Word: congressed
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Capitol Hill, meanwhile, hums at peak capacity. Congress is frantically stacking pet projects into a trillion-dollar tower in hopes that--by painting the word stimulus down the side--it will lift off like an economic rocket. There is no Plan B. The hero of recessions past--the American shopper--has left the mall. For the first time in its history, the National Retail Federation predicts consumers will actually spend less over the coming year. Super Spender can't save the day when stuck in the unemployment line...
...Lawrence H. Summers has already been working for about nine hours, having checked the markets, read the newspapers, met with senior White House staff, finished his daily briefing to President Obama, visited both houses of Congress to discuss the stimulus plan and pulled aside a few Senators to lobby them personally. In days prior, he helped lead meetings on the banking crisis, the next federal budget, health-care reform, changes to Medicare and Social Security and a pending reregulation of the financial markets. The litany of crises would give an army of economists the shakes, but it doesn't seem...
...McConnell has told Obama in person that his party favors entitlement reform and would work for passage if both parties shared the risk. Republicans have always been keener than Democrats about curbing the automatic-spending programs, but the depth of the GOP's appetite for reform is uncertain because Congress has not taken a real vote on entitlement cuts since the early 1980s...
...northwest-Washington apartment, from which his wife Elisa New plans to commute to her job as an English professor at Harvard. (Each has three children from a previous marriage.) About 13 hours later, after meetings on a dizzying array of topics, he returns home to read reports from Congress or the Group of Thirty, an international body of economists, and call a network of peers who advise him. "I have aged, so I don't think I have called anyone after 11 o'clock since this job," he jokes about his reputation for having late-night debates with friends...
...journalism business over the years--but this struck me as too bad to be true. And on closer examination, it is. About $40 trillion of PGP's $56 trillion in liabilities is its calculation of future Medicare and Social Security benefits ($34 trillion of it is Medicare alone), which Congress has promised to future senior citizens but has made no provision to pay for. This is the entitlements nightmare we hear so much about. Trouble is, the PGP folks seem to have forgotten about this $40 trillion of dubious promises when totting up the assets of people who will...