Question/Newspaper Articles/Phones/Phoner
Laura Meckler (on the phone), Wall Street Journal, White House Correspondent
Topic: The President’s budget being released later this morning (11:15a), what’s expected in the budget and early reaction around the White House.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Former Director, Congressional Budget Office, 2003-05
Topic: A look at the annual budget & the scoring by the Congressional Budget Office which accompanies the yearly release.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Former Lieutenant Governor (D-MD) and Catholic Democrats Board Member
Topic: Guest will discuss the latest developments in the Obama Administration’s birth control directive to religious-affiliated institutions. The President announced a compromise Friday on the controversial policy. The changes will allow more religiously affiliated groups to opt out of the mandate, which required employees to offer health insurance that covered birth control at no cost. Under the revised rule, employees at Catholic and other religious hospitals, charities and universities would have access to free birth control through their insurance companies. Guest supports the President’s revised proposal announced Friday.
Michael Jacobson, Vera Institute of Justice, Executive Director
Topic: Discuss a new survey of state corrections departments about the costs of incarceration. According to the survey, the combined costs incarceration in 40 states came to about $40 billion dollars in 2010. With all of the costs considered (including some of the outside costs of operating a prison), the average taxpayer in those states paid about $31 thousand dollars per inmate for incarceration services.