Out of Control

How much power will the next president try to grab? Reason magazine's Jacob Sullumn takes a look.

Sen. John McCain, writes Sullum, "declined to identify areas where the Bush administration has overstepped its constitutional authority. [Sen. Barack] Obama, by contrast, gave half a dozen detailed examples. In general, the Illinois senator's answers to the Globe's questions were direct, thoughtful, and complete, apparently reflecting a sincere determination to limit his own power if elected. After the election, of course, such promises may not be worth much. But on that score I worry more about Hillary Clinton. The New York senator's answers to the Globe survey, though less detailed than Obama's, were similar in substance. I just find it hard to believe them. Clinton agreed, for example, that the president has to seek congressional authorization before attacking another country, except in response to an 'imminent threat.' Yet she has bragged about urging her husband to bomb Serbia as part of an unauthorized war that had nothing to do with national defense. Although Clinton now claims to have a modest view of presidential power, she was singing a different tune a few years ago. 'I'm a strong believer in executive authority,' she told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News in 2003. 'I wish that, when my husband was president, people in Congress had been more willing to recognize presidential authority.' With the War on Terror as a rationale, her wish could be her command."

Watch Reason Foundation’s Director of Government Affairs Mike Flynn explain why a mortgage bailout is a terrible idea on CNBC.

Sen. John McCain has now joined calls for a housing bailout that his aides say will cost taxpayers between $3 billion and $10 billion.

From the NY Times: “There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes,” Mr. McCain said.

National Review reports “even a borrower who fully understood the terms of his adjustable-rate mortgage (i.e. not someone who was ‘preyed upon’ by an unscrupulous lender) would qualify for a bailout” in McCain's plan.

Michelle Malkin on the “subprime boondoggle” bill that passed the Senate 84-12 today.

In an op-ed for the Detroit News, Reason Foundation’s Shikha Dalmia examines the latest immigration bill, the SAVE Act and writes, "if this bill becomes law, within four years every employer nationwide would be required to verify the work credentials of its entire work force, including 160 million existing workers plus 60 million new hires. Since the program prior to the huge proposed expansion has a 5 percent error rate, this would mean that more than 12 million legal workers could potentially be thrown out of work by no fault of their own. Nor will improved technology eliminate these errors, as its authors claim, because most of them are the result of data entry mistakes. What's more, workers -- not their employers -- would have to clear things with Uncle Sam when their credentials are thrown into question. To do so, they'll have to deal with the same agencies that issued visas to 9/11 terrorists after they flew planes into buildings. But even if one assumes that the program has 100 percent success in catching every one of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, that would still translate into one American worker being hurt for every illegal snagged. That is a lousy deal. But the fundamental problem with the program is that it would require workers to prove that they are eligible to work rather the government to prove they are not. We're all guilty until proven innocent."

The U.S. Supreme Court, taking its first major case of broadcast indecency in 30 years, will hear an FCC appeal of a Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that nullified the agency’s enforcement regime regarding “fleeting expletives,” AP is reporting.

The case stems from an FCC claim that broadcasts of entertainment awards shows in 2002 and 2003 were indecent because of profanity uttered by U2 Lead singer Bono, Cher and Nicole Richie. Although no fines were issued, the FCC’s policy reserves the right to levy financial penalties in the future.

At issue is whether the passing use of language that might be objectionable to some viewers constitutes indecency under FCC guidelines. The Second Circuit Court sidestepped the content issue by citing procedural irregularities, namely that the FCC policy was invalid because the agency had changed it without adequate explanation. The case stemmed from Bono’s ad-libbed, apparently unscripted, exclamation, “f***ing brilliant!” during the NBC broadcast of the 2003 Golden Globes Awards show. The same FCC case also cited the Fox network over similar language by Cher and Richie during the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards.

Despite the FCC’s contention that it received hundreds of thousands of complaints over the language, the Second Circuit “was skeptical that the commission can provide a reasoned explanation for its fleeting expletive regime that would pass constitutional muster,” AP reporter Mark Sherman wrote.

Although the Supreme Court won’t hear the case until the fall, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. When it comes to regulating content, the FCC is fighting for relevance. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has made no secret of his desire to police premium cable content (think The Sopranos, The Wire and The L Word) for “indecency,” not to mention Web content, and he might try to leverage a court decision in this regard (assuming he keeps his post in 2009). Yet Martin has often been subjective. In the past he has given an official past to broadcast airings of Saving Private Ryan, the Steven Spielberg war film that contains a fair amount of (scripted) profanity.

That tendency to pick-and-chose has reduced Martin’s legal arguments to the notion that the government needs to be watching out for public taste. At the same time, he did a fine job bolstering the First Amendment argument against banning profanity speech by choosing to use examples of it—mostly for shock effect—in his official comment on the Second Court’s decision.

Stating, as Solicitor General Paul Clement did, that the Second Circuit put the FCC “in an untenable position,” powerless to stop the airing of expletives even when children are watching, presupposes that it’s the FCC’s business to decide what children should be watching. Hence, the Second Court did at least address the correct constitutional questions the FCC action raised, and, for my part came, down on the right side—rules can’t be vague and subjective.

With oil hitting $110 a barrel and gas prices creeping towards $4 a gallon, the federal government continues to prohibit U.S. farmers from growing hemp, which could be used to efficiently produce biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol.

Hemp is also a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly substitute for polyester, cotton, fiberglass and concrete, according to a new Reason Foundation study that examines hemp's potential uses and the ways other countries are benefitting from it. Industrial hemp production is banned in the U.S. as an archaic consequence of the war on drugs.

"There are numerous environmental advantages to hemp," said Skaidra Smith-Heisters, a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and author of the report. "Hemp often requires less energy to manufacture into products. It is less toxic to process. And it is easier to recycle and more biodegradable than most competing crops and products. Unfortunately, we won't realize the full economic and environmental benefits of hemp until the crop is legal in the United States."

Full Study (.pdf)
Summary of Study (.pdf)
Press Release

A USA Today editorial says, "If you want to be president, you have to sacrifice privacy."

In the "Opposing View,” Reason magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch writes, "In this era of the Imperial Presidency, so much attention is lavished onto presidential candidates that the focus has strayed from ‘What do we need to know?’ to ‘What are they hiding?’ The former is a matter of citizen self-defense; the latter is a game of gotcha — and one with potentially damaging consequences for the rest of us."

WashingtonPost.com says Matt is “one of the world's foremost experts on all things McCain.” You can find his book, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, here, and you can watch him discuss McCain, conservatives and the religious right on the newest episode of PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal here.

