ObamaCare in peril? Questionable sign-ups, delays mar launch

Three weeks out from the ObamaCare enrollment deadline, the president's signature health care law is facing ever-increasing challenges which go far beyond the program's troubled exchange websites. 
Raising questions whether it's a crippled law that's near impossible to implement along its mandated timetable, key elements of the act continue to unilaterally be pushed off by the administration. Lawmakers are raising concerns about the security of the ObamaCare websites, even as the many "glitches" that blocked would-be enrollees are fixed. 
And at the heart of the Affordable Care Act's problems is the question of whether it will do what President Obama said -- cover a large swath of the country's 47 million uninsured. 
The numbers the administration is using to tout its progress to that end are coming under the microscope. While officials say 4 million have signed up for private insurance on the exchanges so far -- still short of the unofficial 7 million goal by the end of March -- it's unclear how many of them were previously uninsured. 
A new pair of studies suggests not very many, meaning Obama's target audience largely has not been reached. 
A startling study by McKinsey & Co. showed that of the uninsured eligible to sign up for an ObamaCare private plan, just 10 percent said they had done so. Further, it found that just a quarter of those who did sign up for coverage in the marketplaces were previously uninsured. That suggests the bulk of those signing up are simply switching from one plan to another, some facing higher premiums in the process. 
Further, the administration apparently has no idea how successful the program is when it comes to the core goal of signing up the uninsured. The National Journal reported that Gary Cohen, the health official at the helm of the insurance marketplaces who will soon be stepping down, said the administration is not really tracking that. 
"That's not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way," Cohen reportedly said. 
Health agency spokesman Aaron Albright told Fox News on Friday that they are now "looking at a range of data sources" to figure that out. 
Reports of slow sign-ups and rising premiums have only emboldened Republicans fighting against the law. Four years after its passage, the law's defeat was still the central rallying cry at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington this week. 
"When ObamaCare was debated in Congress, we screamed from the rooftops that it just wouldn't work -- that it would be a job killer; that it would absolutely make health care more expensive and less accessible for millions of Americans," Sen John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Friday at the conference. "We were accused of somehow being heartless and misinformed. But now, four years later, our predictions have come true." 
The other chunk of ObamaCare-related sign-ups comes from Medicaid, which was expanded under the health care law. But while the administration recently touted that nearly 9 million were found eligible since the October launch, new estimates show just about 3 million of them were newly registered because of the health care law. 
The central concern at this stage is whether the insurance industry is seeing enough sign-ups -- insurers were relying on an infusion of young and healthy customers in order to offset the cost of insuring everyone else and complying with other provisions in the law. 
Without the proper mix of customers, premiums could rise. Asked about the McKinsey study, America's Health Insurance Plans spokesman Robert Zirkelbach said that what "ultimately matters" is who signs up, not necessarily how many sign up. 
Meanwhile, other implementation problems threaten to exacerbate the industry's concerns. 
The administration this week announced that it would let people keep plans that would otherwise be out of compliance for another two years. This was an extension of a "fix" Obama made for all those whose policies were canceled, after he was accused of misleading voters in claiming anyone who liked their health plan could keep it. 
But that potentially deprives insurers of even more revenue. Insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski reportedly said this week that insurers are "very worried" now about the sign-ups. 
Hanging over all of these implementation problems is the 2014 midterm elections, and a sizeable group of Democrats nervous about the law's more unpopular provisions going into that vote. 
Lead among them would be the individual mandate requiring people to buy insurance. In the latest dose of bad news, The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to the Tax Policy Center, the penalty for not buying insurance could be a lot higher than the $95 fine Americans usually hear about. 
The House voted Wednesday to delay the tax penalty for one year, with more than two-dozen Democrats supporting the bill. 
In another looming confrontation, House Republicans plan to tie the so-called "doc fix" to a decade-long postponement of the mandate. The "doc fix" is a semi-routine patch by Congress to prevent doctors from seeing a massive cut in their Medicare reimbursement rate. The current one runs out at the end of this month. 
A spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the GOP plan a "new low."

How much did YOUR vote count?

