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What the oil industry wants — in charts
In many ways, life has have never been better for the U.S. oil and gas industries. Production is booming, thanks to new fracking technology. Profits are high. There’s little chance Congress will cap carbon emissions anytime soon. What more could they ask for?
Quite a bit, it turns out. On Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute released a report full of recommendations to the Republican and Democratic committees that are crafting their party platforms this summer. Basically, this is Big Oil’s wish list. It includes everything from opening up more federal lands for drilling to avoiding strict new federal rules on gas fracking. And API has also included a whole slew of charts that help give a better sense for what’s driving the oil and gas industry. Let’s take a look.
Obama wants a clean debt-ceiling bill
President Obama and Speaker John Boehner had lunch today. Here, according to Boehner’s office, is how their discussion of the debt ceiling went:
In a discussion of the debt limit, the Speaker – who has warned that the growing debt is hurting U.S. job creation – asked the President if he is proposing that Congress pass an increase that does not include any spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. The President said, “yes.” The Speaker told the President, “as long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.”
In other words, the White House’s position, for now, is that they want a clean debt-ceiling bill. We’ll see if they stick to it.
Also from Boehner’s office: “the Speaker was very pleased with the sandwiches served.” I bet he was. They came from Taylor Gourmet, and Taylor Gourmet is delicious.
Democrats talk about cutting entitlements. Republicans don’t talk about raising taxes.
The line you often hear in Washington is that Republicans won’t talk taxes and Democrats won’t talk entitlements. The two parties, the thinking goes, are similarly irresponsible, albeit on opposite sides of the budget.
But at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2012 Fiscal Summit, there was a clear difference between Democrats and Republicans: Democrats talked constantly about how they should be talking about entitlements. Republicans reiterated their position that they won’t talk taxes.
‘Too big to fail’ watch
The five largest banks controlled $6.1 trillion in assets before the collapse. By 2012, they controlled assets worth $8.5 trillion. That is to say, they went from being “too big to fail” to being much, much bigger.
But perhaps that somehow makes them better banks? Economies of scale and all that? Not according to this study (pdf) from the Cleveland Fed:
Our calculations indicate that the cost to the economy as a whole due to increased systemic risk is of an order of magnitude larger than the potential benefits due to any economies of scale when banks are allowed to be large..
Boehner’s debt ceiling crisis would be so much worse than you think
There’s some chance that House Speaker John Boehner’s threat to provoke another debt-ceiling crisis doesn’t much matter. If it does matter, it’s only because fiscal policy has already gone very, very wrong.
As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday, “we’re likely to hit the debt limit sometime before the end of the year, but Congress has given the executive branch a set of tools that buy them some time. And those tools will probably take us into the early part of 2013, thus separating somewhat the timing of the expiry of the tax cuts and the sequester with the ultimate need for Congress to act on the debt limit.”
Lunch break: Europe’s shifting borders
A time lapse video looking at Europe’s shifting country borders from 1000 A.D. to 2003:
50 years of government spending, in one graph
Planet Money’s Lam Thuy Vo charts how our government’s spending habits have changed in the past five decades:
The clearest development has been the growth of health-care costs — 50 years ago, Medicare and Medicaid didn’t even exist. Today, the two programs account for about a quarter of all federal spending. Defense spending, meanwhile, has gone from half of the federal budget to a quarter.
It’s also worth noting that federal spending has, over the past 50 years, grown at a pretty similar rate to the rest of the economy. In 1962, the federal government spent $707 billion, accounting for 18 percent of GDP. By 2011, federal spending had inched up to account for 24 percent of the economy or, in dollar figures, $3.1 trillion.
How Greece could get itself kicked out of the euro (without even trying)
Let’s say you were an ordinary person living in Greece and had a stash of euros deposited in your local bank. You’ve been watching all the political chaos unfold on TV and listening to chatter about how Greece might exit the euro altogether. What would you do?
Get it while you can.
(Yannis Behrakis - Reuters)
Why, you’d take your euros out of your local Greek bank and put them someplace safe, like in a German bank. No sense risking the prospect that the Greek government could leave the euro zone and replace all your hard-earned money with some less-valuable drachmas.