Those voting in the primaries will be interested in this tidbit of analysis put together by the National Taxpayers Union. Analysts at NTU have looked at all the programs and tallied up the cost to taxpayers.

Who's the best? Ron Paul--his proposals would reduce federal spending by $150.1 billion. No one else comes close. Rudy Guiliani, who dropped out of the race, would have reduced spending by $1.4 billion. Everyone else--that's everyone else--will be boosting spending.

The biggest spender, believe it or not, is not Hillary Clinton--It's Barack Obama. Apparently, his brand of change inside the beltway will cost us all an additional $287 billion. Mrs. Establishment (Clinton) would boost spending by just $218.2 billion.

At least the remaining Republicans don't break the $100 billion increase mark, and John McCain's proposals add up to $6.9 billion.

The CEO of a privately-held broadband company called on the federal government to end low-interest loans for broadband to rural phone companies that face competition from cable companies and other service providers using alternative technologies.

Amy Tykeson, head of BendBroadband, a cable company serving rural Oregon, told a House subcommittee hearing yesterday the federal government had to stop providing loans to broadband providers interested in offering service to consumers who already have access to high-speed Internet access.

Here’s how Multichannel News reported the story:

Tykeson, echoing concerns raised by cable officials for several years, took aim at a Rural Utilities Service (RUS) program, claiming that funds intended for areas truly unserved were flowing to companies that compete with cable competitors. The RUS is an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Subsidizing competition is a waste of scarce RUS loans funds that should instead be targeted to areas where a market-based solution has not developed,” Tykeson said, noting that cable’s broadband lines pass about 94 million U.S. homes.

Tykeson, whose Oregon-based company is privately held, appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies.

The RUS, Tykeson said, made a loan to a company within BendBroadband’s own 60,000-home service area, which is also served by two other broadband providers, Qwest and wireless provider Clearwire.

“Notwithstanding this information, the RUS granted the application for a loan to offer subsidized service there,” she said.

Another fire season has resulted in tragedy in Southern California and, once again, the federal, state, and local governments have shown that they still haven't learned how to deal with the threat. By now, you have probably heard about a lot of the bureaucratic bungling and red tape that impeded response efforts. As a San Diego resident, I had a front-row seat to the ineptitude. For example, despite the fact that the city is surrounded by three military bases, military assets went unutilized or underutilized. State rules require each federal helicopter to carry a licensed "fire spotter" from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). Unfortunately, Cal Fire didn't have spotters available, so nearly two dozen Marine, Navy, and California National Guard helicopters remained on the ground. In addition, two of the National Guard's C-130 cargo planes were unable to help because they still have not been fitted with tanks to carry thousands of gallons of water or fire retardant, despite promises to do so four years ago after the Cedar and Paradise fires ravaged the area. (For more details, see this Associated Press story.) Meanwhile, government officials from the president to the governor to the mayor to the County Board of Supervisors to spokesman from various government agencies constantly held press conferences where they stood around and congratulated each other on what a great job they were doing.

Some may say that the problems in responding to the fires in San Diego and elsewhere were just a matter of poor leadership. While this is true to some extent, I think there are problems with allowing government to handle such issues in the first place, problems that no change in leadership can fully address. The problem can be illustrated in the difference between public and private property and the different incentives of public land managers and private property owners. Government land management tends to be reactive, while private property management is proactive. Why is it that we never hear about the government clearing overgrown brush, creating fire breaks, or conducting controlled burns throughout the year, rather than responding only after there is a crisis and throwing money at the problem when it is too late?

Fire prevention is essentially about risk management and property protection, two of the things that free markets handle best! Author and columnist Lew Rockwell recently wrote an article on this issue. According to Rockwell,

Are we under the impression that private markets can't handle risk management? Private markets specialize in protection of property, particularly against natural risks. If the land were privately owned, it would be protected against burning through better management. If it had to be burned, the burning would be controlled. Unexpected events like droughts and winds would be calculated into management decisions.

What's more, there would be serious liability issues. Any owner of property who let fires rage would be directly responsible for imposing fires on others. This is the way markets work. If my bathtub overflows, floods my house, and then the waters flood my neighbor's house, I am responsible via my insurance policy. So, yes, there would be a price to pay for fires on your land that harm others' property.

What do we have today? We have fires that are no one's responsibility.

Perhaps it is time to rethink allowing government to manage our fire prevention efforts.

I heard the most illuminating – and the most depressing – assessment of Iraq yet last Wednesday at Michigan State University where Stephen Biddle, one of the most – if not the most -- respected military strategists in the United States, was speaking. (Full disclosure: Biddle was invited as part of a lecture series called the Symposium on Science, Reason and Modern Democracy that my husband co-directs at the MSU political science department.)

Biddle, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and award-winning author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, and an early opponent of the war, explained why America’s pre-surge strategy in Iraq was a colossal failure. And even though the current U.S. strategy is on the right track, he put its odds of success – defined not as the creation of some fancy-shmantzy pluralistic democracy in Iraq, but just “sustainable stability” -- at no more than 10 to 15 percent. And that too if the U.S. maintains the current approximately 160,000 troops for at least 8 to 10 years till a new generation of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds has had a chance to grow up without each side feeling that it was about to be slaughtered by the other. This is an enormously difficult and expensive proposition with huge opportunity costs. But if the U.S. is not prepared for such a commitment, he believed, it should hit the exit doors now. This would certainly lead to an all-out civil war with epical bloodletting and nightmarish geo-political consequences for the whole region – but at least it wouldn’t cost anymore U.S. lives.

What, most emphatically, wouldn’t work was the middle-ground that every Democratic presidential candidate, with the exception of Joe Biden, was proposing: Cutting troop levels in half and changing their mission from combat to peace-keeping. This would make U.S. troops sitting ducks for both Sunni and Shiite militias without preventing their mutual slaughter. “This is a situation where the extreme options – total withdrawal now or a big troop commitment for about 10 years -- are clearly better than the middle one.”

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s plan for carving up the country into a loose federation of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves was wishful thinking too, Biddle felt. To convince Sunnis, who have little oil in their areas, to go along with such an arrangement, Biden proposes that an oil-sharing formula be written into the Iraqi constitution. But who’ll enforce the constitution? Given that Sunnis constitute only 20 percent of the population and have only minimal political representation, it would have to be the Shiite-dominated government. So we would basically be asking the Sunnis to lay down their arms for the sake of a piece of paper that would be enforced by their mortal enemies.