How much did YOUR vote count? Because of the Electoral College, a vote from Wyoming is worth 3.8 times as much as a vote from California. This table shows a state by state comparison of the power of each vote. The column on the right represents how much a vote is worth, compared to how much it would be worth if all votes were treated equally. Note, if the United States simply used the Popular Vote to decide elections, all the numbers in the right column would be "1.00".

State	Population	Electors	People Per Elector	Vote Power
Wyoming	479602	3	159867	3.17
D.C	519000	3	173000	2.93
Vermont	593740	3	197913	2.56
Alaska	619500	3	206500	2.45
North Dakota	633666	3	211222	2.40
South Dakota	733133	3	244378	2.07
Rhode Island	990819	4	247705	2.05
Delaware	753538	3	251179	2.02
Montana	882779	3	294260	1.72
Hawaii	1185497	4	296374	1.71
New Hampshire	1201134	4	300284	1.69
Idaho	1251700	4	312925	1.62
Maine	1253040	4	313260	1.62
Nebraska	1666028	5	333206	1.52
New Mexico	1739844	5	347969	1.46
West Virginia	1806928	5	361386	1.40
Mississippi	2768619	7	395517	1.28
Iowa	2869413	7	409916	1.24
Connecticut	3282031	8	410254	1.24
Oklahoma	3358044	8	419756	1.21
Arkansas	2551373	6	425229	1.19
Utah	2129836	5	425967	1.19
Kansas	2654052	6	442342	1.15
Nevada	1809253	4	452313	1.12
Oregon	3316154	7	473736	1.07
Wisconsin	5250446	11	477313	1.06
Minnesota	4775508	10	477551	1.06
Alabama	4369862	9	485540	1.04
South Carolina	3885736	8	485717	1.04
Louisiana	4372035	9	485781	1.04
Kentucky	3960825	8	495103	1.02
Indiana	5942901	12	495242	1.02
Missouri	5468338	11	497121	1.02
Tennessee	5483535	11	498503	1.02
Colorado	4056133	8	507017	1.00
Massachusetts	6175169	12	514597	0.98
Maryland	5171634	10	517163	0.98
Pennsylvania	11994016	23	521479	0.97
Washington	5756361	11	523306	0.97
Virginia	6872912	13	528686	0.96
Ohio	11256654	21	536031	0.95
New Jersey	8143412	15	542894	0.93
North Carolina	7650789	14	546485	0.93
Michigan	9863775	18	547988	0.92
Illinois	12128370	22	551290	0.92
New York	18196601	33	551412	0.92
Arizona	4778332	8	597292	0.85
Georgia	7788240	13	599095	0.85
Florida	15111244	25	604450	0.84
California	33145121	54	613796	0.83
Texas	20044141	32	626379	0.81

The way the "vote power" column was calculated is as follows. The United States has a population of 272,690,813. (Population numbers are taken from the US Census 1999 estimate, from this page.) Since there are 538 Electors in the Electoral College, the average Elector represents about 506,860. The large (in population) states are given approximately about as many Electors as is proportionate to their population. However, the smaller states are given up to 3 times as many Electors as they should get if they were handed out proportionately to their population. If you divide they average number of People Per Elector (506,860) by the People Per Elector from a particular state, you get the number of effective votes per person for that state. For example, from Wyoming, divide 506,860 by 159,867 and you see that a vote from Wyoming is worth about 3.17 times as much as the average American's vote.
An alternate way to do the calculation would be to divide the percent of the Electoral Vote the state takes up by the percent of the national population it takes up. Wyoming makes up 3/538 of the Electoral College, or about 0.558%. However, it only makes up (479,602 / 272,690,813) = 0.176% of the national vote. Divide those two numbers and you see that Wyoming's voters count (0.558% / 0.176%) = 3.17 times as much as they should if all votes were treated equally. Either way you do the calculation, you should get the same answer.
Is this fair?
Is it fair that 0.176% of the population (Wyoming) gets 0.558% voting power of who gets to be the next president? Or how about the people of California, who make up 12% of the country, but only get 10% of the Electoral Votes?
Winning the Popular Vote by 13% and still losing the election
Based on the fact that the Electoral College makes some Americans' votes more than others (votes from smaller states are generally worth more than votes from larger states), it is possible for one Candidate A to get 56.5% of the popular vote and still lose to Candidate B, who only got 43.5%.
Let's say Candidate A wins eleven of the most populous states: Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, New York, Texas, and California. These states represent 56.5% of the population (154,051,863 people), but only 268 Electoral College votes. Candidate B wins the rest of the states (including D.C.), which represent 43.5% of the population (118,638,950 people) and 270 Electoral College votes, giving him (or her) the election.
Candidate A - 56.5% of popular vote, 268 Electoral Votes
Candidate B - 43.5% of popular vote, 270 Electoral Votes
Is it fair that someone could win the Popular Vote by a 13% margin and still lose the election?

