May forecast gives Oregon Legislature more than $270 million additional revenue
OregonLive.com
With the May revenue forecast numbers in hand, the Legislature can now assess at what level it could fund state services such as education and human services. There's one glitch: the May forecast predicts that the state's corporate kicker law will ...

Revenue forecast; wildfire damages: Oregon Legislature today
OregonLive.com
California Wildfires View full sizeA firefighter keeps watch as the wildfire burns along a hillside in Point Mugu, Calif., May 3, 2013. The Oregon House is set to vote Thursday on a bill on wildfire damages following a devastating 2007 wildfire in ...

• Snags await favourite for Fed job - FT.com
• The Real I.R.S. Scandal - NYT
• Cells as living calculators - MIT News
• Google’s Multi-Front War - Digitopoly
• Broken transmission mechanisms - Free exchange
• Why Did the U.S. Financial Sector Grow? - Tim Taylor
• Does Expanding School Choice Increase Segregation? - Brookings
• The History of Cyclical Macroprudential Policy - FRB Working Papers
• The Myth of a Perfect Orderly Liquidation for Big Banks - Economix
• Spatial Econometric Peeves (wonkish) - Greed, Green and Grains
• The CBO Is Likely Still Overestimating Future Deficits - Modeled Behavior
• Do New Keynesians need to assume (much) labour hoarding? - Nick Rowe
• Steven Pearlstein Tries to Rescue His Austerity Pushing Friends - Dean Baker
• Mark Carney will follow the Fed, not the Bank of Japan - Gavyn Davies

On higher education, it's finals time for the Legislature
OregonLive.com
It now seems clear that Oregon universities will finish their academic year before the Oregon Legislature completes its restructuring of the university system. But with just a few weeks of the session left, and with budget issues capable of filling all ...

and more »

Paul Krugman on the recent news that the deficit is falling:

About That Debt Crisis? Never Mind, by Paul Krugman: OK, another toe dipped in reality. The new CBO numbers are out, and they scream “debt crisis? What debt crisis?” ... Yes, debt rose substantially in the face of economic crisis — which is what is supposed to happen. But runaway deficits? Not a hint. Yes, there are longer-term issues of health costs and demographics. As always, however, these have no relevance to what we should be doing now... Meanwhile, our policy discourse has been dominated for years by what turns out to be a false alarm. To the millions of Americans who are out of work and may never get another job thanks to premature fiscal austerity, the VSPs would like to say, “oopsies!” Or maybe not even that. ...

It's a good scam if your goal is to reduce the size and influence of government: implement spending cuts that slow the economy, never mind the unemployed, then call loudly for tax cuts and deregulation to spur economic growth. Repeat as needed.

BlueOregon
John Kitzhaber: Oregon Legislature must make a grand bargain or cuts to schools
OregonLive.com
John Kitzhaber: Oregon Legislature must make a grand bargain or cuts to schools. Print · Christian Gaston, The Oregonian By Christian Gaston, The Oregonian The Oregonian Email the author | Follow on Twitter on May 15, 2013 at 1:22 PM, updated May 15, ...
The Oregon GOP don't want to win elections in Oregon ever again.BlueOregon
Party leaders differ on governor's budgetary planStatesman Journal
Ore. House speaker opens door to more pension cuts - Corvallis Gazette-TimesCorvallis Gazette Times

all 24 news articles »

The previous post reminds me of an offer I've been meaning to make to try to help to publicize academic research:

If you have a paper that is about to be published in an economics journal (or was recently published), send me a summary of the research explaining the findings, the significance of the work, etc. and I'd be happy to post the write-up here. It can be micro, macro, econometrics, any topic at all, but hoping for something that goes beyond a mere echo of the abstract and I want to avoid research not yet accepted for publication (so I don't have to make a judgment on the quality of the research -- I don't always have the time to read papers carefully, and they may not be in my area of expertise).