But the most interesting part of the lecture was Biddle’s explanation for why America was not able to control the insurgency till General Petraus took over. Till then, Biddle noted, the U.S. was not fighting Iraq – it was refighting Vietnam. Essentially, there are two types of insurgencies: A classic ideological insurgency and a sectarian-communal civil war. Vietnam was the first type of conflict where different groups were struggling with each other to impose their idea of good government on the rest of the country. Iraq, however, is the second kind of conflict where each is trying to protect itself and its identity. “The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are fighting a zero-sum game with existential stakes.”

Indeed, U.S. efforts to apply the lessons of Vietnam to Iraq, namely political reconciliation through elections, economic reconstruction and rebuilding an indigenous military, actually “poured gasoline on the flames of the Iraqi insurgency.” For instance, consider the creation of an indigenous force: In an ideological conflict, this would make perfect sense. Afterall, unlike foreign troops, locals have a direct stake in the well-being of their country. Moreover, since they speak the local language, they can more easily separate innocents from guerillas and avoid targeting the wrong people – something that is essential to gain the confidence of the larger population. But in Iraq’s case, none of this applied. In a country riven by ethnic hatreds, there was no reason to believe that an indigenous army would protect all Iraqi lives equally – or that it would be possible to convince anyone that it would. Thus, as far as the Sunnis were concerned, Biddle noted, the force that we put together was nothing short of a “Shiite militia on steroids.” Their response under the cirumstances was completely rational: escalate their insurgency and prevent this force from ever taking root. Even the much vaunted elections in Iraq fuelled the sectarian fires because, in a war of identity, electoral politics creates a further incentive to demonize the other groups. They gave Shiites an opportunity to say to fellow Shittes, “Vote for me and I’ll protect you from the Sunni Devils” – and vice versa. “Elections, did not mitigate underlying conflict, they intensified the centrifugal forces that were breaking-up Iraqi society.”

If things have calmed down a bit since General Petraeus took over in February, it is not necessarily because going in he had a more accurate understanding of the nature of the conflict – but sheer dumb luck. Even though we were screwing up badly in Iraq, as it turns out, al Qaida was screwing up even more. In Anbar Province, a predominantly Sunni area, al Qaida was systematically terrorizing the local population, leaving Sunni leaders with no option but to approach our units as the lesser of the two evils.

The success in routing out al Qaida in Anbar with local cooperation gave birth to what, Biddle calls, Petraus’ new bottom-up approach in Iraq in addition to the top-down model that U.S. had hitherto followed. The top-down apporach aimed exclusively at controlling the security situation in Baghdad in order to create the politcal space for a power-sharing compromise. “Petraus has decided to do this (stabalize the country) retail, as opposed to imposing a wholesale formula from the top.”

The new approach involves cutting bilateral deals with every local faction – and Biddle counted 20 main ones – under which the U.S. gives them the following option: Either stop shooting at us and, in return, we will not only let you keep your arms but also place U.S. troops in your neighborhood to protect you from your enemies. Or, if you decline, we will raid your homes, take away anything that you can possibly use to defend yourself. “And, once we are finished, guess what your enemies across the street will do to you.”

“We have to counter existential stakes with existential stakes,” Biddle notes. “We can’t convince them to lay down their arms for three hours more of electricity a day.”

If the U.S. had the troop strength and the resources to fully implement both the top-down and bottom-up approach simultaneously, then U.S. prospects of succeeding would be better than the one- in-10 odds that Biddle gives them. But that would require nothing short of reinstituting the draft – a political impossibility. So sooner or later General Petraus will have to decide to give up one or the other.

In the end, Biddle noted that the administration’s strategy of maintaining current troop levels was rational – and CATO Institute’s strategy of getting out now was rational. Everything else was irresponsible or wishful thinking.

But these choices themselves testify that Iraq is a tar baby the U.S. never should have grabbed. Thank you President Bush!

Today a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit challenging Bush's domestic spying program.

Maybe we should make some stickers that simply read "I Heart Being Treated Like A Criminal By My Own Government" - reminiscent of the stickers Drew Carey passed out at Reason Weekend in Las Vegas - this should cover all abuses of our civil liberties.

Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is starting to roll out details on his "12 Commitments to the American People," and the first of the twelve to be unveiled--Fiscal Discipline--caught my eye. In addition to ideas like mandatory sunset clauses for all Federal programs, a presidential line-item veto, and a PART-esque Government-wide Accountability Program (GAPStat) to measure program performance and identify waste and non-effective programs, what stuck out was that he has become the first candidate of either party to talk about privatization in a positive light:

Reduce the Federal Civilian Workforce by 20% through Attrition and Retirement: Within the next decade, 42% of the Federal Civilian Workforce – some 300,000 bureaucrats – will retire. (Congressional Budget Office, “Characteristics and Pay of Federal Civilian Employees”, 3/07)

• Replace only half, making the Federal government smaller and smarter through increased use of technology and privatization.
• Eventually saving the taxpayers $21 billion each year, while ensuring that the Federal government is focused on performing its essential responsibilities (Congressional Budget Office, “Characteristics and Pay of Federal Civilian Employees”, 3/07).

More details here. It's not exactly a surprise that Giuliani would talk privatization given his record as NYC Mayor, but it certainly is refreshing to hear it in the context of the underwhelming ideas being bandied about thus far among the candidates.

From the press shop of Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK) - "Yesterday, Congressman John Sullivan reintroduced H.R. 2558, the Government Neutrality in Contracting Act. In 2001, President Bush issued an Executive Order, reversing President Clinton's previous policy of promoting union-only Project Labor Agreements (PLA) on federally-funded construction projects. H.R. 2558 will solidify the president's Executive Order to end this discriminatory practice and promote competition within government contracts."

Let's hope this legislation ends up being a real win for the free market!

From the press shop of Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK) - "Yesterday, Congressman John Sullivan reintroduced H.R. 2558, the Government Neutrality in Contracting Act. In 2001, President Bush issued an Executive Order, reversing President Clinton's previous policy of promoting union-only Project Labor Agreements (PLA) on federally-funded construction projects. H.R. 2558 will solidify the president's Executive Order to end this discriminatory practice and promote competition within government contracts."

Let's hope this legislation ends up being a real win for the free market!

As we mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating landfall today, it is fitting that we look at the progress that has been made in rebuilding the region--and the lack of progress. As Harry Mount explains in a recent article for the UK's Daily Telegraph, there have been stark differences in the rebuilding effort between the public and private sectors:

[W]hile private business has flourished, public works have failed miserably. Schools are only just opening. University departments have been closed for good. Courtrooms don't have enough judges to deal with the renaissance of America's murder capital.

Mount continues:

This mismatch between private and public has nothing to do with shortage of public money; after Katrina, President Bush promised £58 billion ($110 billion) in federal aid for the victims. New Orleans and its crooked ways are partly to blame. Only this weekend, a pair of Bobcat excavators worth £50,000 ($95,000) were stolen from the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit areas of the city, where they were being used to build a memorial to the victims of Katrina.