And that’s exactly what a lot of Greeks have been doing these past two years — withdrawing about €2 to €3 billion worth of euros from the country each month. Lately, though, these withdrawals have been accelerating. A lot. On Monday, Greek depositors took out some €700 million in a single day, sending their euros elsewhere for safekeeping. It’s a rational move by those individuals. The problem, though, is that if everyone in Greece does this, it could inadvertently get Greece kicked out of the euro.
Most of us think we make good doctors
Getting a medical degree is not easy: It requires 10 years of medical education and 16,000 hours of clinical experience to get certified to provide treatment. Even so, most of us think we can make equally as good diagnoses as our doctors—as long as we have a little help from Google.
A Wolters Kluwer poll out this morning finds that not only are most consumers turning to the Internet to answer medical questions, but that they also put strong faith in their own diagnosis. Among college educated Americans, 63 percent say they have “never” misdiagnosed themselves. Add in those who have say they’ve “rarely” made a wrong call and the number jumps up to 84 percent.
Boehner’s full speech on the debt ceiling, read it here
On Tuesday, Speaker John Boehner took the stage at the Peter G. Peterson’s 2012 Fiscal Summit and outlined his intentions to again threaten the Obama administration with default in order to extract concessions on spending. I wrote a bit about why Boehner is adopting this strategy in Wednesday’s Wonkbook. But here’s his full speech:
Wonkbook: Of course Boehner wants another debt-ceiling showdown
"We shouldn’t dread the debt limit," said Speaker John Boehner at the Peter G. Peterson Fiscal Summit. "We should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction."
These comments have been the occasion for much wailing and gnashing of teeth, as if anyone, anywhere, believed that the Republicans' 2011 debt-ceiling antics were some sort of one-off. But Boehner was clear on Tuesday. "I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase," he said.
Reconciliation
— Four scenarios for an end game in Greece.
— A five-year investigation concludes that a man was wrongfully executed in Texas.
— Study: 29 percent of Americans will sleepwalk in their lifetime. (Seriously?)
— The NRCC is banking on an openly gay Republican to win in Massachusetts.
— A weirdly moving short film about plywood.
READ: Mitt Romney’s remarks on the debt
Today, in Des Moines, Iowa, Mitt Romney delivered a speech his campaign billed as a significant address on the national debt. His prepared remarks — minus some introductory material about the greatness of Iowa — follow:
Today America faces a financial crisis of debt and spending that threatens what it means to be an American. Here in the heartland you know in your hearts that it’s wrong.
The history of the filibuster, in one graph
I want to spend another moment on this great graph Todd Lindeman worked up for my column on the constitutionality of the filibuster.
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(Graph: Todd Lindeman; Data: Senate.gov)
What you’re seeing here are the number of “cloture” motions in every congressional session since 1919. Cloture is the procedure used to break a filibuster. Between 1919 and 1975, a successful cloture motion required two-thirds of the Senate. Today, it requires three-fifths, or, in cases where all 100 senators are present and voting, 60 votes. As you can see, the majority is having to try and break many, many, many more filibusters than ever before.
Just how big can car-sharing get?
About 560,000 Americans use some form of car-sharing service — mostly Zipcar — where they can rent vehicles from neighborhood lots by the hour. That sounds like a lot of people, but it’s only about 0.27 percent of all drivers in the United States.
Not living up to its potential.So what would happen if car-sharing really caught on? Tanya Snyder points to a new study (pdf) by the RAND Corporation that, in part, looks at the potential for car-sharing in the United States. Realistically, the RAND authors argue, we could see as many as 7.5 million Americans — or 4.5 percent of all eligible drivers — use car-sharing services at some unspecified point in the future. That would be a huge, huge shift, the study notes, but it’s not infeasible. Surprisingly, though, it would have only a modest impact on energy use and carbon emissions.
Obamacare repeal would cost insurers $1 trillion
Next month, America’s health insurance plans may lose $1 trillion in revenue.
