"It isn't fiscally irresponsible to raise the debt limit, I think it would be rather irresponsible not to raise the debt limit because we have already incurred the bill."

The Concord Coalition is looking to hire a research assistant to help with the Washington Budget Report and other Concord policy work.

For the full position listing and application submission click here.

When we finished our issue brief on the health care reform "endgame" before the holidays, we had a difficult time trying to isolate the key 10-year costs and savings of different components of the legislation. Now that we have had a bit more time with the final House and Senate versions of the legislation and the CBO analyses, we wanted to present the following table:

Related Media: 

With the House having passed its version of health care reform (H.R. 3962) and the Senate on the verge of passing its version (H.R. 3590), the outline of a final bill is beginning to take shape.

As mentioned in the last post, the Senate dramatically weakened the Independent Medicare Advisory Board in the health care legislation currently being debated.

As you have read here, here, and here, The Concord Coalition firmly believes that having an independent Medicare commission is one of the most important elements being considered in current health care reform legislation.

This week marks the debut of Concord's new, online budget game -- The Federal Budget Challenge.

I have written a lot in this blog about the Congressional Budget Office and their estimates (here is the latest example). Today, the Washington Post has another great article explaining the process.

I spent much of the last week in San Francisco assisting our Northern California Fiscal Advisory Council in their discussions of the possible solutions to the country's fiscal challenges.

The big news this week on the health care front was the release of the Senate Finance Committee's initial draft of its health care legislation. The big interest in the budget world with this development is that it marked the first complete reform legislation with a score from CBO that shows deficit reduction, not only during the 10-year budget window but also in the years beyond.