But the chief culprit is a federal government clogged with bureaucracy and indecision, incapable of spending money even when it's got tons of the stuff.

The American government can just about arrange an orgy in a brothel -- fraudulent applications for Katrina aid were spent on champagne and prostitutes -- but it is hopeless when it comes to large-scale federal construction projects.

This paralyzing bureaucracy is not limited to Katrina recovery efforts, either. As Mount notes, the same maladies have impaired rebuilding efforts at the World Trade Center site as well.

In the five years since September 11, one building, 7 World Trade Centre, the third and least-known skyscraper to collapse that day, is the only one to have been rebuilt.

At 7 WTC, the site's leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, worked unencumbered by the attentions of government. As a result, the £350 million ($665 million), 52-storey tower went up this May without a hitch.

A couple of hundred yards from 7 WTC, Ground Zero is still a great big empty concrete tub.

Mr Silverstein owns the lease to the Ground Zero pit and the rights to rebuild all the space lost within it. But, while 7 World Trade Centre is outside the pit and entirely under his control, construction inside the pit is run by government, principally George Pataki, the outgoing governor of New York State.

We should take these lessons to heart when we consider options for rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, the World Trade Center site, and future disaster areas. It is not government planning, but market forces, that allow for the quickest, most appropriate, and most economical recovery of disaster areas. People and businesses will seek opportunities to invest their resources and offer their services where they are most needed--if only government will get out of the way and let them do it.

This is kind of funny, but a small piece of a larger problem. The US Coast Guard Academy recently used a government charge card to buy a home brewing kit...and then brewed and consumed some 532 bottles of beer. Courtest of us, the taxpayer.

According to Human Events, the brewery was made possible by a government charge card issued to an academy official responsible for “organizing social functions.” According to congressional testimony published last month by the Government Accountability Office, the official used the card to purchase a beer brewing kit and some ingredients and then “wasted government resources by brewing alcohol while on duty.”

One of my favorite quotes though suggests that by brewing the beer actually “provided the Academy with both cost savings and a quality product for official parties attended by cadets, dignitaries, and other guests of the Superintendent.” Upon closer review the Government Accountability Office calculated the cost to be more like $13 for a six pack...this sounds all too similar to other government cost comparison studies I've seen!

In jest, a colleague suggested that this is just another example of the government moving into competition with the private sector!

The biggest piece of pork ever?

Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) is requesting the House of Representatives to consider an amendment (H.R. 3496, as revised) to the Deep Water Energy Resources Act (H.R. 4761) that would divert $1.5 billion of federal revenues earned through offshore drilling to subsidize the deeply troubled Metro transit system serving the nation’s capital and his congressional district. If enacted, this earmark would be one of the largest ever passed—seven times larger than Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” and twice as large as Mississippi’s “Train to Nowhere.”

More from Ron Utt here.

Fitting, perhaps, that Davis is a Republican.

I've pointed out that there’s some evidence that government-sector managers, who have been even more resistant to telecommuting than their private-sector counterparts, are beginning to warm up to the idea.

Yet it still gets a chilly reception from many of these folks:

Top managers are holding back the spread of telecommuting at some government agencies, several officials said during a panel discussion earlier this month.

For government agencies to fully realize the benefits of telecommuting, such top managers need to change their attitudes, said Wendell Joice, head of the U.S. General Services Administration's governmentwide telework team.
"We are hampered by constantly having to beg and plead," said Joice, speaking at a conference called Continuity of Operations Planning in the Federal Government and Industry: Enabling a Mobile Workforce in Times of Crisis. The event, held here, was sponsored by iPass Inc., RSA Security Inc. and research firm Input Inc.

Article here.

Related: When telecommuters screw up (but was he really a telecommuter?)

Related: Report: Govt work safe to do at home

At least one senator sees the value in tying budget decisions to agency performance:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R.-Okla., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, held a hearing to address the transparency of, and potential for bias in, the administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool.

In opening remarks, Coburn praised the PART process, which entails quantifying the success of federal programs through a standardized set of questions, for bringing a new tool to bear on program assessment. He acknowledged that any such tool would be a "blunt instrument" given the size and scope of government activities, but chided other lawmakers for not taking PART scores into account in making budget decisions, in part out of loyalty to pet programs that might be underperforming.

Coburn highlighted a vote by the House appropriations subcommittee that funds the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments to insert language prohibiting the use of PART assessments at those agencies in the appropriations bill.

. . . .

Testifying that the PART improves management by shining a bright light on programs, [OMB's deputy director for management Clay] Johnson pointed to the government's ExpectMore.gov website, which makes PART data available for public scrutiny.

Johnson's statements walked a fine line between pushing what he described as a secondary use of the tool in informing budget decisions, and deference to Congress's constitutional power to regulate spending. The administration rates agencies on budget-performance integration in its quarterly traffic-light-style management score card, and encourages Congress to consider programs' PART scores in making budget decisions.

Full article here.

That's the return on investment the federal government gets on "competitive sourcing" studies i.e., for every dollar spent on looking for more efficient ways to perform "vital" public services the government saves $27. Not bad.

Sadly, Congress is again trying to block this common sense reform...and they're using the appropriations process to do it by inserting language into appropriations bills that instruct the agency that they "can spend no money to study...competitive sourcing."

Brilliant. So we stop activities that actually demonstrate results and we keep all those programs that don't. Again, brilliant.

Yesterday, the grandiloquent chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Jerry Lewis, finally felt the poisonous prick of pork (much to his surprise, it would seem).

Jerry Kammer and Dean Calbreath of the Copley News Service report today that investigators were probing Lewis' dealings with lobbyist and former Republican Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego. The source said the investigation was a spin-off from the corruption probe of now-imprisoned former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

It seems the dark side of the lard-fest that has infected Washington for the past few years is finally coming to light. Thus, now is the time for keeping one's distance from the egregious earmarkers (though, that may be tough as the head appropriator).

“Mr. Cunningham was never a close friend,” Lewis added. He described the disgraced ex-congressman as simply “a colleague I trusted to serve the interests of his country.”

However, Lewis and Cunningham sometimes campaigned together, including a joint fund-raiser at the San Diego headquarters of General Atomics in October 2004 with Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine.

Lewis and Cunningham also worked in tandem on Pentagon funding requests that came before the Appropriations Committee, defense contractors and military analysts have told the Union-Tribune.

“Lewis and Duke worked together, exerting a lot of control. It was pretty frightening,” said a San Diego military contractor who dealt with both Lewis and Cunningham.

