Glenn Hubbard, the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, has an op-ed on the budget in today's Wall Street Journal. The good news is that, in addition to demanding spending cuts, Hubbard sorta-hypothetically concedes that tax increases might be needed. The bad news is that, like any good movement conservative, he insists such tax hikes must be regressive:

Where's health care reform? "Inside the five yard line," says Robert Gibbs. On the two yard-line, says President Obama.

Greg Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, explains that President Obama's large bank tax is pretty straightforward economics:

One thing we have learned over the past couple years is that Washington is not going to let large financial institutions fail.  The bailouts of the past will surely lead people to expect bailouts in the future.  Bailouts are a specific type of subsidy--a contingent subsidy, but a subsidy nonetheless.

While Congress slogs through the final months of the health reform debate, the American people remain focused on the economy. With good reason: We’re in a very deep hole, and it’s not clear how we’re going to get out. 

So the first tranche of quarterly data tracking where federal stimulus dollars are going and how they are being used is out and the answer is… well, it’s pretty hard to say.

Here are the straight numbers: Roughly, 5,200 federal contractors received around 9,100 contracts worth about $16 billion that created or saved a little over 30,000 jobs. But what do those really mean?

Sure, it’s an admirable presentation, with the official Recovery.gov website heralding all sorts of new maps and tables listing places, names, projects, and job counts. And if meaningful, the numbers are underwhelming, to say the least, given that the count of 30,000 jobs created or saved falls far below earlier estimates from the Council of Economic Advisors that the stimulus package had saved or created one million jobs by this time.  

But unfortunately, the numbers aren’t very meaningful. Rather than reflecting definitively on recovery progress, they are fragmentary and unsatisfying--and the problem has a great deal to do with recovery reporting.

According to the CBO, enacting President Obama's FY 2010 budget would yield annual budget deficits averaging 5.3 percent over the next decade, with a steadily rising trajectory after 2013 ("A Preliminary Analysis of the President's Budget, March 2009, Table 1-4, p. 10).  The administration has consistently argued that the key remedy for this unsustainable path is comprehensive health care reform-specifically, the cost containment measures for which universal coverage is the precondition.

It got dry, and that must be the influence of global warming. Wait--then there were downpours, which proved the greenhouse effect. A monster hurricane crossed North Carolina; global warming must be the cause. No, wait--out comes a book about the most deadly hurricane in U.S. history, which hit in 1900, long before there was greenhouse gas buildup. Snowfall has decreased some in recent years, and that must prove global warming. But wait--when cities were snowed in during the winter of 1996-1997, commentators blamed greenhouse disruption.