the Wall Street Journal, appropriator Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), is eyeing the chairman’s gavel even though he’s only fifth in line in terms of seniority. Kingston has put together a spending restraint plan in PowerPoint for consideration by the 26 member Republican Steering Committee, which will decide on committee chairs.

Although the Journal notes that Kingston is “no spending virgin,” there is a lot to like about his plan, which is promisingly entitled “Changing the Culture: A New Vision for the House Appropriations Committee.”

Here are my thoughts on the plan’s contents:

• One slide shows a list of “Big Stuff” and places at the top “State Addiction to the Federal Government.” The language is perfect and indicates that Kingston recognizes that federal aid to the states is a significant issue that needs to be addressed. Reinstituting “fiscal federalism” is one of the chief principles of reform addressed on the Downsizing Government website.

• The same slide acknowledges the trillion dollar cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This inclusion perhaps signals that Kingston is prepared to get serious about reining in defense spending, unlike many Republicans.

• Kingston proposes new spending caps that would work to eventually reduce total federal spending to 18 percent of GDP. He notes that “This approach would require Congress to focus on the actual problem of spending, as opposed to deficits, which are a symptom.” Only interest on the debt would be off limits from sequestration should Congress fail to adhere to the spending caps.

• Kingston calls federal grants “the new earmarks” and singles out the $7.2 billion broadband grant program for criticism, noting that it “pay[s] companies to do what they would do on their own.” As I recently explained, eliminating earmarks but keeping the federal grant programs that fund the same activities would amount to a Pyrrhic victory.

• Kingston calls for more “budget hawks” on the appropriations committee, and singles out spending reformer Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for inclusion on the committee. He also calls for getting “members off subcommittees in which they are unable to take hard votes.” Amen. If Republicans want to cut spending, then they need to put members on the committees who will actually vote to do it.

The Journal explains that the GOP leadership, in particular incoming House Speaker John Boehner, had better take Kingston’s candidacy seriously:

Officially, committee chairs are selected by the 26 or so person GOP Steering Committee, but Mr. Boehner has five votes on the panel and he can block anyone from getting the nod. A Steering Committee decision can be overturned by a vote of the full GOP House conference, and the leadership should worry that selecting someone like Mr. Rogers could lead to a rank-and-file revolt.

Republicans claim to be the party of fiscal probity and that they’ve learned from their demise in 2006. Mr. Kingston’s proposals are the kind of creative thinking that Republicans are going to need to carry out the principles and agenda they say they believe in.

When tea party voters helped give the Republicans a second chance at reining in government spending, they didn’t have in mind re-heated meatloaf – they want steak. Boehner and the House GOP leadership would be wise to oblige, or else these voters might dine elsewhere in 2012.

Rep. Kingston’s Spending Cut Plan is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today POLITICO Arena asks:

Is it worrisome that Americans spend on political advocacy – determining who should make and administer the laws – much less than they spend on potato chips, $7.1 billion a year?

My response:

For decades among modern liberals it has been an article of faith — devoid of evidence — that money corrupts politics and that there is too much money in politics — “unconscionable” amounts, we’ve been told, repeatedly. Thus the crusade to restrict and regulate in exquisite detail every aspect of campaign finance, beginning in earnest with the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and culminating with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold). Yet after every new restriction along that tortuous course, ever more money has flowed into our political campaigns. But for all that, they’re no more corrupt than they’ve ever been. In fact, the best evidence of the fool’s errand that campaign finance “reform” has been all along is found in comparisons between states with little and states with extensive campaign finance regulations: When it comes to corruption, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the regulated and the unregulated states.

But all those regulations have accomplished two things that should give liberals pause. First, by virtue of their sheer complexity and cost, they pose a serious impediment to those who would challenge incumbents, who already have a major leg up on reelection. And second, because we cannot limit private campaign contributions and expenditures altogether, thanks to the First Amendment, the regulations have led to money being diverted away from candidates and parties and into other, often unknown, hands, over which the candidates and parties have no control — by design. As a result, we see candidates today having to disavow messages underwritten by people who would otherwise, but for the regulations, have given directly to the candidate or the party. But that outcome was absolutely predictable – and was predicted. Two good reasons to end this campaign finance regulation folly and let individuals and organizations contribute and spend as they wish. What are we afraid of, freedom?