New and contrary results on the wealth effect for housing:

Homeowners do not increase consumption despite their property rising in value, EurekAlert: Although the value of our property might rise, we do not increase our consumption. This is the conclusion by economists from University of Copenhagen and University of Oxford in new research which is contrary to the widely believed assumption amongst economists that if there occurs a rise in house prices then a natural rise in consumption will follow. The results of the study is published in The Economic Journal. "We argue that leading economists should not wholly be focused on monitoring the housing market. Economists are closely watching the developments on the housing market with the expectation that house prices and household consumption tend to move in tandem, but this is not necessarily the case," says Professor of Economics at University of Copenhagen, Søren Leth-Petersen. Søren Leth-Petersen has, alongside Professor Martin Browning from University of Oxford and Associate Professor Mette Gørtz from University of Copenhagen, tested this widespread assumption of 'wealth effect' and concluded that the theory has no significant effect. Søren Leth-Petersen explains that when economists use the theory of  'wealth effect' the presumption is that older homeowners will adjust their consumption the most when house prices change whilst younger homeowners will adjust their consumption the least. However, according to this research, most homeowners do not feel richer in line with the rise of housing wealth. "Our research shows that homeowners aged 45 and over, do not increase their consumption significantly when the value of their property goes up, and this goes against the theory of 'wealth effect'. Thus, we are able to reject the theory as the connecting link between rising house prices and increased consumption," explains Søren Leth-Petersen. ... The research shows that homeowners aged 45 and over did not react significantly to the rise in house prices. However, the younger homeowners, who are typically short of finances, took the opportunity to take out additional consumption loans when given the chance. ...

Basit Zafar, Max Livingston, and Wilbert van der Klaauw examine the impact of the payroll tax cut in 2011 and 2012, and its subsequent reversal:

My Two (Per)cents: How Are American Workers Dealing with the Payroll Tax Hike?, by Basit Zafar, Max Livingston, and Wilbert van der Klaauw, Liberty Street Economics, NY Fed: The payroll tax cut, which was in place during all of 2011 and 2012, reduced Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from workers’ paychecks by 2 percent. This tax cut affected nearly 155 million workers in the United States, and put an additional $1,000 a year in the pocket of an average household earning $50,000. As part of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Congress allowed the 2011-12 payroll tax cut to expire at the end of 2012, and the higher income that workers had grown accustomed to was gone. In this post, we explore the implications of the payroll tax increase for U.S. workers. The impact of such a tax hike depends on two factors. One, how did U.S. workers use the extra funds in their paychecks over the last two years? And two, how do workers plan to respond to shrinking paychecks? With regard to the first factor, in a recent working paper and an earlier blog post, we present survey evidence showing that the tax cut significantly boosted consumer spending, with workers reporting that they spent an average of 36 percent of the additional funds from the tax cut. This spending rate is at the higher end of the estimates of how much people have spent out of other tax cuts over the last decade, and is arguably a consequence of how the tax cut was designed—with disaggregated additions to workers’ paychecks instead of a one-time lump-sum transfer. We also found that workers used nearly 40 percent of the tax cut funds to pay down debt. To understand how the tax increase is affecting U.S. consumers, we conducted an online survey in February 2013. We surveyed 370 individuals through the RAND Corporation’s American Life Panel, 305 of whom were working at the time and had also worked at least part of 2012. ...

After a presentation of the survey results, and a discussion of what they mean, the authors conclude:

Overall, our analysis suggests that the payroll tax cut during 2011-12 led to a substantial increase in consumer spending and facilitated the consumer deleveraging process. Based on consumers’ responses to our recent survey, expiration of the tax cuts is likely to lead to a substantial reduction in spending as well as contribute to a slowdown or possibly a reversal in the paydown of consumer debt. These effects are also likely to be heterogeneous, with groups that are more credit and liquidity constrained more likely to be adversely affected. Such nuances may be lost in the aggregate macroeconomic statistics, but they’re important for policymakers to consider as they debate fiscal policy.

In response to arguments that tax cuts wouldn't help because they would be mostly saved, I have argued that there are two ways that tax cuts can help (see Why I Changed My Mind about Tax Cuts). One is to increase spending, and the other is to help households restore household balance sheets that were demolished in the downturn (i.e. the cure for a "balance sheet recession"). The sooner this "deleveraging process" is complete, the sooner the return to normal levels of consumption and the faster the exit from the recession (rebuilding household balance sheets takes a long time and this is one of the reasons the recovery from this type of recession is so slow, tax cuts that are used to reduce debt can help this prcess along). It looks like both effects are present for payroll tax changes (and work in the wrong way with a payroll tax increase).

