Research

On Wednesday Obama said he “will do everything in [his] power to make the case for reform.” Given the Chicago-style ways of his White House, we wonder how far he’ll go to ram his government-run health care experiment through Congress. If the current state of Dem v. Dem chaos is any indication, he has a long way to go.

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) said the mood in the House is “fragile.” That’s no surprise since Speaker Pelosi’s office won’t commit to the White House’s timeline, House Dems don’t trust the Senate to pass Obama’s reconciliation bill, and a growing number of Dems aren’t happy with what they see. One Democrat so far has changed his mind to oppose Obama’s reform. Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-NY) plans to vote against the Senate bill even though he voted for Pelosi’s government-run health care bill in November.

To see who’s saying what, check out our Research Briefing, “Chaos XXV: Who’s On First?”

Back in January, President Obama introduced his so-called “financial crisis responsibility fee” in a desperate populist attempt to attack and punish banks. So Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked the CBO to do an analysis of the proposal to see if Obama’s rhetoric held up to reality. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t.

RHETORIC: Obama argued that this so-called fee would “be imposed on major financial firms until the American people are fully compensated for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street.”

• REALITY: CBO says the banks paying the tax “would not be those that are directly responsible for losses realized by the Troubled Asset Relief Program.”

RHETORIC: Obama argued that this so-called fee “won’t be passed along to retail customers.”

• REALITY: CBO says the “cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors …”

RHETORIC: At the same time Obama was pushing this tax, he was also ... more