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With the ink barely dry on a $858 billion tax cut and spending bill, Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert L. Bixby says, Washington has been hit with an official reminder that steps to rein in the nation’s debt cannot be…

With the ink barely dry on a $858 billion tax cut and emergency spending bill, lawmakers were hit with an official reminder last week that steps to rein in the nation’s growing debt cannot be postponed much longer.According to the…

A federal judge put a cloud over this year's health care reform legislation by ruling last week that a key provision – the individual mandate to buy insurance – was unconstitutional. But the judge declared the mandate “severable” from the…

Congress approved and President Obama signed legislation last week that will increase projected budget deficits by $858 billion. The additional borrowing would finance two-year extensions of the Bush tax cuts, a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits, and a one-year reduction…

The legal term severable normally gets little notice outside the world of constitutional law -- yet now it has become a big buzzword amongst health care analysts and federal budget wonks. The reason has to do with the numerous legal challenges to the Accountable Care Act's individual mandate to purchase…

Congress has approved a one-year extension of Medicare payment rates for physicians, avoiding steep cuts that would otherwise have taken effect. Rather than finding a better long-term alternative to the current payment formula, lawmakers have repeatedly used stop-gap measures to…

Deficit hawks have long warned that unnecessary delays in deficit reduction carry risks and high costs that will only make the job harder down the road. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) underscores that point. It analyzes…

WASHINGTON – The Concord Coalition today said the high cost of this week’s legislative agreement between the White House and Republicans can only be justified if it is promptly followed by enactment of a substantial deficit-reduction plan that would take…