Campaign Finance: Don’t Confuse Me with the Evidence is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

People inside the Beltway seem to think that the only things worth being said and written are said and written in Washington. John David Dyche’s column today makes a good case for the quality of commentary outside the all-knowing capital.

While most everyone in DC is calling the stretch run of the horse race, Dyche steps back and wonders whether the Kentucky Senate race would have been better for citizens if the U.S. Constitution had not been changed to direct election of senators. He thinks it would be.

I am not so certain. As Dyche notes, James Madison thought the representative or indirect aspects of American constitutional democracy would improve public choice. As times has passed, I wonder more and more about the quality of people drawn to all legislatures, including state bodies. Madison thought indirect election wold “refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” Should we still rely on the wisdom of that medium? And yet, what is the alternative? (Todd Zywicki has an informative article on the origins and demise of indirect election of senators).

Dyche works as an attorney in Louisville, Kentucky, and has written a nice biography of Mitch McConnell. His column is worth a regular read, especially if Rand Paul comes to Washington as a U.S. Senator. Dyche would be a good guide to how Paul’s libertarian tendencies are playing out politically back home.

Reform for Senate Elections? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A decade ago, amid much controversy, I persuaded the Australian government to cut the capital gains tax rate in half.

Stephen Kirchner, an economist from Australia’s leading think tank, the Center for Independent Studies, reviewed the results last November.

This a brief summary:

The introduction of capital gains tax discounts for individuals and funds as part of the 1999 Ralph business tax reforms has received a lot of bad press, but much of this commentary is ill-informed. . . .

Those who called for reform of Australia’s capital gains tax regime 10 years ago argued that the Ralph reforms would likely raise more revenue because of the increased incentive they provided for taxpayers to realise capital gains that would otherwise go untaxed. Supply-side economist Alan Reynolds predicted that the reforms would raise twice as much revenue in the long run. He was right. The capital gains tax share of Commonwealth tax revenue nearly doubled between the introduction of the Ralph reforms and 2006–07. In absolute terms, CGT revenue rose from $4.6 billion in 1998–99 to $17.3 billion in 2006–07. CGT revenue growth has been strongest among individuals, who received the larger discount of 50%, followed by funds, which received a 33% discount. The slowest CGT revenue growth has been from companies, which received no discount.

The data suggest that the Ralph CGT reforms have resulted in more tax revenue through increased realisations of capital gains. They have thus strengthened rather than weakened the ability of the tax system to serve equity objectives. The Ralph reforms demonstrate the basic supply-side insight that lower effective tax rates lead to faster growth in the tax base and tax revenue.

An Australian Lesson about Capital Gains Tax Rates and Revenues is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A new AP-Gfk poll reveals that about two-thirds of the American public lack confidence that the financial regulation bill, currently being crafted by House and Senate conferees, will actually help avert future financial crises. 

The public is right to be skeptical, as there is nothing in either the House or Senate bill that ends bailouts or ends “too-big-to-fail.”  In fact parts of the bill, such as the expansion of deposit insurance, will actually increase the likelihood of future crises.  (The IMF has an insightful working paper on the negative impacts of deposit insurance). 

Perhaps the failure of Congressional efforts to end financial crises is the result of Washington’s unwillingness to recognize that government itself was the major driver of the recent crisis.  Fortunately the public seems to get that.  Some 70 percent of the poll respondents believe that government shares blame for the crisis.  Here’s to hoping that Congress will at some point listen to the public, and end many of the distortionary policies that caused the crisis.

Public Sees Past Facade of “Financial Reform” is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Last year, when the issue of defunding ACORN was a hot-button issue, I told countless radio talk show audiences that the focus should be on eliminating the underlying fuel that created the organization—the flow of federal subsidies.

Chris Edwards pointed this out in September. If Congress simply stops subsidizing ACORN, its activists will reincorporate under new names and again become eligible for funds. Alas, that’s precisely what ACORN is currently doing.

From FoxNews.com:

One of the latest groups to adopt a new name is ACORN Housing, long one of the best-funded affiliates. Now, the group is calling itself the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Others changing their names include what were among the largest affiliates: California ACORN is now Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and New York ACORN has become New York Communities for Change. More are expected to follow suit.