Even Worse: Winning the Popular Vote by 56.5% and still losing the election
If we take into account that each state gives ALL of their Electoral Votes to a single candidate, even when he wins by a single vote, things get even worse. If Candidate B won Wyoming by a single vote (239,801 to 239,800) he would still get all 3 of Wyoming's Electors. Assuming this happened in all of Candidate B's states (winning each one by 50.001%), and assuming Candidate A won all of his states 100% to nothing, the margin gets a lot bigger. Candidate A could get 78.25% of the Popular Vote and still lose, compared to Candidate B's only 21.75%.
Candidate A - 78.25% of popular vote, 268 Electoral Votes
Candidate B - 21.75% of popular vote, 270 Electoral Votes
Does it seem fair that someone could win the Popular Vote by a 56.5% margin and still lose the election? Candidate A could get more than THREE TIMES as many popular votes as Candidate B and still LOSE the election. Does this seem like equal protection under the law?

Election 2000
Right now Gore leads by over 250,000 votes in the Popular Vote, but Bush could win the Electoral Vote if Florida goes his way. In the example above, the candidate who won by 56.5% of the Popular Vote still lost the election. With Candidate B winning even though the popular vote was 21.75% to 78.25%, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE was CLEARLY disregarded. The votes of the extra 56.5% of the population who voted for Candidate A were not heard because of the unfair way the votes are counted into the Electoral College. Those voters were cheated, and their votes were not treated fairly. While not nearly as extreme as this example, the extra 250,000 people (about 1% of the population) who voted for Gore were also cheated, because their votes were not treated equally. Not unless the votes are given equal power, and every American voter is given equal protection under the law, is the will of the people honored.
This Electoral College analysis was done by Robert Glen.

'Reunited' Tea Party activists mount battle against IRS at CPAC

OXON HILL, Md. –  The IRS targeting scandal may have faded from the headlines of major newspapers, but Tea Party groups renewed their battle cry against the tax agency on Thursday as the Conservative Political Action Conference got underway. 
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, kicked off CPAC -- the annual conservative pilgrimage just outside the nation's capital -- by telling a crowd of the GOP faithful, "We need to abolish the IRS." 
"By virtue of your being here today, tomorrow each and every one of you is going to be audited by the IRS," he said.
Following his speech, a six-person panel discussion, titled "IRS Targeting Scandal: Protecting the Voice of the People," served as a refresher course for the standing-room-only crowd packed into the Maryland meeting room.
The purpose, panelists told FoxNews.com, was to come together and share stories about what they say are abusive targeting practices of conservative groups at the hands of the tax-collecting agency.
But for Bill Norton, head of the Tea Party Patriots, the actions of the IRS go beyond harassing conservatives. He says the actions of the government agency trample on the First Amendment rights of everyone.
"Freedom of speech is very essential," Norton said. "It's not about the Tea Party targeting but about targeting free speech."
Panelist Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, said the IRS scandal has "united and reunited this movement ... standing up against the IRS."
"People used to not speak out commonly against the IRS," he said. "Victory, part one, is that we are calling out the IRS and we can do that for the first time together."
Sekulow also raised the possibility that the newest plot twist involving Lois Lerner -- the ex-IRS official who first publicly acknowledged the targeting -- smacks of a government cover-up. 
During a House hearing on Wednesday, Lerner once again invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify. Last year, Lerner also refused to answer questions about her role in singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
The mystery of her refusal to testify for a second time is what Seklow says is disconcerting.
"We already know Lois Lerner is at the center of this," he said. "She is not going to be able to talk her way out of it. But how high up does this go?"
He added, "There are lots of people involved but at the end of the day, she decided not to testify. Something happened. What happened?"
At times. the crowd clapped, cheered and expressed anger as Kevin Kookogey, founder and president of Linchpins of Liberty, detailed his story at the hands of the IRS.
Kookogey, said the tax agency slow-walked his application for 501(c)(3) status. He says what should have taken two to four months stretched out over 35 months and ended up costing him a $30,000 grant. He said he also lost 75 percent of his business because his clients did not want to associate with someone being looked at by "the largest and most intimidating organization in the world."
Eventually, he said, he did get his application approved but "it was like a lifeguard had tossed a preserve to a swimmer who had already drowned."