KATU
Flooded homes, reckless coaches, poker rooms: Oregon Legislature today
OregonLive.com
December 2007 Vernonia Flood View full sizeThe small logging community of Vernonia was rocked by floodwaters in 2007. A bill in the Oregon Legislature would allow county assessors to record flood damage to homes. Ross William Hamilton/The ...
PERS process quicker this time than 10 years agoStatesman Journal

all 26 news articles »

• Austerity in the New York Review of Books - Paul Krugman
• The Geography of Student Debt - Liberty Street Economics
• Remember When the IRS Targeted Liberals? - ataxingmatter
• Wherein I Try to Help Robert Waldmann Calm Down - Uneasy Money
• Fiscal consolidation, American style - Free exchange
• Will Yahoo! return to its portal roots? - Digitopoly
• ISea Level Rise to Be Less Severe than Feared - Scientific American

Jon Chait notes some bad news for deficit hawks and opponents of Obamacare:

Give Back that Pulitzer, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page: The recent slowdown in health-care costs is one of those facts, like climate change or the rapid growth after Bill Clinton raised taxes, that flummoxes American conservatism. The slowdown of health-care costs is one of the most important developments in American politics. The long-term deficit crisis — those scary charts Paul Ryan likes to hold up, with federal spending soaring to absurd levels in a grim socialist dystopian future — all assume the cost of health care will continue to rise faster than the cost of other things. If that changes, the entire premise of the American debate changes. And there’s a lot of evidence to suggest it is changing — health-care costs have slowed dramatically, and experts believe it’s happening for non-temporary reasons. The general conservative response to date has involved ignoring the trend, or perhaps dismissing it as a temporary, recession-induced dip... Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page offered up what may be the new conservative fallback position: Okay, health-care costs are slowing down, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the huge new health-care reform law. “It increasingly looks as if ObamaCare passed amid a national correction in the health markets,” the Journal now asserts, “that no one in Congress or the White House understood.” It’s another one of those huge, crazy coincidences! Of course, it’s not just that the Journal didn’t predict the health-care cost slowdown. The Journal insisted ... that Obamacare would ... necessarily lead to a massive increase in health-care inflation. In a series of hysterical, freedom-at-dusk editorials which were, unbelievably, awarded a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, the Journal expounded extensively on this belief. ... The ... fact that the right is being forced to fall back from predicting a staggering rise in health-care costs to explaining away the staggering decline in health-care costs represents real progress...

More bad news for deficit hawks from the CBO. Ezra Klein explains:

CBO says deficit problem is solved for the next 10 years: ...according to the Congressional Budget Office, the debt disaster that has obsessed the political class for the last three years is pretty much solved, at least for the next 10 years or so. The last time the CBO estimated our future deficits was February– just four short months ago. Back then, the CBO thought deficits were falling and health-care costs were slowing. Today, the CBO thinks deficits are falling even faster and health-care costs are slowing by even more. Here’s the short version: Washington’s most powerful budget nerds have cut their prediction for 2013 deficits by more than $200 billion. They’ve cut their projections for our deficits over the next decade by more than $600 billion. Add it all up and our 10-year deficits are looking downright manageable. ...

Tim Duy:

Plosser on the Exit, by Tim Duy: As is well known, policymakers have been coalescing around a QE exit strategy for some time, since at least the March FOMC meeting. Two central issues with the exit are the timing and the communications. Officials do not want to undermine the recovery, knowing full-well that previous flirtations with exits have gone awry. At the same time, however, they fear the cost-benefit analysis may be turning against them. For some doves it is not the potential inflation cost, but the potential financial instability cost. Some policymakers want to begin tapering asset purchases at the next meeting, some are looking to the summer, and others looking to the fall.

Regarding the communications issue, policymakers seem to be taking pains to make clear that the financial markets should not overreact to any one policy move. The tapering process may be smooth, it may be choppy, it may be long, it may be short. It is contingent on the state of the economy, something inherently unknown. Mostly, they want to avoid a 1994-type of miscommunication.

Today's speech by Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Charles Plosser covers nearly all of these elements. In general, although I do not agree with his conclusions regarding timing, I think he makes a what would be viewed by some as a credible argument for tapering to begin sooner than later.