A comment from Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Republicans on the U.S. House oversight and government reform committee, doesn’t indicate that the GOP has quite received the message:

To credibly claim a clean break, argued Hill, the new groups should at least have hired directors from outside ACORN.

It appears that for many Republicans, attacking ACORN represented political opportunism, not a statement about the proper role of the federal government.

Further rendering the GOP’s ACORN agenda moot was last week’s ruling by a U.S. District judge that singling out ACORN for defunding is unconstitutional. It truly boggles the mind what passes for constitutional and unconstitutional in this country.

Tuesday was the birthday of James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution.” Reflecting upon Madison’s wise words, it’s hard to understand how the federal “community development” programs that have funded ACORN could pass constitutional muster:

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

“[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”

“With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”

See this essay for reasons why these HUD community development programs should be abolished.

To Kill ACORN, Kill the Programs is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

David Goldhill has done it again.

You may recall his article, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” from the September 2009 issue of The Atlantic.

Now, at HuffingtonPost, he comments on the health care legislation that may soon face a final vote (of some sort) in the House:

[C]ontinuing our Party’s almost unquestioned conflation of health insurance with health care, the central feature of the proposed “reform” is further extension of our flawed insurance-based system…[D]espite the Administration’s recent heated rhetoric, most of the entrenched health industry interests are quietly or openly in favor of this bill. Should the bill become law, I suspect we will look back at it as an industry bailout…

How…can Democrats in the depths of a recession support a massive tax increase on middle-class job creation…? How…could we justify diverting even more of middle class income to support our broken system of care, further starving families of funds for all their other needs? Most uninsured Americans lack insurance only temporarily; how many of them would trade lesser lifetime job prospects and lower disposable income for the short-term retention of health insurance?…

If the legislation had any real prospect of controlling health care spending, would the pharmaceutical industry be funding the “yes” campaign?

As a former Democrat who hung door knockers for Michael Dukakis in 1988, I know the heavy heart with which he writes.  Read the whole thing.

Watch the video to hear Goldhill’s story:

David Goldhill: “A Democrat’s Case For ‘No’” is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Moody’s has announced that it will change its methods for rating debt issued by state and local governments.  Politicians have argued that its current ratings ignore the historically low default rate of municipal bonds, resulting in higher interest rates being paid on muni debt, or so argue the politicians.

First this argument ignores that the market determines the cost of borrowing, not the rating.  And while ratings are considered by market participants, one can easily find similarly rated bonds that trade at different yields.

Second, while ratings should give some weight to historical performance, far more weight should be given to expected future performance.  Regardless of how say California-issued debt has performed in the past, does anyone doubt that California, or many other municipalities, are in fiscal straights right now?

Last and not least, politicians have no business telling rating agencies how to handle different types of investments.  We’ve been down this road before with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  During drafting of GSE reform bills in the past, politicians put constant pressure on the rating agencies to maintain Fannie and Freddie’s AAA status.

The gaming over muni ratings illustrates all the more why we need to end the rating agencies govt created monopoly.  As long as govt has imposed a system protecting the rating agencies from market pressures, those agencies will bend to the will of politicians in order to protect that status.  As Fannie and Freddie have demonstrated, it ends up being the taxpayers and the investors who ultimately pay for this political meddling.

Moody’s Caves In to Political Pressure on Municipal Bonds is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

When Rep. Collin Peterson (D- Minn. and Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee) pronounces that a farm program is too generous, you know you’ve crossed a line.

But that’s what happened recently after Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark), Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman and — oh, hey, how about that? — facing a tough re-election battle in November proposed an extra $1.1 billion in emergency farm aid be added to a jobs/tax/unemployment/kitchen sink bill going through the Senate this week. These extra handouts would flow despite the fact that the 2008 farm bill contained ”reforms” (the so-called ”permanent disaster” program) ostensibly to put an end to politically-motivated ad hoc emergency aid of just the type that Senator Lincoln is pushing now.

For those who can stomach it, this excellent article by Dan Morgan, one of the nation’s best agriculture journalists, contains plenty of background information.

