When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) famously exclaimed, “The cupboard is bare! There’s no more cuts to make,” in 2013, the national debt stood at $17 trillion. Since then, the debt has risen to more than $19 trillion with no sign of abatement. Members of Congress often use this growing figure as a prelude to promise to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse,” especially as they campaign for their jobs. But, once they return or first come to Washington, they seem to have a hard time eliminating the waste, even though it is fairly easy to locate.
GSEs: As Sleazy as 1-2-3
When the Jackson Five (featuring a very young Michael Jackson) appeared on American Bandstand on February 21, 1970, they sang about love being as easy as learning the ABCs. But childhood crushes pale in comparison to a truly nefarious coupling: the marriage of private gains and taxpayer losses.
United States Postal Service Fails Despite Advantages
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is one of the largest employers in the United States, with 625,113 employees. But the agency’s financial results are not quite as impressive. The USPS lost $5.1 billion in 2015 and the cost of labor has increased while the size of the workforce has shrunk. Nonetheless, the USPS Office of the Inspector General (IG), which is required to uncover and expose waste and abuse, declared in an April 16, 2016 report that the USPS is “doing better financially than sometimes reported in the media.”
A New Cause du Jour: Beating Up “Big Pharma”
Beating up pharmaceutical companies is the new “cause du jour.” Even though pharmaceuticals are only 10 percent of all healthcare costs, they tend to make easy targets because it is difficult to understand why such a small pill should cost so much money.
Spectrum Auction Moves Forward
A November 10, 2015 report from Gartner noted that the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach 6.4 billion devices in 2016. By 2020, that number will potentially reach 20.8 billion devices, all of which will need access to spectrum in order to function. However, spectrum is already limited in availability due to the use of mobile technology, digital goods, and mobile Internet.
Got Some Splainin To Do
Yesterday, May 10, 2016, the House and Energy Commerce Committee released a report, which demonstrates the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator Andrew Slavitt provided false testimony in a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing, “An Overdue Checkup Part II: Examining the ACA’s [Affordable Care Act] State Insurance Marketplaces.” The hearing was held December 8, 2015.
USPS Saves Less than Predicted from POStPlan
A recently released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) “Post Office Structure Plan” (POStPlan) has failed to achieve the savings first predicted by USPS in 2012. The POStPlan aspired to save money by reducing the retail hours of 13,000 offices (66 percent of all post offices) and staffing them with non-career or part-time employees; the plan offered reassignment or separation incentives of career employees. USPS estimated that this plan would save the agency $500 million annually, but POStPlan savings have only reached $337 million annually.
For USPS Inspector General, Everything’s Always Coming Up Roses
On April 18, 2016 the United States Postal Service (USPS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report positing a rosy future for the USPS. The report, “Peeling the Onion,” concluded that USPS is “doing better financially than sometimes reported in the press.” Postal IG David Williams seems to view the agency’s prospects through rose-colored glasses, but the fiscal realities contained in its financial statements, congressional oversight and Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports indicate that the agency is running on empty and in need of transformative change.
Digital Creativity on World IP Day
As the theme for World IP Day 2016 is “Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined,” it is a good time to remind everyone who loves music, particularly those who access songs online, that the royalty structure in the United States is out of balance with today’s distribution methods.
Don Quixote Alive and Well at the FCC
Rather than tilting at windmills trying to solve problems that don’t exist, government agencies should proceed with great care before imposing technical mandates on an industry. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appears to be taking a “shoot from the hip” approach to regulating, and currently has its sights set on abrogating intellectual property (IP) rights.