Fox News poll: 67 percent would vote out all current lawmakers

Most voters would oust all current members of Congress -- including their own senators and representative -- if given the opportunity, the latest Fox News poll finds.
By a 67-26 percent margin, voters would kick everybody on Capitol Hill to the curb and replace them with new people. That includes two-thirds of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
The result is perhaps not so surprising, given how voters feel about lawmakers these days: just 12 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, while 78 percent disapprove.
READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS
Congress received a record-low 9 percent approval rating in October 2013.
Democratic candidates hold a slim two-percentage point advantage when voters are asked about their preference for Congress this year.
Forty percent of voters would back the Democratic candidate in their House district if the election were held today, versus 38 percent who would vote for the Republican.
"I don't want to go all Jimmy Carter on everyone, but there does seem to be a general malaise amongst the electorate," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News poll with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. "This may help Republicans in the fall, but based on the economic evaluations, the generic ballot, and ratings of prominent Republicans, right now voters give both President Obama and the GOP the thumbs down."
The parties have been close on this generic ballot test in recent months. Republicans had a two-point edge in January, and in December it was tied.
The small Democratic advantage of the moment does not include a coat-tails effect from Obama. Overall, 44 percent of voters say they would be less likely to support a candidate if Obama campaigns for them, while 31 percent would be more likely to back him or her.
Independents are more than twice as likely to vote against (45 percent) a candidate Obama campaigns for rather than support that candidate (18 percent).
It’s the same story for former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate he supports by 14 points (41-27 percent).
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, is also no vote magnet: by an 8-point margin voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate he backs (26-18 percent), while 38 percent say it wouldn’t matter to their vote.
The only person tested who would do more good than harm for a candidate is former President Bill Clinton. Forty percent of voters say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate he backed, while 31 percent say less likely.
When it comes to issues, 43 percent of voters say they would be less likely to support a candidate who backs the health care law, while 30 percent would be more likely. Another 25 percent say it wouldn’t matter to their vote.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,002 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from March 2 to March 4, 2014. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for the total sample.