Begin with his base forecast:

My forecast of 3 percent growth should allow for continued improvements in labor market conditions, including a gradual decline in the unemployment rate, similar to the trend we have seen over the past three years, which was a 0.7- to 0.8-percentage point decline per year. Continuing at such a pace would lead to an unemployment rate close to 7 percent at the end of 2013 and a rate below 6.5 percent by the end of 2014.

Indeed, this year we have already seen the unemployment rate fall from 7.9 percent in January to 7.5 percent in April. Employers added 165,000 jobs in April, but the more positive news came in the revisions for February and March. The revised data indicate that firms added 332,000 jobs in February and 138,000 in March. The upward revisions for these two months added 114,000 jobs.

The forecast of a 6.5% unemployment rate by the end of 2014 is important. My thought is that the Fed will want to conclude asset purchases before hitting that target. Moreover, optimally they would like time so that, if necessary, the tapering can be a slow process. That argues for tapering to begin sooner than later. Indeed, Plosser would like asset purchases to end this year:

Based on the stated views of the Committee regarding the flexibility in pace of purchases, I believe that labor market conditions warrant scaling back the pace of purchases as soon as our next meeting. Moreover, unless we see a significant reversal in current trends that jeopardizes my forecast of near 7 percent unemployment rate by the end of this year, then I anticipate that we could end the program before year-end. Let's look at some of the data.

The end of the year is actually fast approaching; if you want to taper off over the course of a hand full of meetings, the calendar is driving you to begin now. Now, back to that data:

In the six months through September 2012, when the decision to initiate the latest open-ended asset purchase program was made, nonfarm payrolls had increased an average of 130,000 per month, and the unemployment rate had averaged 8.1 percent. In the most recent six months, from November 2012 through April 2013, nonfarm payrolls have increased on average 208,000 per month — a 60 percent increase — and the unemployment rate has averaged 7.7 percent. As I noted earlier, April's unemployment rate has now reached 7.5 percent.

Moreover, the average duration of unemployment has fallen, the share of long-term unemployment has dropped, and hours worked and earnings have risen. While further progress would certainly be desirable, I believe the evidence is consistent with a significantly improving labor market. Thus, it is appropriate to begin scaling back the pace of asset purchases.

At this point, I raise my hand and say "But isn't underemployment still too high and being driven by cyclical factors? Aren't you erring on the side of removing stimulus too early?" But that arguement is neither here nor there for Plosser. He has obviously decided these are second-order issues. He does deliver what (I think) is a novel argument for tapering sooner than later:

Indeed, in my view, were the FOMC to refrain from reducing the pace of its purchases in the face of this evidence of improving labor market conditions, it would undermine the credibility of the Committee's statement that the pace of purchases will respond to economic conditions. Similarly, if there were sufficient evidence that conditions in labor markets had deteriorated, I would expect the FOMC to consider increasing the pace of purchases. After all, this is the meaning of state-contingent monetary policymaking. But if we reach the point that markets only expect us to move in one direction — that is, toward more easing — and we become reluctant to dial back on purchases over concerns of disappointing or surprising markets, then we will find ourselves in a very difficult position going forward.

In short, the Fed communicated a particular strategy - one in which the pace of asset purchases would be determined by recovery in the labor market. And, by Plosser's reckoning, the 60% increase in the pace of job growth is evidence of exactly the kind of improvement the Fed was looking to achieve.

Notice that Plosser is not appealing to a fear that the Fed's credibility on inflation is at risk. Instead, not acting to slow asset purchases undermines the credibility of the Fed's communications strategy. This is an argument that might resonate with other policymakers who are already worried that financial markets will misinterpret future policy actions. I suspect Plosser knows inflation concerns are likely to fall on deaf ears. Indeed, he addresses the inflation topic earlier in the speech:

Should inflation expectations begin to fall, we might need to take action to defend our inflation goal, but at this point, I do not see inflation or deflation as a serious threat in the near term. However, I do believe that our extraordinary level of monetary accommodation will have to be scaled back, perhaps more aggressively than some think, to ensure that inflation over the medium term remains consistent with our target.

Convincing others to pull back on easing due to inflation concerns is something of a challenge when your preferred inflation measure is below target and trending down. But where that argument fails, perhaps a credibility/communications argument can succeed?