A $1.1 Billion Re-Election Campaign. For the Senate. is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Democrats have lots of ambitions.  One of them is their health care overhaul, which included a lot of “pay-fors” — i.e., spending cuts that would pay for ObamaCare‘s new entitlements.  But they also want a jobs bill, a “doc fix,” and other things that require new government spending.  Those also require pay-fors — unless Democrats are willing to expand further a $1-trillion-plus deficit — and pay-fors are a scarce commodity.

Today, CongressDaily’s Anna Edney reports:

Some, though, are skeptical Democrats would use any of the pay-fors because that would mean officially declaring the reform effort dead.

“I don’t expect any effort to dismantle the reform bill until there’s no pulse,” one lobbyist said.

Right now, ObamaCare is mostly dead. And as we all know, “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead…Mostly dead is slightly alive.”

A good way to tell when ObamaCare is all dead is when Democrats start picking at the carcass for pay-fors.

How to Tell When ObamaCare Is Dead is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Andrew’s earlier post is a great overview of the context for the Head Start findings.

I thought we should also highlight the description of the Head Start Impact Study findings in the report itself (p.215/4-31):

Looking at effects on participants does not change the overall patterns found in the main analysis, which show that Head Start improved children’s language and literacy development during the program year but not later and had only one strongly confirmed impact on math ability in a negative direction. (For the 3-year-old cohort, kindergarten teachers reported poorer math skills for children in the Head Start group than children in the control group.)

This is a devastating report for proponents of government-run early childhood initiatives.

It’s past time we turn to the education reform that has proven itself through multiple random-assignment studies; school choice.

Head Start EPIC FAIL is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews has done it again: lifted my hopes up just to drop them right back down.

In November, you might recall, Mathews called for the elimination of the office of U.S. Secretary of Education. There just isn’t evidence that the Ed Sec has done much good, he wrote.

My reaction to that, of course: “Right on!”

Only sentences later, however, Mathews went on to declare that we should keep the U.S. Department of Education.

Huh?

Today, Mathews is calling for the eradication of something else that has done little demonstrable good — and has likely been a big loss – for American education: the No Child Left Behind Act. Mathews thinks that the law has run its course, and laments that under NCLB state tests — which are crucial to  standards-and-accountability-based reforms — “started soft and have gotten softer.”

The reason for this ever-squishier trend, of course, is that under NCLB states and schools are judged by test results, leading state politicians and educrats to do all they can to make good results as easy to get as possible. And no, that has not meant educating kids better — it’s meant making the tests easier to pass.

Unfortunately, despite again seeing its major failures, Mathews still can’t let go of federal education involvement. After calling for NCLB’s end, he declares that we instead need a national, federal test to judge how all states and schools are doing.

To his credit, Mathews does not propose that the feds write in-depth standards in multiple subjects, and he explicitly states that Washington should not be in the business of punishing or rewarding schools for test performance.

“Let’s let the states decide what do to with struggling schools,” he writes.

What’s especially important about this is that when there’s no money attached to test performance there’s little reason for teachers unions, administrators associations, and myriad other education interests to expend political capital gaming the tests, a major problem under NCLB.

But here’s the thing: While Mathews’ approach would do less harm than NCLB, it wouldn’t do much good. Mathews suggests that just having the feds “shame” states with bad national scores would force improvement, but we’ve seen public schools repeatedly shrug off massive ignominy since at least the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk. As long as they keep getting their money, they couldn’t care much less.

So neither tough standards nor shaming have led to much improvement. Why?

As I’ve laid out before, it’s a simple matter of incentives.

With punitive accountability, the special interests that would be held to high standards have strong motivation — and usually the power — to demand dumbed-down tests, lowered minimum scores, or many other accountability dodges.  The result: Little or no improvement.

What if there are no serious ramifications?

Then the system gets its money no matter what and again there is little or no improvement.

It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t!

So what are reformers to do? One thing: Take government — which will almost always be dominated by the people it employs — out of the accountability equation completely. Give parents control of education funds and make educators earn their pay by having to attract and satisfy customers.

Unfortunately, that still seems to be too great a leap for Jay Mathews. But one of these days, I’m certain, he’ll go all the way!