GOP lawmakers fight Dem push to punish Issa for IRS hearing actions

House Republicans are fending off aggressive efforts by Democrats to punish Rep. Darrell Issa for cutting off Dem. Rep. Elijah Cummings during a heated hearing on the IRS targeting scandal.
House Republicans are fending off aggressive efforts by Democrats to punish Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., for cutting off a Democratic congressman during a heated hearing on the IRS targeting scandal.
The House voted Thursday afternoon to block a resolution that would formally chastise the chairman of the House oversight committee for his conduct at Wednesday's hearing.
The vote was along party lines, 211-186, with 10 members voting present. Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, had offered the resolution, which called Issa's behavior "offensive and disrespectful."
Fudge also penned a letter to House Speaker John Boehner urging the speaker to strip Issa of his chairmanship "immediately."
"Congressman Darrell Issa of California abused his authority and therefore must be reprimanded to ensure the dignity of the House of Representatives is preserved," Fudge wrote, calling him a "disgrace."
Boehner, though, brushed off the Democratic complaints.
"Mr. Issa was within his rights to adjourn the hearing when he did," Boehner said.
Issa shut down the committee hearing on Wednesday when the IRS official at the center of the scandal involving targeting of conservative groups, Lois Lerner, again invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked a series of questions.
In doing so, Issa cut off Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings' microphone as Cummings, the panel's top Democrat, continued to speak.
"You cannot just have a one-sided investigation," Cummings shouted. "There is absolutely something wrong with that. That is absolutely un-American."
Issa, though, defended his actions and told reporters after the hearing: "He was not directing questions toward the witness and the committee [had] already adjourned."
He later told Fox News that Cummings "was simply endlessly slandering the efforts of the committee."
Members of both parties, though, have apparently criticized Issa's actions.
During a press conference on Thursday, Cummings said several Republicans on the committee apologized to him for Issa's actions.
A senior House Republican aide told Fox News that "Issa needs to learn self-control. Now all of our members have to defend his poor actions."
Some of the Democratic criticism, though, has become increasingly personal.   
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz linked cutting the microphone to oppression in Venezuela and Ukraine.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson called Issa's behavior "crude, wrong, racist and mean."
Issa and Cummings are not yet back on speaking terms.

Congressional investigators to probe troubled state ObamaCare exchanges

The investigative arm of Congress on Wednesday agreed to look into problems with state health exchange websites around the country.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office accepted an initial request from a group of House Republicans seeking an audit on how $304 million in federal grants were spent on the Cover Oregon website, which has yet to enroll a single person online without special assistance.
The agency said due to similar requests from several members of Congress and congressional committees related to the rollout of online health care exchanges, it would broaden the investigation and issue several separate reports on its findings.
GAO spokesman Charles Young said just which states will be included with Oregon will be determined as the investigation goes forward. But 14 states and the District of Columbia opted to create their own exchanges and accepted federal funding to do so.
Republicans have been stepping up their attacks on troubled health exchanges during this election year, but Rep. Greg. Walden, R-Ore., said it was a non-partisan issue.
He noted Oregon Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley made their own requests for the GAO to investigate a day after the Republicans -- Walden, House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan, and Reps. Joe Pitts and Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania -- filed theirs last month.
"The politics will play out where they may, good or bad," Walden said. "That doesn't mean you don't ask questions. We need to get answers."
Merkley said in a statement that he looked forward to the GAO's recommendations "about how to fix the system and avoid this happening in the future."
Cover Oregon spokesman Michael Cox said, "We will participate fully with the GAO as they conduct their work."
Walden added that the probe of state websites would "piggyback nicely" on another GAO look at the federal health exchange website, which has already begun.
Separately, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has asked for an inspector general's investigation into problems with the rollout of the health care law.
Some of the state exchanges have outperformed the federal exchange website, but others have trailed behind and faced significant challenges, including expensive fixes to glitches and lower projected enrollments.
In addition to Oregon, where residents on their own still can't sign up for coverage in one sitting, the exchanges in Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Minnesota have faced major problems.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, called the investigation a political stunt.
"With House Republicans voting today for the 50th time to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it is disappointing but not surprising that Republicans are now using federal government resources to investigate state health exchanges instead of finding a productive way to help Americans access health care," Schatz said in an emailed comment.
States with successful exchanges include Connecticut, Rhode Island, Kentucky and New York. Connecticut, which has far exceeded its enrollment goals for the open enrollment period, is setting up a consulting business and marketing an "exchange in a box" to other states.
Cover Oregon's online enrollment system was supposed to launch in October, allowing individuals and small businesses to compare insurance plans and qualify for federal tax credits to subsidize the premiums. It wasn't ready, however, forcing people to fill out a lengthy paper application that would have to be processed by hand. Pieces of the website are now working and some portions of the processing are automated, but significant problems still exist.
Republicans have contended problems were known for months before the launch. Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, has acknowledged mistakes were made but denies having prior knowledge of problems that kept the website from launching on time.
Other questions raised by the Republican request, crafted in consultation with the GAO, include:
-- What capability does the federal government have to reclaim those funds if Oregon abandons the state-run exchange and joins the federal one?
-- What other costs has Oregon incurred because of the website's failure?
-- Did Cover Oregon's status as a state organization play a role in its failure?
-- What steps could federal agencies have taken to assure state and federal oversight of projects like this in the future.
The Wyden-Merkley request asks more questions:
-- How were the federal funds used, including job creation, public and private contractors, software developers, and consumer education?
-- What efforts to enroll people outside the website have been successful, and what can be done to expand enrollment ahead of the March 31 deadline?
-- If taxpayer funds were mismanaged, can the federal government reclaim grant funds from contractors?
-- Was there anything in the Affordable Care Act that Cover Oregon did not respond to in its creation?
-- What can Oregon do to most quickly and efficiently overcome Cover Oregon's problems and enroll more people?

