positive outlook

“Disgust” as Political Motivator by Jared Bernstein

Let me get this straight:

–Sen. Murray and Rep. Ryan may actually agree on a budget, i.e., top line discretionary spending numbers, that shaves a bit off of the mindless 2014/15 sequester cuts?

–The healthcare.gov website is on the mend—not perfect, but much better.

–Speaker Boehner, as per the link above, is solidly on record against another shutdown; Sen. Cruz is nowhere in sight.

Must one pinch oneself? Is Dysfunction Junction applying for a name change? Is this the beginning of some sort of turnabout?

Surely not, but instead of the usual “everything’s as bad as ever, don’t be fooled!” let’s contemplate one aspect of this (briefly, as I’m on the road, scrunched in an airplane seat that would be a tight fit for a four-year old; btw, here’s a thought: you can’t lean your seat back in coach! Sorry, but unless I’m your dentist, it just doesn’t work).

That aspect is not pretty, I grant you, but it is: disgust. Polls quite clearly reveal that most people, even if they’re not paying that much attention, have pretty much come to loathe the DC dysfunction act.

Three things we learned from today’s Obamacare update by Sarah Kliff

There were 1 million visitors to HealthCare.gov Monday. And there have been 380,000 visitors to HealthCare.gov as of noon today. This is slightly higher traffic than Monday, when 375,000 visitors came to the Web site by noon.

"We know that consumers are actively shopping and enrolling in coverage every day," Medicare spokeswoman Julie Bataille said. "We believe there's an indication that these will grow over time." 

 According to Massachusetts, all of the healthy people will sign up last minute in March.