Ultimately, guilty or not, Chairman Lewis is still largely responsible for the excessive earmarking taking over in DC; he should take this opportunity to turn over a new leaf and stop the cycle of pork and corruption.

The first step in any recovery, however, is admitting you have a problem ...

Today, the WashTimes has an interview with the ultimate kosher senator; as a doctor, he knows that too much pork is bad for the health of the nation ... the fiscal health, that is.

Do read the interview; it's quite candid and delves into the double talk of congress (not that it's breaking news or anything). As the Senator explains, politics begets pork and apropos political mea culpas:

Sen. Coburn:

You'd be surprised by the number of people who didn't vote with me that came back up to me and said, "You keep doing what you're doing." That's a positive signal to say they know in their heart we got to change this system, but they're not at the point yet where they can figure out politically that they can be with me.

Well, at least he's positive ... but, the question remains, when might this political Shangri-La materialize? When will senators and members of congress feel comforitable enough to shun pork-barrel spending as the good doctor has? Yes, it's an election year; but, shouldn't that inspire greater fiscal responsibility? If only.

Senator Coburn will be speaking at the Heritage Foundation this afternoon; we'll have a full report later today ...

A healthy suborbital space travel industry, complete with space hotels and trips to the moon and beyond, is possible if only government will restrain from stifling creativity and innovation with burdensome regulations. So said Burt Rutan, leader of the SpaceShipOne team that became the first to launch a privately-funded human spaceflight in 2004, at the 25th International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles recently.

According to a space.com article:

Rutan said that he remains worried about the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) commercial space transportation regulations, tagging it a dilemma. There remain several sticky, red tape rules that may well cripple experimental research and development of passenger-carrying space planes.

Such rules are inhibiting the prospect that a sustainable suborbital space travel industry can be established, Rutan argued.

Rutan also criticized NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle program and plans to revisit the Moon, likening NASA's efforts to archeology. Said Rutan, They are forcing the program to be done with technology that we already know works. They are not creating an environment where it is possible to have a breakthrough. . . . If we copy what we had it won't be affordable enough or safe enough.

Rutan has thus hit upon the critical difference between efforts driven by market forces and those driven by political decisions and ambitions. Market entrepreneurship encourages risk and demands results. Political entrepreneurship only seeks to further political goals and careers—even when those efforts contradict the laws of economics and cannot be held accountable.

Rutan continues to put his money where his mouth is. He and his Scaled Composites company are busy developing a fleet of suborbital spaceliners and two giant carrier planes for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Gallactic venture.

It’s common practice among businesses to require their employees to submit expense reports that detail the purpose of their expenditures, attaching the employee’s name directly to the bill. This means that John Smithmiester can’t just go and buy a $95.2 million Picasso for his apartment and have his company foot the bill. Yet, our own Uncle Sam Inc. doesn’t seem to have the same basic due diligence best practices in its congressional handbook.

Until yesterday.

HR 4975 passed in the House yesterday with a vote of 217-213, requiring that lawmakers submit an explanation along with any earmark request, justifying their teapot museums or waterless urinals. In addition, the bill also requires lawmakers to attach their name to the specific earmark.

Yet perhaps it’s all for the best that the government took over 200 years to catch up to the private sector; otherwise, America would be without the paper museums and mariachi music that are so near and dear to all of our hearts.

I've seen a lot of beautiful sunsets in my time, but this one could take the cake:

A proposal that could lead to termination — or “sunset” — of agencies and programs that fail to prove their worth every 10 years may make it to the House floor for the first time this spring.

The measure will likely come up for a vote during the first two weeks in June, said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

The Bush administration-backed idea to create a Sunset Commission — whose recommendations would be voted on by lawmakers — has been bouncing around Congress for years and was the subject of a Government Reform subcommittee hearing in September. Bills to create the commission have been introduced in the House and Senate.

. . . .

In addition to the Sunset Commission, two other proposals would convene groups to recommend the elimination of agencies or programs:

• The Results Commission, which would evaluate a list of programs and agencies deemed questionable by the president.

• The Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies, which would evaluate all agencies and programs except those in the Defense Department or any agency that solely administers entitlement programs.

Bills to create these commissions have been introduced in both the House and Senate.

Government employees won 61 percent of job competitions with the private sector last year, a sharp drop from 91 percent the year before, according to a report to be released this week.

The drop was due to Federal Aviation Administration employees’ loss of a job competition to Lockheed Martin in February 2005, said Robert Burton, acting administrator of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget.

FAA’s outsourcing of 2,500 positions for flight service specialists, who provide pilots with flight plans and weather information, followed the government’s largest public-private job competition to date.

Job transfers began in October, following an unsuccessful court challenge by an employees’ union and appeals from Congress to wait until it decided whether to halt the transfer.

The 2005 totals are “a little skewed” by the FAA decision, so the new report will include a three-year average of job competitions won by government and industry, Burton said.

Full article here.

The Labor, State and Transportation departments earned top spots in an independent organization's rankings of the quality of agencies' 2005 annual performance reports, and Treasury jumped up significantly.

George Mason University's Mercatus Center released its seventh Annual Performance Report Scorecard on Tuesday, rating and ranking agencies on the transparency, public benefits and leadership evidenced in their performance and accountability reports. The ratings measure the quality of the reports, rather than agencies' success at meeting the goals outlined in them.

. . . .

The score card awards agencies up to 60 points, spread across 12 criteria designed to evaluate the performance reports for how accessible, readable and usable they are; their delineation of program outcomes and costs; and the extent to which leadership is demonstrated by justifying agency performance and making links between programs, goals and policies.

Agencies earning ratings of "satisfactory" or higher, with at least 36 points, were responsible for only 15 percent of the $2.45 trillion in fiscal 2005 noninterest spending, the report stated.

. . . .

"Given the paucity of links between outcomes and costs in most reports, it's tempting to conclude that vast swaths of federal spending are essentially 'faith-based' initiatives," said Jerry Ellig, a Mercatus Center senior research fellow and a co-author of the study. "Intentions and values, rather than systematic proof of actual outcomes, drive much of the support for these programs."

The full article is here, and the Mercatus study is here.

Here’s Don Boudreaux:

Did you know that the modern federal income tax in the United States was a chief cause of alcohol prohibition here (from 1920 through 1933)? … [Prohibition’s repeal] had next to nothing to do with prohibition's ineffectiveness and almost everything to do with Uncle Sam's desperation, in the early 1930s, for additional tax revenue.

More here.

And from Jacob Sullum’s latest column:

How is a mugger different from the Internal Revenue Service? Both take your money, but the mugger doesn't make you fill out forms.

