Richard Kogan Quotations

The tax cut is bigger than anything, by a fairly long shot.

It's hard to sort of have a new commitment for research on alternative fuels when the resources devoted to these projects shrink year after year.

The administration's forthcoming budget is expected to have approximately $200 billion in missing costs in the fifth year, ... Once these missing costs are taken into account, the deficit is seen as being in the range of $500 billion in 2009, or around 3.5 percent of GDP. That is not close to cutting the deficit in half.

The path of large and permanent deficits on which the government has embarked is unsound public policy and should be reversed as soon as the economy permits.

What they've done is thoughtful, analytically sound and numerically cautious ... but they haven't put in the huge caveat about the range of uncertainty, ... It's so large that we can't know if the problem is twice as great or a quarter as great as what they're saying.

People who are poor enough to receive LIHEAP benefits, such as elderly widows living below the poverty line, are not in a position to absorb a big increase in home heating costs. If these households don't receive more help paying their utility bills, many of them will face excruciating choices between heating their homes, paying the rent, having enough food to last through the month, and meeting other basic needs. Serious hardship is virtually certain to ensue.