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What's in the House's supplemental legislation besides needed funding for the troops and some political posturing? The Politico notices a few choice items.
-$5 million for tropical fish breeders and transporters for losses from a virus last year. --$25 million for spinach that growers and handlers were unable to market, up to 75 percent of their losses. --$50 million "for asbestos abatement and other improvements"€ť to the Capitol Power Plant.... --$74 million "for the payment of storage, handling, and other associated costs for the 2007 crop of peanuts to ensure proper storage of peanuts for which a loan is made."
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Now this is really troubling...and suspicious: Just as Democrats vow to put an end to earmarking, the Congressional Research Service gives up tracking earmarks in legislation. Good thing Sen. Coburn is on the case. Too bad the congressional majority will probably do everything in its power to keep CRS our of earmark analysis.
Democrats promised reform and instituted "a moratorium" on all earmarks until the system was cleaned up. Now the appropriations committees are privately accepting pork-barrel requests again. But curiously, the scorekeeper on earmarks, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS)--a publicly funded, nonpartisan federal agency--has suddenly announced it will no longer respond to requests from members of Congress on the size, number or background of earmarks. "They claim it'll be transparent, but they're taking away the very data that lets us know what's really happening," says Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. "I'm convinced the appropriations committees are flexing their muscles with CRS." ... Sen. Coburn plans to fight back. He says he will attach an amendment to every appropriations bill demanding CRS prepare a full report on the earmarks in it. "Let senators vote for secrecy and prove they don't want a transparent process or let them deliver what they promised," he says. "The choice will be theirs and the American people will be watching."
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CBPP slams Colorado's TABOR. The Independence Institute sets CBPP straight on its facts. (Microsoft Word link)
TABOR does not say that government can never raise taxes. TABOR does not fix government revenues, but it does protect citizens' incomes from careless appropriation by government. It does this by shifting power to the people who pay the taxes. Before TABOR, those who wanted a tax increase to fund a pet project had only had to ask the legislature to pass a tax increase. Since tax increases give legislators more money to distribute and insulates them from the difficulties of cost cutting, raising taxes tends to be more popular with legislators than with the average taxpayer. TABOR simply requires that tax increase proponents seek approval from those who pay taxes rather than those who spend them.
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USA Today reports on a new Urban Institute study showing that spending on seniors--particularly through the big entitlement programs--is crowding out spending on children's services, such as education. The entitlement squeeze is being felt throughout the budget and will only assert itself more as the baby boomers retire. Without entitlement reform or massive, unprecedented tax hikes, entitlement spending will crowd out all other federal spending well within the lifetimes of today's young workers. Every year that Congress puts off reform is a missed opportunity in so many ways.
The spiraling cost of benefits for seniors is limiting the federal government's ability to invest in kids. Despite Democrats' plans to boost spending on education and children's health insurance, the projected $2.9 trillion federal budget's tilt toward older Americans will only increase, a study out today from the Urban Institute says. The report, which examined more than 100 federal programs for children, shows that their share of domestic spending and tax breaks has dropped from 20% in 1960 to 15.4% today. Barring a change in policy, it would decline to 13% in 2017. As a share of the nation's economy, spending on kids would go from 2.6% to 2.1%. By contrast, spending for adults only in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid ? the major programs that benefit seniors ? would rise from 7.6% to 9.5% of the economy.
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Brian Riedl and Baker Spring explain what's wrong with the supplemental. So much for all those pledges of fiscal responsibility and all the lip service about supporting the troops...
The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--whom this legislation was originally designed for--have become merely a bargaining chip for a Congress that could never pass this additional $21 billion [in pork-barrel spending] on its own. Lawmakers are effectively telling President Bush that the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot have their body armor unless Congress gets $16 million for additional office space in the House of Representatives.
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In the midst of congressional action to raise the national debt limit, Senator Barack Obama laments the impact of the move on future generations. It is a similar "failure of leadership" that has led to our long-term spending crisis. We wonder what Senator Obama has to say about that.
"Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," Obama said. "€śAmerica has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."
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A Washington Times editorial explains why Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is worried about the long-term budget scenario and why Republicans and Democrats should be worried, too.
By 2030 the unified budget deficit would approach 9 percent of GDP (more than four times its present level); the ratio of publicly held federal debt to GDP would soar from today's 37 percent to 100 percent (and then "grow exponentially after that"); and net interest outlays would nearly triple to 4.5 percent of GDP, which is proportionately greater than today's defense budget (4 percent of GDP). These outcomes would occur under four plausible assumptions: (1) retirement and health spending follows the intermediate projections of the Congressional Budget Office, (2) defense spending declines as a share of GDP, (3) other non-interest outlays rise at the rate of GDP and (4) federal revenues remain at their historic (and current) share of GDP.
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Wow. And much of this money was carved out of funds that otherwise could have been spent on highways, which would benefit far more Americans.
Transit has been on the slide for well more than half a century. Even though spending on public transportation has ballooned to more than seven times its 1960s levels, the percentage of people who use it to get to work fell 63 percent from 1960 to 2000 and now stands at just under 5 percent nationwide.
