NY Times:
The growth of federal spending on health care will continue to decline as a proportion of the overall economy in the coming decades, in part because of cost controls mandated by President Obama’s health care law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.
David Leonhardt/NY Times/Upshot:
But much of the mistrust really does reflect the federal government’s frequent failures – and progressives in particular will need to grapple with these failures if they want to persuade Americans to support an active government.
When the federal government is good, it’s very, very good. When it’s bad (or at least deeply inefficient), it’s the norm.
The evidence is abundant. Of the 11 large programs for low- and moderate-income people that have been subject to rigorous, randomized evaluation, only one or two show strong evidence of improving most beneficiaries’ lives. “Less than 1 percent of government spending is backed by even the most basic evidence of cost-effectiveness,” writes Peter Schuck, a Yale law professor, in his new book, “Why Government Fails So Often,” a sweeping history of policy disappointments.
As Mr. Schuck puts it, “the government has largely ignored the ‘moneyball’ revolution in which private-sector decisions are increasingly based on hard data.”
Lawrence Downes/NY Times:
Mr. Cornyn’s bill, sponsored in the House by Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, would change the law so that Central American children are processed the same way Mexican children are – that is, with a quick screening interview by a Border Patrol agent, and, in many cases, an immediate trip back home.
There are several reasons why this is a terrible idea. It starts with handing the responsibility for humanitarian interviews to a law-enforcement agent with a badge and a gun, whose main job is to catch and deport illegal border crossers, and who may not even speak Spanish. This is not the person you want interviewing a traumatized 15-year-old Honduran girl to find out whether the abuse she endured at home or the rape she suffered en route qualifies her for protection in the United States.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Andrew Prokop:
Why 104 Kansas Republicans just endorsed a Democrat for governor
Ed Kilgore:
My political mentor down in Georgia used to say: “Republicans in this state could screw up a one-car funeral.” Now that was back in the days when the Georgia GOP was regularly missing opportunities to achieve the kind of breakthroughs their brethren had long made in other southern states. But even now, with Republicans having run Georgia like a private preserve for about a decade, there seems to persist this tendency towards unforced errors.
That’s evident again today as incumbent Gov. Nathan Deal finds himself in the midst of loud allegations that his staff pressured a supposedly independent ethics commission to bury charges against Deal’s 2010 campaign.
James Fallows/The Atlantic on whether Iron Dome, Israel's missle defense system, is actually working:
Why such a difference in emphasis?
One possibility is the Post has new information that offsets this raft of skeptical analyses, even though it doesn't mention any of them. If so, that will be very interesting in technical and military terms.
Another possibility is that when we eventually know what happened in these missile exchanges (and of course I hope no one on either side dies in any further attacks) , this story, and its lead-the-paper play in the Post today, may seem to be another illustration of Mecklin's hypothesis: that militaries hype the performance of high-tech systems during the heat of battle, and by the time the real results are in the press is onto something else.
The National:
If there is one positive that has come out of the announcement of a caliphate by the Islamic State (the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant or ISIL), it is the debate it has triggered in Arabic media. “ISIL’s actions are but an epitome of what we’ve studied in our school curriculum,” tweeted Saudi commentator Ibrahim Al Shaalan. “If the curriculum is sound, then ISIL is right, and if it is wrong, then who bears responsibility?”
It is significant that such remarks come as part of a collective soul-searching from intellectuals, religious scholars and ordinary people from within the region.
Jennifer Mascia/Raw Story:
Who gets shot in America: What I learned compiling records of carnage for the New York Times
Adam Wollner/National Journal:
As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie prepares to make his first trip to Iowa since 2011, the potential Republican presidential candidate is coming under fire—from a conservative group.
The Judicial Crisis Network is launching an online ad Tuesday accusing Christie of appointing liberal judges to the New Jersey Supreme Court. The nonprofit group says it is spending $75,000 on the three-day effort—which includes 90-second and 15-second versions of the ad—in the Hawkeye State, which hosts the first presidential caucuses.
"Chris Christie promised to change New Jersey's liberal Supreme Court," the ad's narrator says. "Five openings later, no change."
And on the eve of Netroots nation, don't miss
Robert Costa on Elizabeth Warren:
Populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) got a rock-star reception during a standing-room-only campaign rally here [West Virginia] Monday, as hundreds of liberal activists cheered her broadsides against corporate interests and voiced hopes that her presence might shift the political winds in an increasingly Republican state.