Daily Read - 2/24/10

Keith Hennessey has a good summary of President Bush's record of passing major bipartisan legislation. Interestingly, it includes items used in recent rhetoric to paint Bush as an extreme partisan and ideologue, and also includes things Obama is expanding or extending, without giving Bush any credit.  I'm not a big George Bush fan, but much of the criticism of him is based on fiction and partisanship, and takes little account of the truly difficult times he faced while in office.

The average number of years Americans spend in retirement has roughly doubled since 1970, according to this handy chart in the Economist. "Official retirement ages have failed to keep pace with rising life expectancy, making pensions increasingly unaffordable." The age Americans can qualify for Social Security needs to raised, which means governments and employers need to find ways to keep people working longer and being productive.

Blogger Jay Cost makes an interesting point about those who argue the Senate should not use reconciliation to pass health care because the procedure does not honor the majority rule principle of a Democracy: "the Senate is not a majoritarian institution!" Every state gets 2 Senators, regardless of population.

The FDIC reports: "Lending by the banking industry fell by $587 billion, or 7.5 percent, in 2009, the largest annual decline since the 1940s."  (Washington Post)  FDIC Chairman Sheila C. Bair says much of the decline is the "result of cutbacks by the nation's largest banks, which have tightened qualification standards for borrowers and increased the proportion of money that they hold in reserve against unexpected losses."  I'm sure that speeches vilifying bankers are being loaded into the president's teleprompter as I type this.  However, I doubt he will go much further in explaning the lack of lending that saying bankers are evil.  As Bair says, banks are still being burned by loans made over the last few years as creditors ability to repay keeps getting worse.  Bair says banks are holding extra reserves "against unexpected losses", but banks are also waiting (still) for financial reform measures out of Washington that will almost certainly raise their reserve requirements.  If they lent money that the government will later say they should have in reserve, they would be vilified for that too.  Washington needs to give up on scoring political points and finish whatever financial reform they decide on -- all they are accomplishing by delaying and demonizing is scaring the private sector from making investments.

The National Federation of Independent Business (here) says: "Washington still does not get it. It pays lip service to the fact that small business generates half of private sector GDP and creates over two-thirds of private sector net new jobs, but when it comes time to provide help, small business gets $30 billion IF banks decide to accept the TARP funds to support loans and IF the owners can subsequently get a loan from a bank. But for most firms, this dinky amount is of little help. More so, this new aid misses the main problem since only five percent of small business owners cite “financing” as their top business problem but 31 percent cite “poor sales.”"  The NFIB argues that Washington continues to press on with their high-spending, high-regulation agenda, which is the "death knell for private sector vitality."  "If the administration wants to count “jobs created and saved” it should also be accountable for “jobs destroyed or prevented.”"  (h/t Cato)