Thursday, December 22, 2011

A Look Back at 2011: Congress and White House Edition 

I have a new column up at e21, looking back at the major policy struggles of the last year:

2011 began with great uncertainty and anticipation. How would the new House majority, propelled into office with the energy from the emergent Tea Party movement, share power with a Democratic White House and Senate? And what would it all mean for economic and fiscal policy?

Now that 2011 is nearing an end, it’s safe to say that this particular political marriage — arranged to some extent by the voters who pulled the lever both for Barack Obama in 2008 and then for conservative Republican congressional candidates in 2010 — has been a rocky one, to put it mildly. Over the course of the past year, the news has been dominated by a series of high-level budget negotiations that were initiated by both sides with great fanfare and much hope for historic and game-changing breakthroughs, and that ended instead as spectacular, headline-grabbing failures....

You can read the whole column here.

posted by James C. Capretta | 1:11 pm
File As: Health Care