Some of the day’s best reads:
- Jonathan Bernstein on counting House votes for health reform: “What I do think is worthwhile is thinking about the general situation, which remains about the same: there are about fifty Members of the House whose preferred outcome is bill passes, they vote no, and whose second choice outcome is probably to have the bill pass with their support.”
- Clive Crook on ideas to raise tax revenues: “There are countless stupid ways to raise more tax revenue but really just three intelligent ways. First, introduce a carbon tax; second, broaden the base of the income tax; third, design a national sales or value-added tax.”
- The NRDC on California’s leadership on energy efficiency: “California has shown once again that it’s faster, cheaper, and cleaner to save energy than to produce it.”
- William Galston on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget: “Despite drastic reductions in both discretionary domestic spending and entitlement programs whose wisdom and political viability is questionable at best, the roadmap contemplates budget deficits of 5 percent as late as 2037 and produces its first balanced budget in 2063.”
- Nate Silver on Charlie Crist’s political future: “Few politicians have had a rougher twelve months than Florida’s Charlie Crist, who began the period as the popular governor if America’s fourth-largest state, and now finds himself, as Public Policy polling’s Dean Debnam put it, as someone who ‘[couldn't] win a Republican primary for Dog Catcher.’”