Every year the Tax Foundation calculates the cost of this added indignity. Since it's hard to put a dollar figure on annoyance and anxiety, the Washington-based think tank sticks to estimating the time involved in keeping records and completing returns: some 6 billion hours in 2005.

The group's analysts multiply these hours by the average hourly compensation for professional tax preparers or, for the share of taxpayers who file their own returns, the average hourly compensation for U.S. workers. The resulting figure represents the cost of complying with the federal income tax, which the Tax Foundation projects will be $279 billion this year.
…
Not surprisingly, compliance costs have increased as the tax code has become more complicated. The number of words dealing with income taxes in the Internal Revenue Code and IRS regulations rose nearly tenfold between 1955 and 2005, from 718,000 to more than 7 million.

Seems like a good time to visit the The Wine Commonsewer. He’ll give you tax advice and then sooth the pain with a nice pinot (actually he probably won't supply you with the good stuff but he can make recommendations).

It’s the Murray Plan:

Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies and converting what remains into a muddle of services, subsidies, in-kind support and cash hedged with restrictions and exceptions, just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back in cash grants to all American adults. Make the grant large enough so that the poor won't be poor, everyone will have enough for a comfortable retirement, and everyone will be able to afford health care. We're rich enough to do it.

…

I call it simply "the Plan" for want of a catchier label--makes a $10,000 annual grant to all American citizens who are not incarcerated, beginning at age 21, of which $3,000 a year must be used for health care. Everyone gets a monthly check, deposited electronically to a bank account. If we implemented the Plan tomorrow, it would cost about $355 billion more than the current system. The projected costs of the Plan cross the projected costs of the current system in 2011. By 2020, the Plan would cost about half a trillion dollars less per year than conservative projections of the cost of the current system. By 2028, that difference would be a trillion dollars per year.

Article here.

According to a new CDW-G survey of federal IT workers:

Forty-one percent of the employees surveyed said they had worked off site in some capacity in 2005, and that is double from the year before. Of those, 43 percent said they started teleworking in the last year.

Article here.

Related: Foot-dragging Feds Beginning to Embrace Telecommuting

"Unless we do something about [obesity], the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist attempt."

US Surgeon General Richard Carmona.

Article here.

We can only hope that some “what I meant to say” press conference is in the works.

I suppose the SG ignored this study.

All 535 members of Congress get Hustler for free:

Not that most members want it. It usually gets thrown in the circular file marked “trash.”

But like clockwork, it keeps coming, despite efforts to have it stop.

The spokesman for Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, recently tried to halt the mailing. Nope.

Several members of Congress have sued to make it stop, only to lose.

…

[Publisher Larry Flynt] doesn't feel bad that the ones who are actually opening the envelopes aren't the members of congress but young interns.

“I'm sure the interns are over 18,” Flynt says. “Those guys need some help getting through puberty anyway.”
Interns for Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, are trained to distinguish the nudie magazine's envelope from the other mail and throw it away, says Chief of Staff Scott Parker.

“So every time we happen to get one, it ends up in the trash pretty instantly,” Parker says.

Just how instant is "pretty" instant?

Article here; via Fark.

According to the Federal Times, federal budgeting is becoming more tightly integrated with program performance:

Much like an eighth-grader looking for extra allowance around report card time, federal managers are finding that good grades pay off, even when the money is tight.

Nearly three quarters of the programs rated effective by the Office of Management and Budget are slated for budget increases in the president's fiscal 2007 proposal, compared with 60 percent in the 2006 proposed budget.
Those rated moderately effective also fared better in the 2007 budget proposal with 55 percent winning recommendations for increased funding, compared with 50 percent that were up for more money in the same category in 2006.

OMB measures a program's performance by asking managers to answer a series of questions on how well the program's goals are tied to overall agency goals and missions, how well the program is managed and to what extent the program is achieving intended results. That questionnaire is called the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). OMB scores the responses and ultimately gives each program a rating of effective, moderately effective, adequate, ineffective or results not demonstrated.

This growing correlation between a program's PART score and the budget proposal should come as no surprise from an administration whose mantra is "what gets measured gets done."

For more on PART, see Adam's article in the latest Privatization Watch.

Bush angered conservationists again last week with his budget plan to sell off some 300,000 acres of national forests and other public lands worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

From Government Executive:

Two years after President Bush issued an executive order on reforming management of real property, federal agencies have made little progress in accounting for their holdings or ensuring they are aligned with needs and missions, according to congressional auditors.

In testimony prepared for a hearing held Monday (GAO-06-248T), Mark L. Goldstein, director of physical infrastructure issues at the Government Accountability Office, said that real property management continues to be a "high-risk area" for agencies.

"The government's vast and diverse portfolio of real property reflects an infrastructure based on the business model and technological environment of the 1950s," GAO auditors found. They reported that many government real property assets do not mesh with agencies' changing missions, and are therefore unnecessary.

Furthermore, upkeep and operating costs for empty buildings cost the government billions of dollars annually, while ownership of the buildings ties up financial resources that could be better utilized elsewhere, the auditors concluded. They cited data from GAO's 2003 report on the topic that found the Defense Department was spending an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion annually on maintenance for unneeded buildings.

From the Federal Times, OPM is moving forward on bringing performance pay to all federal employees:

The Bush administration is setting the stage for extending performance-based pay reform government-wide by requiring agencies to strengthen how they appraise their managers and employees outside the executive ranks.

As part of the president’s management agenda, the administration last year laid out new goals for how agencies should manage their human resources. One of those goals is for agencies to hold their supervisors, managers and executives accountable for managing employee performance.

Toward that end, the Office of Personnel Management has asked agencies to reassess how they manage the performance of non-executive managers and employees and to apply to them the same performance-management practices they use for senior executives. Three years ago, senior executives were the first government-wide group of employees to be moved into a performance-based pay system. The result has been that most are now evaluated under new, more rigorous performance appraisal systems.

OPM expects agencies to set quantifiable performance goals for employees that are tied to achieving program or agency goals. This is how Senior Executive Service members are appraised for performance. Specifically, in 2007, more than half of every employee’s performance plan must be focused on achieving specific and quantifiable results, OPM Director Linda Springer said in a Jan. 30 memo to agency chief human capital officers.

Full article here.

OMB released the latest President's Management Agenda score card last week. Government Executive has the highlights:

Federal agencies saw modest improvements on the latest Bush administration quarterly management score card, with the biggest gains evident in e-government initiatives.

Eight of 26 agencies improved their e-government grades on the traffic-light-style President's Management Agenda score card for the first-quarter of fiscal 2006, which ended Dec. 31, 2005. Only the Transportation Department was downgraded in that area. The Office of Management and Budget published the scores Thursday.