Plosser is careful to add the now required "not tightening" clause:

I want to emphasize that in this state-contingent framework, reducing the pace or even ending asset purchases need not be the start of an exit strategy or more aggressive tightening. Nor would it indicate that an increase in the policy rate was imminent. Instead, these actions would slow and then halt efforts to continuously expand the level of accommodation by increasing the size of the balance sheet. Given the improving economy, dialing back asset purchases is an appropriate response.

I imagine we will see something like this in every speech going forward. Policymakers do not want market participants to jump to conclusions on the basis of any one policy move.

Bottom Line: While the Fed is moving closer to tapering asset purchases, timing remains an issue. I think that most policymakers will not be swayed to an early end by the "Fed's inflation credibility is at risk" argument. But a subset is likely swayed by the "financial stability is at risk" argument. And another subset may be swayed by the "communications credibility is at risk argument" that is an element of Plosser's speech. In short, the majority favoring continuing asset purchases at the current pace is obviously shrinking. Hopefully this week's upcoming speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the release of the minutes from the last FOMC meeting will help clarify how quickly that majority is loosing ground.

Jared Bernstein:

Why Should Any Of These Groups Have Tax-Exempt Status?: Nope, I’m not going to defend the IRS, which appears to have acted in ways wholly inconsistent with their mandate for unbiased investigations into, in this case, whether certain political groups should receive tax-exempt status. It is unclear how high up the chain of command these untoward actions went, but this morning’s news suggests it wasn’t just a few rogue auditors in Cincinnati. ... Republicans will of course try to pin this on the President, despite the fact that since Nixon used the IRS to target his enemies, the president’s been barred from even discussing this kind of thing with the agency. No, the problem here isn’t the president. It’s the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision and subsequent tax law written by Congress that gives these groups tax exempt status (under rule 501(c)(4)) as long as most of their activities are primarily on educating the public about policy issues, not direct campaigning. Of course, the ambiguities therein are insurmountable. Many of these groups, especially the big ones, spend millions on campaign ads mildly disguised as “issue ads,” and under current law they can do so limitlessly and with impunity. ... Weirdly, the IRS hasn’t seemed particularly interested in going after the big fish here, like Rove’s Crossroads GPS on the right or Priorities USA on the left. Instead, they appear to have systematically targeted small fry on the far right. If so, not only is that clearly biased and unacceptable—it’s also ridiculous given the magnitude of the violations of tax exempt status by these small groups relative to the big ones. At the end of the day, we should really ask ourselves what societal purpose is being served here by carving out special tax status for any of these groups. If anyone can show me any evidence that the revenue forgone is well spent, that these groups are making our political system and our country better off, please do so. If not, then no one’s saying shut them down—they’ve got a right to speak their minds. But not tax free.

Steven Pearlstein argues that The case for austerity isn’t dead yet, and that:

austerity by itself won’t solve the problem of high employment and low growth in developed economies. But neither will fiscal stimulus by itself. Neither will work unless incorporated into a program of serious and credible structural reform.

But this is incorrect, and it confuses long-run growth policy with short-run stabilization. Monetary and fiscal policy can be used to stabilize fluctuations in the economy even without reforms that could raise long-run growth (the short-run stabilization policies may help with long-run growth, e.g. by improving labor market conditions and preventing people from permanently leaving the labor force, so the policies are not fully independent, but it's important to keep them conceptually separate). As Antonio Fatás points out in a post that anticipates and counters this argument (this was written before Pearlstein's piece), the idea that monetary and fiscal policy cannot work to stabilize the economy without structural reform is wrong (especially in countries like the US):

Time travel in Euroland: Unfortunately, this is not news by now, but the president of the Euro group, Jeroen Dijsselbloem in an interview with CNBC yesterday dismissed the role that fiscal policy and monetary policy can have to address the economic crisis (emphasis is mine):

"Monetary policy can really not help us out of the crisis. It can take away the pressure, it can accommodate new growth, but what we really need in all countries is structural reforms in the first place. I'd just like to stress the point that in the policy mix of fiscal policy, monetary policy and structural reforms — I'd like the order to be exactly the other way around. Structural reforms in the first place, fiscal policy and viable targets in the mid-term for all regions in second place — and monetary policy can only accommodate domestic economic problems in the short-term."

It is not exactly clear what to make out of his statement but it seems that long-term solutions should come first before we implement those that will help us in the short term. It is surprising that even today there is such a great confusion about long-term versus cyclical problems.