Neither Standards Nor Shame Can Do the Job is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is holding hearings today focused on Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg’s (R-NH) idea to set up a special Task Force to draft a deficit-reduction plan. The plan would get fast-tracked through Congress for a vote and “everything would be on the table.”

For taxpayers, this idea creates the threat of large tax increases on top of all the other tax increases being discussed in Congress. While the senators supporting a Task Force express valid concerns about the government’s exploding debt, the plan could launch a drive to impose a European-style value-added tax in America.

In theory, such a Task Force could come up with some meaty and long-overdue cuts to the federal budget. But nine of the senators co-sponsoring the Conrad-Gregg Task Force, including Conrad, voted in favor of the massive spending bill passed by the Senate on Sunday, which increased appropriations by 10 percent in a single year.

In calling for deficit reduction, Senator Conrad says that “it is no longer enough for Congress to simply talk about reform; it is time for action and leadership.” But Senator Conrad certainly hasn’t shown reform leadership on farm subsidies. So until he and his colleagues start restraining their own spending appetites, it’s safe to assume that ”everything on the table” really just means a sneaky, under-the-table tax increase.

Tax Hike Commission is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama gave what seems like his thousandth exclusive health care interview last night, this one to ABC News’s Charles Gibson.  In trying to sell his health care plan, the president warned that if Congress does not pass legislation controlling health care costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”  He also warned that unless health care is reformed, “your premiums will go up.”

 The president is absolutely correct about that.  The only problem is that, according to the president’s own chief health care actuary, the bills that Congress is now considering do nothing to restrain either federal health care spending or total health care costs.  In fact, Rick Foster, chief actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says that if Congress passes the bill now before the Senate, health care spending will actually increase by $234 billion more over the next 10 years than if we did nothing. 

And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the congressional bills do little or nothing to reduce the growth in insurance premiums. Even if a bill passes, premiums will roughly double by 2016, and keep rising after that.   But for millions of Americans the bill will actually make things worse.  According to CBO, the Senate bill would actually increase insurance premiums by 10-13 percent for Americans who buy their insurance through the non-group market, that is those who don’t receive insurance from their employer.  Those 10-13 percent increases are over and above the increases that would occur if we did nothing.    

On the other hand, if the president were really serious about controlling health care costs and lowering premiums, he wouldn’t need to spend trillions of dollars and take over one-sixth of the US economy; he could try some of the ideas written about here, and here, and here.

Obama on Health Care: Half Right is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• European Union to install its first president.

• How delayed economic reform in India killed 14.5 million children. More details, here.

• It always starts with “good intentions:” How urban planners destroyed the small-town atmosphere in Portland, Oregon and made congestion even worse.

• Lots of talk but little action from the Obama administration on education.

• Podcast: If the Obama administration was serious about job creation in the stimulus plan, why weren’t dollars targeted at states with higher unemployment?

Thursday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

We’ve been writing a fair amount over the last several months about increasing support for school choice among members of the Democratic Party. The focus has typically been on legislators, but a new report from the Center for Education Reform give a glimpse into possible widespread support among private-schooling Dems and Dem donors in Washington, DC.

The Trustees delves into the political affiliations of board of trustee members of the “ten most prestigious private schools that support the  D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.” Based on trustees’ total donation amounts to the two major presidential candidates in 2008, or to candidates, party committees, and parties themselves, the report suggests that trustees lean Democratic by a ratio of roughly 9 to 1.

Importantly, only about 37 percent of trustees were found to have made any contributions, so the 9-to-1 ratio doesn’t necessarily mean that trustees overall are similarly skewed. In addition, the underlying assumption seems to be that if the schools participate in the voucher program their trustees support school choice, which doesn’t necessarily follow. A trustee may very well think a school should take some voucher kids but also think the program ought not to exist. And, of course, trustees almost certainly don’t all agree one way or the other.

Those things said, this is yet more evidence supporting an increasingly inescapable conclusion: Democrats — who have historically opposed school choice much more so than Republicans — are finding that they just can’t do it anymore. There is no justification for consigning kids to awful schools.

Of course, members of both parties — or no party at all — who support only small, hamstrung programs still have a lot of thinking to do…

As The Dems Turn (To School Choice) is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog