In 2009, when Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus), economists and pundits alike scoffed at the Obama administration’s estimates of the number of jobs that the bill had “created or saved.” Greg Mankiw, Harvard economics professor and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, called the term “an act of political […]
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.
Farm Bill Should Buy the Farm
When is $24 billion not a lot of money? When it represents all the savings taxpayers can expect from the supposedly new-and-improved Farm Bill, formally known as S. 3240, the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012, which may reach the Senate floor by mid-June. The bill, which was co-authored by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Ranking Member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), outlines what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will amount to $969 billion in spending on commodity programs, rural development, farm credits, conservation, agricultural research, and nutrition programs, among others, from fiscal year (FY) 2013 to 2022.
Cutting Spending and Waste in Fisheries
Bureaucratic, command-and-control regulation of coastal fisheries wastes taxpayers’ dollars and endangers the sustainability of this common resource. Managing a shared resource like fish in the sea is a difficult problem. Since no one owns them, there has always been simply a race to capture as many as you can and bring them to market. Ownership […]
F-22 Plagued by Recurrent Problems, Cost, Lack of Mission
On the heels of much-publicized difficulties with the F-22 Raptor’s oxygen system, the Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded Lockheed Martin a $19 million contract to retrofit an automatic oxygen system on 40 of the planes it originally sold to the Air Force.
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.
Round 3: Net Neutrality Debate Continues
Even as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has yet to weigh in on the Verizon case against the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCCs) net neutrality 2010 Report and Order on Preserving the Open Internet (FCC 10-210), proponents are beginning to formulate the next round of debate on the issue. On April 26, 2012, Susan Crawford, a former advisor to the Obama transition team, wrote a commentary for Wired on what she termed the “cable-ization” of the Internet. In her article, Ms. Crawford likened the cable industry to an airline employee who refused to let her take her viola on an airplane, stating that, like this airline employee, the cable industry acts as a “gate keeping” monopoly that refuses to provide users with access to the full extent of broadband Internet capabilities under all circumstances.
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 […]
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.
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.