Budget proposal won’t tame debt, interest would soon exceed military spending

President Obama's latest budget proposal paints a troubling picture of America's fiscal future. 
Here's a startling snapshot:   
-- By 2024, the total national debt would rise from $17.4 trillion to nearly $25 trillion.
-- By 2020, U.S. taxpayers would be paying more in interest on the debt than they would on the entire Defense budget.
-- By 2017, those interest payments would be bigger than the budget for Medicaid.
Despite Democratic claims that President Obama has tackled the deficit, the numbers give a sense of what fiscal hawks -- who have not given up their fight despite an election-year aversion to dealing with the debt -- are so worried about.
"We can't let election-year malaise be an excuse for inaction on such an important issue," Maya MacGuineas, of the Fix the Debt Campaign, said in a statement.
White House officials appear to be declaring a victory of sorts over the deficit -- which is the annual budget shortfall. A White House statement touted the fact that "the deficit has been cut in half as a share of the economy" under Obama.
It is true that under the budget blueprint, the 2015 deficit would shrink to $564 billion from $649 billion this year. That's a sharp fall from year after year of $1 trillion-plus deficits during Obama's first term.
But even when the deficit shrinks, the national debt -- which basically is the nation's ultra-platinum credit card tab -- will continue to grow. A lot.
And every year the debt grows, the interest on that debt also grows, crowding out needed funding for everything from the military to education to infrastructure to entitlements.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said he's concerned that the fastest-growing part of the budget may actually be the interest.
"We are not going to be able to sustain the safety net that we have in this country with this kind of debt," he told Fox News, warning of a "super-sized" government whose budget "will never balance."
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the president's proposal will continue to inflict "an excruciating financial toll."
According to White House budget documents, the proposal shows the interest on the debt rising from $223 billion this year to more than $800 billion a decade from now.
What startles lawmakers is how that rapid rise compares with other parts of the budget.
The proposal shows the Defense budget shrinking from $612 billion today to $583 billion in 2020. That same year, the interest on the debt would soar past $600 billion. Soon, it would begin to crowd out other vital areas of the budget as well.
In arguing that the budget plan represents "fiscal responsibility," Obama administration officials point to a select stat -- the percentage the deficit or debt represents as a share of the economy. The White House budget documents show that percentage, in both cases, dipping over the next decade. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director of the Office of Management and Budget, referred to this as "stabilizing our debt-to-GDP ratio."
But that assumes the economy will not fall victim to another recession. And even when the percentage drops, the debt total keeps rising.
"Although debt would decline as a share of GDP under the president's budget, it will be far too high and could be even higher if the economy doesn't grow as the president hopes or other assumptions in the budget prove to be too optimistic," MacGuineas said.
Many members of Congress, though, have been just as reluctant as members of the administration to take on tough long-term talks about tackling the debt. Past talks between Obama and Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner failed to produce a so-called "grand bargain," leaving both sides feeling burned by the effort. Republicans blame Democrats for pursuing tax increases and shielding some entitlement spending, while Democrats blame Republicans for their stalwart opposition to most tax hikes.
The White House says that it will nevertheless push for some savings in the budget plan, including $402 billion in "health savings" and $650 billion from proposed tax reform over the next decade.
Congress is likely to go its own way on the budget all the same, but the current fiscal trajectory is not much different than the one Obama proposes.

Red Line