. . . .

Agencies continued to show relatively poor results in financial performance, however.

Two agencies suffered dramatic drops in that area -- the General Services Administration and Energy Department moved from green to red lights, indicating "unsatisfactory" performances. The Smithsonian Institution jumped in the other direction, moving from red to green, signaling "success." The Office of Personnel Management saw a more modest change, improving to yellow, for "mixed results."

Overall, the financial performance category on the score card remained bathed in red as 24 agencies continued to struggle with rules that require annual audits. While 19 of those agencies merited clean audits for the past year, many were held back on the score card by "material weaknesses." In the most recent ratings, 17 agencies obtained red scores in financial management, while only eight earned a green mark.

Management initiatives related to human capital, the opening of federal jobs to competition from contractors, and the linking of budget and performance results were stable, with just two agencies seeing changes.

The PMA score card is published here, though as of today the latest results haven't been posted yet.

According to the Federal Times, DOD is moving forward with a plan to privatize military mail delivery:

The Defense Department is starting to move forward on a plan to outsource its billion-dollar-plus mail operation, which would be one of the government's biggest privatization projects in recent years.

An influential advisory group concluded doing so would save money, improve mail service and free up troops badly needed for war-fighting.

. . . .

Pentagon officials have already drafted an internal memo to move forward with the privatization plan, and that memo is under review, according to one industry source who asked not to be identified.

. . . .

The Defense Business Board task force said outsourcing would allow the military to shift almost 4,500 active and reserve troops from postal duties to other higher-priority jobs. "Delivery of mail is not a core military function," the task force said.

. . . .

Defense mail costs — including transportation, payroll, technology, travel, and headquarters operations — are at least $1.8 billion a year, the Defense Business Board study said. But the true total cost is unknown because government auditors cannot calculate it.

One industry source said those costs could be reduced by about 25 percent — and service to customers greatly improved — by using technology to reduce the number of packages that now get returned because they are "undeliverable as addressed."

Could the U.S. Postal Service take over?

"This probably would not be an opportunity for [the Postal Service] because they wouldn't be able to compete with private-sector companies from a cost standpoint," said Robert McLean, executive director of the advocacy group Mailers Council of Arlington, Va., which represents mailing associations, corporations and nonprofit groups.

"Private-sector companies that operate mail rooms usually do so at wage levels far less than what the Postal Service pays, and the Postal Service would not be able to match that," McLean said.

Gene Del Polito, head of the advocacy group Association for Postal Commerce, also in Arlington, agreed.

"There is no way in hell the Postal Service is going to get this business because they can't be competitive. There is no way it will cost less, even compared to using military personnel," Del Polito said.

If there is any effect on the Postal Service from privatizing military mail delivery, Del Polito said, it would likely be the negative one of establishing a privatizing precedent.

"If you open up military mail to competition, then it would be irrational to keep other parts of the mail system the exclusive preserve of the Postal Service. If cost is the major concern, then the Postal Service should be privatized," Del Polito said.

There's a thought...

In a partial victory for the Bush Administration, the Senate has voted to allow limited competitive sourcing at the VA:

The Senate late last month passed legislation that would allow a limited reintroduction of public-private job competitions at the Veterans Affairs Department, which effectively stopped running such contests in early 2003.

The language is more restrictive than that in earlier versions of the bill, and federal employee union officials hailed it as a victory.

Proponents of the Bush administration's competitive sourcing program had successfully inserted a provision into a preliminary version of the 2005 Veterans Health Care Act (S. 1182) that would have allowed full resumption of job competitions at VA.

It would have accomplished this by repealing a 1981 law, which the VA general counsel in April 2003 interpreted to mean that the Veterans Health Administration could only fund competitive sourcing studies with money appropriated by Congress explicitly for that purpose. The counsel's finding effectively halted the VA's competitive sourcing program.

Democrats on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, as well as federal employee unions and veterans groups, fought the full repeal of the 1981 law, arguing that a continuation of job competitions would divert funds from veterans' health care and exacerbate budget shortfalls at VA facilities.

But Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the VA committee and a proponent of continuing competitive sourcing at the department, argued that the savings achieved through studies could reach $1.3 billion over five years.

The Senate ultimately voted to allow only limited competitions, setting a $15 million cap on VA spending for studies. Senators also approved restrictions on studies consistent with those imposed on the Defense Department.

Like the Pentagon, VA would be barred from granting a cost advantage to contractors that contribute less toward employee health benefits than the government. The provisions would have a September 2007 sunset date.

Looks like GAO is ringing in the New Year with a performance-based pay system:

The New Year brings a new pay system for employees at the Government Accountability Office.

GAO, which has been a leader in federal personnel reform and holds an exemption from most civil service rules, is introducing market sensitivity to its pay scale. The audit agency hired the global consulting firm Watson Wyatt to conduct a study of compensation for analysts and is making several changes based on those findings.

This year, the GAO is guaranteeing that all employees with a "meets expectation" or higher rating will receive at least a 2.6 percent salary adjustment, as long as their pay falls within a competitive market range. All pay hikes beyond that will be tied directly to performance ratings. Watson Wyatt found that comparable employers were raising pay 2.6 percent this year.

...but lawmakers still want to make it more difficult to achieve the President's competitive sourcing goals. From the Federal Times:

Democrat and Republican lawmakers have struck a deal to scuttle a controversial anti-outsourcing measure contained in a House-passed spending bill.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is contained in the Transportation spending bill and has prompted an administration veto threat because it would effectively stop agencies from subjecting federal jobs to possible outsourcing.

Capitol Hill, industry and union officials familiar with the negotiations say House and Senate lawmakers agreed to eject the Van Hollen measure from the House-Senate conference report and replace it with a measure considered less destructive to the Bush administration's plan to open federal jobs to possible outsourcing.

The Senate passed its version of the 2006 Transportation, Treasury and Housing and Urban Development spending bill Oct. 20, and both chambers are heading for a conference to reconcile the differences between the two versions.

House and Senate lawmakers agreed to include in the conference report a Senate-passed provision that would bar agencies from awarding more than 10 federal jobs to a contractor unless its bid is cheaper by $10 million or 10 percent — whichever is lower — below the federal team's bid.

. . .

OMB threatened a presidential veto of the Transportation bill if this Senate provision is left intact, saying it would force agencies to decide competitions based on cost only.

"By marginalizing the consideration of quality, this provision would weaken competitive sourcing as a management tool to achieve the best overall value for the taxpayer," OMB said in an Oct. 19 statement to the Senate.