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Our apologies.
The CBO does show how the budget could be in balance - indeed, have a surplus of $170 billion, in 2012 - but in ways that are politically impossible and economically improbable. But as killjoys like the Heritage Foundation like to point out, this is basically meaningless without reform of the major off-budget entitlements, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The big three are expected to grow $367 billion by 2012, meaning all other federal spending would have to be cut by $71 billion to achieve balance.
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A groups called the National Sexual Violence Resource Center role is to "?identif[y] and disseminate[] information, resources, and research on all aspects of sexual violence prevention and intervention." It is a Centers for Disease Control grantee. It is also a big source of spin and apparent fabrications in the Duke lacrosse case. K.C. Johnson debunks NSRVC's puzzling "talking points" for "victims' rights" advocates and reveals what strange propaganda U.S. taxpayers may be funding.
The NSVRC itself obtains part of its funds from the federal government, through a grant from the Center for Disease Control... [P]osting inaccuracy-laced material such as Murphy?s undermines the [victims' rights] movement's credibility. How could anyone who has closely followed this case hereafter trust any statement from the NSVRC, knowing that the organization disseminated Murphy?s "talking points"? As for the Centers for Disease Control, perhaps it would be worth knowing how the federal government could, even indirectly, be funding the dissemination of Murphy's assertions on the case.
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A sobering thought.
On Jan. 1, 2008 -- less than one year away -- the oldest member of the post-World War II generation will celebrate her 62nd birthday, opt for early retirement, quietly deposit the first Social Security check issued to a Boomer into her bank account, and the long national fiscal nightmare will begin. Three years later she will turn 65 and enroll in Medicare, the fiscal equivalent of riding downhill with no brakes.... Between now and 2030, the number of Americans age 65 and over will nearly double, from 40 million to 78 million.
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Mike Franc offers a preview of the President's State of the Union Address scheduled for next Tuesday. Actually, it's more of a scorecard for what conservatives should expect of the President. Entitlements and taxes are the big domestic issues on the table. Winning the long war on terrorism dominates foreign policy.
President Bush should focus his State of the Union speech on the two policy challenges that will define his legacy and the legacies of those now serving in Congress: winning the War on Terror and meeting the fiscal challenge posed by the looming retirements of the Baby Boom generation. With respect to the Baby Boomer retirements, the question is how to meet the income and health-care needs of 77 million retired boomers without jeopardizing our prosperity or the security of our nation. To do this, the President must define very clearly just how dangerous it will be if we do nothing to alter the fiscal trajectory of the Big Three entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security).
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Dick Armey finds great fault in congressional Democrats' pay-as-you-go budgeting proposal.
Over time, that commitment to spending discipline was replaced by a commitment to get re-elected at any cost -- and new spending records were set. The Democrats now in charge have promised, to quote Nancy Pelosi, "no new deficit spending, no new bridges to nowhere." But deficit spending is caused by too much spending -- and under the House Democrats' paygo rule, entitlement spending, the lion's share of the federal budget, will grow unabated, as will the massive unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security (currently approaching $70 trillion), which are not acknowledged under existing budgeting practices. Meanwhile, there are no enforceable caps on domestic discretionary spending -- and thus earmarks, even if restrained as promised, will do next to nothing to promote deficit reduction. Social Security reforms that turn empty promises into personally owned accounts -- real assets for retirement -- cannot be funded under paygo without massive tax increases or deep reductions in promised benefits. In effect, paygo makes serious entitlement reform politically impossible without a word of debate. Meanwhile, as surplus payroll tax dollars currently diverted into other spending programs continue to disappear, the pressure on the deficit will become insurmountable.
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Remember the current congressional majority's professed crusade against reckless spending and wasteful pork-barrel projects? Senator Byrd, self-professed "Pork King" and the first Member to obtain more than $1 billion for his (still poor) state, says that's all coming to an end.
[W.V.] Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox said Wednesday he misspoke when telling senators the day before the state would lose more than $100 million in federal road-building funds. U.S. Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, both D-W.Va., let Mattox know the slightly more than $110 million has already been secured in the federal budget. In addition, Byrd's office explained that sometime in the summer, after first getting a hand on appropriations made by Republicans prior to the Democratic Senate takeover in November, earmarking funds for specific road projects will again take place.
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Reuters' account makes it sound like the Fed chief is ambivalent about raising taxes and letting the size of government increase versus reforming entitlements. But he is not, as this section of his testimony today makes clear:
First, the budget deficit by itself does not measure the quantity of resources that the government is taking from the private sector. An economy in which the government budget is balanced but in which government spending equals 20 percent of GDP is very different from one in which the government's budget is balanced but its spending is 40 percent of GDP, as the latter economy has both higher tax rates and a greater role for the government. Monitoring current and prospective levels of total government outlays relative to GDP or a similar indicator would help the Congress ensure that the overall size of the government relative to the economy is consistent with members' views and preferences.
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