This confusion comes from a basic belief that some hold that there is nothing inherently different in the dynamics of an economy when one looks at the short run and the long run. This is part of a never-ending academic debate but when it comes to policy makers and politicians it seems to be more a matter of beliefs.

What it is not always understood is that we are dealing with two separate problems and therefore we need two different set of tools or solutions to deal with them.

It is possible that irresponsible behavior, excessive spending and accumulation of debt (private or public) are the cause of the Great Recession. And if this is true, it will require future adjustments to spending plans, deleveraging, and fiscal discipline to avoid a repetition of this event in the future.

But once the crisis started we are dealing with a second problem: a recession that moves us away from full employment. This is a cyclical phenomenon that is well described in macroeconomic textbooks and to deal with it we use monetary and fiscal policy. The fact that potentially debt and excessive spending were the cause of this cyclical event does not mean that we need to deal with these imbalances now to get out of the crisis. We are dealing with two separate phenomena that are only related because one possibly led to the second one, but the dynamics associated with each of them are very different and the recipe to get out of them can be, in some cases, the opposite.

This is what we write in all macroeconomics textbooks: what works in the short run might not work in the long run. As an example, we emphasize the importance of saving in the long run to drive investment and growth. But when we talk about the short run we emphasize the importance of spending to understand fluctuations in economic activity. Excessive spending hurts growth in the long run but it is spending and demand what drives growth in the short run.

There will be a day when we will have to debate about whether the cyclical phenomenon has already been addressed because we are back to full employment and therefore all our focus should be on the long term, but it is very hard to argue that this is where Europe is today. My point is not to deny that there are many deep structural issues to be addressed among Euro countries, but to recognize that we are dealing with two set of dynamics that require different solutions and until we invent time traveling the short term still comes before the long term.

KATU
Hospital taxes; energy efficient appliances: Oregon Legislature today
OregonLive.com
The House is scheduled to vote on House Bill 2216, which extends a tax on hospitals to pay for expansion of the Oregon Health Plan. The tax, for which hospitals are reimbursed by federal Medicaid dollars, is critical component to balancing the two-year ...
Oregon Legislature nears vote on hospital taxkgw.com

all 26 news articles »

• Labor Force Participation and the Unemployment Threshold - macroblog
• Capital Controls, Currency Wars, and Cooperation - Liberty Street
• Keynes and Keynesianism - Economix
• Time travel in Euroland - Antonio Fatas
• This Is No Time to Cut Food Stamps - NYT
• Crowding Out Watch, Heritage Edition - Econbrowser
• Working Conditions in Bangladesh - EconoSpeak
• Inflation Continues to Make Itself Scarce - WSJ
• The Partial Faith and Dubious Credit Act - Alan Blinder
• Misunderstanding the Neyman-Pearson Hypothesis - Brad DeLong
• Can FTAs support ‘Factory Asia’? - Vox EU
• Utopophobophilia - Crooked Timber
• Do patent rights impede follow-on innovation? - Vox EU
• Why do people support austerity? A conjecture. - Noahpinion
• Mexico's Economic Growth Slows - FRB Dallas
• The Asymmetric Impact of Monetary Policy - SSRN
• Another Look at the Price Puzzle - SSRN
• When will employment exceed the pre-recession peak? - Calculated Risk
• Monetary Policy and Equity Prices at the Zero Lower Bound - Carola Binder

Oregon Legislature nears vote on hospital tax - The Daily News
Longview Daily News
The Oregon Legislature is nearing a vote on extending a tax on hospitals and nursing homes, but Senate Republicans are vowing to block it in hopes of extracting tougher cuts to public-employee pensions. The state House is scheduled to vote Tuesday on ...

Oregon Legislature nears vote on hospital tax
kgw.com
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Legislature is nearing a vote on extending a tax on hospitals and nursing homes. The $800 million tax provides a big chunk of the funding for the Oregon Health Plan, the state's Medicaid program for low-income Oregonians.

Oregon Legislature nears vote on hospital tax
San Francisco Chronicle
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Legislature is nearing a vote on extending a tax on hospitals and nursing homes, but Senate Republicans are vowing to block it in hopes of extracting tougher cuts to public-employee pensions. The state House is scheduled ...

and more »