ObamaCare’s annual open enrollment ended Thursday, and what do you know? The media-fueled panic over the expiration of the pandemic-era enhanced subsidies turned out to be a false alarm.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported this week that 22.8 million Americans have signed up for ObamaCare plans as of January 3. That’s down from 24.2 million last year. People could still sign up for plans on the federal exchange through Thursday, and some states have extended their open enrollment through the end of the month.
But even if there are few new sign-ups, enrollment is still running higher than it was in 2024—when the sweetened subsidies were available. The 1.4 million decline in sign-ups compared to 2025 enrollment is also less than was predicted. The left-leaning Urban Institute projected that ObamaCare’s subsidized enrollment would drop by 7.3 million.
The Congressional Budget Office’s ObamaCare baseline in 2024 assumed 18.9 million people would enroll in plans this year if the enhanced subsidies vanished. The budget gnomes have repeatedly underestimated ObamaCare enrollment and spending; they need to rework their models.
Tad DeHaven is no fan of the Pentagon taking equity stakes in defense contractors. A slice:
Regarding the equity stake, the DOD’s Under Secretary for Acquisition & Sustainment, Michael Duffy, stated that “We’ve had a pattern within the defense industry of writing checks from the Department on behalf of the taxpayer to expand the industrial base with no promise of return …. This is about to change.”
Yes, the military-industrial complex has a rich history of gouging taxpayers. Efforts by the Pentagon to spend taxpayers’ money more efficiently are thus welcome. But the “return” to taxpayers should be protection from foreign adversaries, not a dividend check they’ll never see that spendthrift politicians will fritter away anyhow. The federal budget isn’t a mutual fund, and it shouldn’t be.
The equity deal puts the Pentagon in the undesirable position of owning part of a contractor that will compete for—and seek to win—large federal procurement awards, raising obvious conflict-of-interest and neutrality concerns. L3Harris’s CEO says the deal is “purely an economic investment” and that the DOD “will not be on the board of directors or involved with managing this company.”
To which I would respond that the Pentagon reports to a president who called up Coca-Cola to badger the company into using cane sugar in its products.
Phil Magness is correct that the Fed is flawed and that politicization will only makes it worse. A slice:
If a central bank must exist, its powers should be tightly constrained. A small toolbox limits the ways in which political actors can manipulate monetary policy. Unfortunately, the modern Fed has amassed an expansive arsenal: rate setting, quantitative easing, emergency lending facilities, market backstops, and regulatory authority over vast swaths of the financial system. In recent years, left-leaning figures in the Fed’s governance even tried to steer the central bank into climate change and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. Each additional tool creates another lever that politicians can pull—subtly or overtly—for their own ends.
Yet even with an overly powerful Fed, a degree of institutional independence remains preferable to direct political control. Elected officials face overwhelming incentives to maximize short-term economic performance, especially heading into elections. That typically means pressuring the central bank to juice growth through easy money, to monetize deficits, or both. The long-term costs—inflation, financial instability, and currency debasement—become someone else’s problem.
This is what makes Donald Trump’s use of lawfare against Powell (and previously against Governor Lisa Cook) so alarming. These actions can only be interpreted as attempts to bring the Fed to heel, clearing the way for more direct presidential control over monetary policy.
Given the Fed’s already-flawed incentive structure, this move risks making policy even more subservient to White House priorities rather than economic realities.
The Washington Post‘s Editorial Board explains that “inflation is not ‘defeated.'” A slice:
Two things can be true at once: the pressures that took the inflation rate to a staggering 8 percent in 2022 have largely subsided. This is presumably what the president is trying to tout. But prices are still rising, particularly in areas that consumers really feel, such as food and drink costs.
Consecutive administrations have adopted this bad habit of talking about “falling” prices, when they really mean increases are slowing.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday on News Nation that the administration’s new dietary guidelines don’t require spending more on food. Her team ran “1,000 simulations,” she explained, and they found “it can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla and one other thing.” Not only does that sound unappetizing, it comes across as out of touch.
A report from Congress’s Joint Economic Committee this week found that the average American family paid an additional $310 for groceries last year.
Steven Greenhut sensibly calls for unleashing market forces to address the AI electricity ‘crisis.’
George Will has an idea “to make the midterms slightly less disgusting.” Three slices:
Party loyalty now eclipses legislators’ institutional pride. So, only divided government can make its Madisonian architecture — the separation of powers; what writer Yuval Levin calls “the deliberate recalcitrance of our system of government” — work.
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Today, Democrats have pronoun fixations, and Republicans believe whatever the president purports to believe at the moment, including that trade deficits (present for 50 years) suddenly threaten the nation’s existence. So the parties’ craziness quotients are comparable. This is one reason why this year’s elections probably will again reflect electoral parity — a national shrug. Although midterm elections are usually referendums on the incumbent president, and although his negatives exceed his positives generally, and on key issues (the economy, immigration), a “blue wave” is unlikely.
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Julia R. Cartwright of the American Institute for Economic Research notes that many self-designated conservatives — she calls them the New Right — have “mastered populism’s simple moral drama.” Progressives have long inflamed ordinary political tussles by characterizing them with Manichean rhetoric: the wicked “oppressors” and the virtuous “oppressed.” Now, faux conservatives are paying progressives the compliment of plagiarism, celebrating the virtuous “people” against the corrupt “elites.” Voters’ choice is between these binary moral dramas.
Jim Bianco tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)
Downpayment assistance, of any kind, just gives home sellers room to raise prices and creates more housing inflation.
The fix is more supply: get rid of restrictions (zoning laws, building regulations, land-use rules) that hold back construction.
This month is the 250th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
