On June 21, 2012, the Senate voted 64-35 in favor of S. 3240, the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012, which would cut the deficit by $23.6 billion over a ten year period. At first glance this seems like a lot of money, until you realize that the bill authorizes a total of $969 billion in spending for fiscal years (FY) 2013 to 2022, and that the $23.6 billion reduction represents just 2.4 percent annual savings or $2.36 billion per year over the coming decade. The legislation does eliminate some wasteful programs, such as the Average Crop Revenue Election program, direct payments, and counter-cyclical payments, but many profligate programs are left largely unreformed and new ones have been created.
Low Hanging Fruit Not Too Low to Cut
When evaluating the overall budget picture, many analysts understandably and appropriately focus on the big ticket spending items, especially the largest and fastest growing portions of the federal budget, entitlements. Sometimes, it pays to think smaller scale and evaluate low hanging fruit when looking for areas to reduce costs.
Government Waste Is Alive And Well In West Virginia
In 2009, the state of West Virginia was granted $126,323,296 instimulus funding for the “West Virginia Statewide Broadband Infrastructure Project” to increase broadband access in public facilities including schools, libraries, and hospitals in what the grant defined as “vastly underserved areas.” Of this funding, $24 million was used to purchase 1,064 powerful Internet routers capable […]
Tobacco Excise Taxes Burn Down Federal Revenues
An April 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that excise tax increases on certain tobacco products have resulted in dramatic shifts by manufacturers and consumers toward lower tax products. Specifically, the implementation of taxes on roll your own tobacco and small cigars have led to increases in production and consumption of pipe tobacco and large cigars. While the government has historically used tobacco taxes to raise revenue, GAO’s study revealed that these disparities in taxation instead decreased federal revenues.
Gulp! Mayor Bloomberg’s Ban on Large Sodas is Hard to Swallow
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that the local government should crack down to help those with a coke addiction…but he’s not talking about drug addicts. On May 31, 2012, Mayor Bloomberg proposed banning the sale of large-sized sodas, sports drinks, sweetened tea or coffee, and other sugary beverages as an antidote to the rising obesity problem. Bloomberg noted that more than half of NYC adults (58 percent) are overweight or obese.
Higher Education: The Next Bubble
The nation’s outstanding student loan balance climbed to more than $1 trillion in May, which includes $460.2 billion held by the federal government. If the higher education bubble bursts, taxpayers will have to clean up the mess.
Reform the Senate Office Allowance System
A culture of inefficient government spending is endemic in Washington, D.C. However, such behavior is particularly frustrating for taxpayers when the rare example of spending less money produces an unsatisfactory outcome. This is unfortunately how the funding structure for Senate office expenses is designed. Due to a perverse system of incentives, senators who do not […]
Congress and USPS: Rearranging the Deck Chairs
One does not need to be an accountant to recognize that the United States Postal Service (USPS), which lost $8.5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2010, $5.1 billion in FY 2011, and is on pace to lose another $11 billion in FY 2012, is in dire straits. Only a politician, however, would insist on delaying the Postal Service’s attempts to put a tourniquet on its red ink-hemorrhaging business model.
House Passes Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act
Cybersecurity has been a very prevalent issue on Capitol Hill recently with legislation such as The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and The Protect IP Act (PIPA) being introduced before Congress. Both of these bills pertain to issues of piracy and online theft, and the negative impact they can have on the economy. As concerns […]
Consolidating Government
Duplication within federal government agencies and programs is a long-standing issue. Redundancies within agencies waste taxpayer dollars and creates an unnecessarily burdensome bureaucracy. In an effort to reduce duplication and overlap in the federal government, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is now responsible for filing an annual report outlining duplicative goals, programs, and responsibilities. In […]