Justin Gardner (Donk Quixote) and Mike Wallach (Phanto), endeavor to tilt at windmills (With apologies to Miguel de Cervantes). Justin is a registered Democrat, considers himself an independent but views the world from the left side of the political spectrum. Mike most recently registered as a Republican, but considers himself primarily a fiscal conservative, deficit hawk, and a libertarian leaning independent. They find common ground in the Health Care Reform debate.

Now that the House has left for summer recess, with the Senate leaving in a week, it’s a perfect time to look back and see what may have gone wrong in the Democrats’ plan to pass a major health care reform package before this week had passed. Most people tend to focus on the policy [...]

In my last post I detailed some of the roadblocks that have kept the Democratic leadership in Washington from finding a way to pass a major health care reform bill with a public option. They’ve whittled the cost of the bill down a few hundred billion dollars by negotiating concessions from drug companies and hospitals, [...]

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

Kevin Hassett (whose American Enterprise Institute affiliation probably tells you all you need to know about his economic opinions) has written a skewering critique of Obamanomics. But what’s interesting is not that he calls the Obama administration the most fiscally irresponsible in history, but that he uses California’s monetary problems as evidence that moderate Democrats [...]

On Thursday, President Obama announced support for a new bill aimed at protecting credit card holders.
As early as next week, House Democrats expect to act on a bill that would make it harder for the industry to slap new fees and rates on cardholders while also requiring clearer disclosure of the costs and risks for [...]

I’ve already seen many scoff at Obama’s pledge to go line by line through the budget, but aren’t those the same people who are calling for less government spending?
It would be heartening to see the following moves applauded instead of ridiculed, especially since all we hear from the right wing these days is how [...]

First, he talks about how he’s going to start talking about all the spending he’s going to cut in the coming weeks. I wonder if it’ll quiet critics who say he’s spending us into the poor house. Probably not, but I’ll keep my eye out nonetheless.
He also introduces the Chief Performance Officer and Chief Technology [...]

Mona Charen of National Review Online notes that major media outside of Fox News either ignored the tax day tea parties or took an adversarial tone in reporting on them. Charen rightly notes that part of the problem is that Fox News promoted and actively participated in the events, giving other news outlets the excuse [...]

“We can only turn the page from recession to recovery if we watch every single taxpayer dollar the way families watch every dollar in their budget.”
Who said this? A fiscal conservative appalled at the unrestrained level of spending coming out of congress? Nope. It was the estimable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid opposing a decrease [...]

At the center of President Obama’s overhaul strategy for Wall Street are the “stress tests” which will be applied to all financial institutions. But how accurate will the test results be? That will depend on whether the treasury takes off-balance-sheet assets into account, experts say.
This is Danielle Ivory, reporting from the American News Project and [...]

Over at The Atlantic, Megan McArdle supported Barack Obama’s candidacy because of his economic team. Now, she worries that support may have been misplaced. Namely, she thinks Obama’s budget numbers are insane (her words) and the stimulus package was far too ideological.
The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard [...]

It’s not just out-of-touch Republicans and us lonely Centrists who are disturbed by the profligate spending of Congress. Joining the call for fiscal sanity is none other than Democratic Senator (and one-time VP hopeful) Evan Bayh. In a Wall Street Journal editorial, he writes:
This week, the United States Senate will vote on a spending package [...]