It won’t have anything to do with a business deal gone awry, or 
No Obamacare? That would cost health insurers $1 trillion.
(Alex Wong - Getty Images)
Americans dropping health coverage during the recession. Instead, $1 trillion is the amount of revenue that health insurance plans can expect to lose if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act. The Court is expected to issue its opinion in late June
The figure comes from Bloomberg Government, where number crunchers have taken a look at what happens if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act and its expected expansion of health care coverage to 32 million Americans. They find that, should the Affordable Care Act be found unconstititional, insurance companies will lose $1 trillion in revenue between 2013 and 2020.
To put that in perspective, $1 trillion accounts for about 9 percent of all revenue that health insurers are expected to earn in the same period. It’s one-half of a percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Add up the annual revenues of America’s five largest banks - Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Wachovia and U.S. Bancorp- and you’re still about $500 billion short of what health plans can expect to lose if the Supreme Court decides against Obamacare.
Sen. Tom Coburn, part one: Defusing the debt bomb
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) speaks during a news conference July 18, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Coburn held the news conference to unveil a $9 trillion deficit reduction plan.
(Alex Wong - GETTY IMAGES)
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) served on the Simpson-Bowles commission, is a member of the Gang of Six, and just published “The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America.” We spoke last week in his office. This interview, which focuses on America’s debt and growth problems, is the first in a two-part series. The second interview, which focuses on health care, will be published later this week.
Ezra Klein: So ‘taxmageddon’ is coming at the end of the year. Depending on how you look at it, it’s an opportunity for Congress to trigger a massive and unnecessary fiscal crisis, or to actually get some serious legislating done on our long-term fiscal issues. Are you optimistic about the outcome?
Tom Coburn: No. But it depends on what the mix is. If President Obama is still president and we’re in control of the Senate, I think you’ll see significant attempts to get something done. But I don’t think they’ll be much more successful than what we saw in August. And I wouldn’t consider that very successful. If Romney wins and we win control in the Senate, we have to send a signal that we’re going to fix it in order to take away all that potential risk to the economy. You have to say we’ll work all over the Christmas holidays to get it fixed.
EK: When you look at the Romney scenario, it seems Republicans have spent a few years now learning how to take tough votes on the budget, particularly on the Ryan plan. So if Republicans control the House and Senate, it seems to me that you’d see quite dramatic action on those issues, as they can be passed with 51 votes through budget reconciliation.
California’s political crisis — and ours
With California’s worsening fiscal condition back in the news, I’m reposting this 2010 column on the political dimensions of California’s problems — and the way they could spread to the rest of the nation.
California Gov. Jerry Brown introduces his state budget proposal at the State Capitol in Sacramento.
(Max Whittaker - Reuters)
California’s fiscal crisis will look sadly familiar to close watchers of the national checkbook. That’s because California is not having a fiscal crisis so much as a political crisis. The trigger may have been the recession, but the root cause was written into the state Constitution, and it was visible long before the housing boom went bust.
Lunch break: Where good ideas come from
Author Steven Johnson lectures — alongside some helpful illustrations — on where good ideas come from.
What LBJ knew about the Senate
President Lyndon B. Johnson is often used as evidence that a sufficiently persuasive president can force Congress to do what he wants. But it turns out Johnson wasn’t a big fan of the great-man theory of presidential bullying. The fourth volume of Robert Caro’s biography quotes Johnson explaining to his aides why they couldn’t steamroll Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.):
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Blog Contributors
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.
Suzy Khimm
Suzy Khimm covers the budget, economic policy, and financial regulatory reform. Before coming to Washington, she was based in Brazil and Southeast Asia, where she wrote for the Economist, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal Asia. Follow her on Twitter here, and email her here.
Sarah Kliff
Sarah Kliff covers health policy, focusing on Medicare, Medicaid and the health reform law. She tries to fit in some reproductive health and education policy coverage, too, alongside an occasional hockey reference. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Politico, and the BBC. She is on Twitter and Facebook.
Brad Plumer
Brad Plumer is a reporter focusing on energy and environmental issues. He was previously an associate editor at The New Republic. Follow him on Twitter. Email him here.
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