See Reason's 2005 Annual Privatization Report for the latest data on the federal competitive sourcing front. With $2.5 billion in savings over the next several years, and a return of $20 for every $1 spent on competitive sourcing, the effort has generated impressive results to date. Taxpayers stand to lose if the Senate provision stays and a veto is not forthcoming.

Who’s the bigger spender?

Discretionary spending comprises most defense spending and other nonentitlement social programs; it's what president and Congress decide to spend each year through appropriations bills. Because it could be theoretically zeroed out each year, discretionary spending is the best measure of fiscal responsibility in evaluating presidents and Congresses.

In fiscal 1965-68, Lyndon Johnson raised discretionary spending a whopping 33.4 percent (all figures are adjusted for inflation and based on Office of Management and Budget data). He jacked up nondefense discretionary spending 34.2 percent and defense spending -- remember Vietnam? -- 33.1 percent.
…

Then there's George W. Bush. In his first term, he increased total discretionary spending 35.1 percent and that percentage will actually rise: the final figures for fiscal 2005 aren't in yet, so we have to rely on the July OMB midsession review numbers. The final numbers will be significantly higher, especially since midsession figures do not take into account hundreds of billions in supplemental spending related to Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How has the president spent so much? Defense spending has greatly increased, by 37.2 percent over four years. But the president also increased nondefense discretionary spending by a humongous 37 percent. Even when you subtract homeland security spending, Mr. Bush and Congress boosted nondefense discretionary spending by 23 percent during his first term.

Read the whole thing (by Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie) here.

There’s so much evidence of the GOP's big spending ways, but will history pay attention? Here’s hoping we can break from our outdated stereotypes of Dems and Reps and realize that the party of limited government does not exist.

Two cheers for divided government.

Congressman Tom DeLay declared "victory" in war on budget fat on Tuesday...stating that there simply isn't any fat left in the federal budget to cut. When asked if government was operating at maximum efficiency he added "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."

An interesting theory yet one that has no merit.

DeLay even suggested that 'no one' has come up with ideas or places to cut further. For starters, Citizens Against Government Waste issues an annual pig book highlighting the wasteful pork barrel projects Congress passes every year - including the infamous 'bridge to nowhere.'

What's worse perhaps is the Majority Leaders dismissal of what the leader of his own party has tried to do. President Bush created the Performance Assessment Rating Tool to weed out poor performing programs - yet Congress has virtually ignored recommended cuts.

The Heritage Foundation has a great wrap up of the story and options that Mr. DeLay may want to consider for spending cuts.

Government Executive has a great roundup of what various federal agencies are doing as part of the Katrina relief and recovery operation. It's well worth a look.

Following up on my post from the other day, another batch of federal employees have won a public-private job competition:

A team of technology workers at the Office of Personnel Management held on to their jobs in the agency's 15th public-private competition by agreeing to cut back on overtime, agency officials announced Thursday.

The 52 IT specialists, based in Macon, Ga., proposed a 40 percent cut in overtime expenses, said Ronald Flom, OPM's deputy associate director for contracting, facilities and administrative services, in the announcement. OPM expects to save $9.9 million during the next five years by going with the in-house team's plan. Of that, $900,000 will come from the overtime reductions.

Employees at the personnel agency have prevailed in 13 out of 15 public-private competitions held since the Bush administration introduced the competitive sourcing initiative. "The record of OPM keeping jobs in-house ... is excellent and confirms the fairness of the process," Flom said.

More confirmation that, when given the opportunity to compete with the private sector for traditionally public sector jobs, government workers can prevail:

A team of Internal Revenue Service employees on Friday prevailed in a public-private competition for document-handling work, but at a cost of 166 jobs.

The in-house team plans to reduce the number of employees filing, maintaining, transporting and disposing of paper tax documents from 843 to 677. The work will also be performed from six rather than eight locations, and more of it will be completed by intermittent workers.

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said the win comes at too high a cost. "There is a much better way [to improve service delivery] than pitting one group of workers against another," she said. "The better course . . . is for agencies to work with their employees on continuous improvement of work processes."

But Raymona Stickell, director of the IRS' Office of Competitive Sourcing, said the agency reviewed a variety of options and decided that a competition had the potential to deliver substantial improvements in efficiency. The agency is providing career counseling to help the 166 affected employees find jobs either within government or in the private sector, she said.

Affected workers also will be offered early outs and buyouts, and will be granted severance pay if they are involuntarily separated, Stickell said. IRS officials plan to cut the affected employees from the agency's payroll in June 2006.

It seems that the NTEU and the IRS folks have different ideas about what constitutes "improvement." The prospects for efficiency gains played large in the IRS decision. But NTEU only seems interested in efficiency up to the point that the first job or worker benefit is threatened. It's obvious which approach is more likely to lead to true transformational change within the organization.

Here's Matt Welch:

If there are still believers in limited government cowering in the corner of the Bush-Frist-DeLay Republican tent, they might recover some of their lost sense of shame by picking up a copy of the Cato Institute's new book, The Republican Revolution 10 Years Later: Smaller Government or Business as Usual?

It's a bracingly grim collection of essays from people who were generally enthusiastic about (and in some cases, participated in) the GOP's historic recapture of the House of Representatives in 1994. Take Stephen Moore, who worked with House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio) in drafting the Contract with America budget for fiscal year 1996.

"Under President Bush (and a Republican Congress) federal outlays increased 28 percent between FY01 and FY05," Moore writes. "Nondefense discretionary spending increased 34 percent during these four years. That fiscal policy is exactly the opposite of what was promised by Republican leaders when they first came to power in the 1990s," Moore writes.

Whole thing here.

For more, go here and here.

Lance Armstrong keeps doing his thing and the Postal Service keeps doing its thing:

The Postal Service must revamp its operations to stay on firm financial footing, according to a Government Accountability Office report released [in May].

So this San Diego Business Journal article of mine from two years ago feels kind of current again:

Even those of us who aren’t particularly interested in cycling marvel at Armstrong’s dominance. We tried to savor some of the exhilaration he felt when he stood on the winner’s platform, worn but victorious. The “Star Spangled Banner” played in tribute to this champion who so exemplifies the romantic spirit of America.

Armstrong even received a very special congratulatory phone call from the Postmaster General. Imagine the thrill. Who among us hasn’t dreamt of getting a call from the most important mailman of them all?

Actually, that’s not right at all. After all, the U.S. Postal Service exemplifies the bureaucratic sprit—sluggish, dreary, and frightened of competition. Which makes it all the more ironic that the postal service would use Armstrong as its spokesman. Have sponsor and spokesman ever epitomized such differing values?

BTW, Lance isn’t ruling out a career in politics.

From the all-news cable channels to the blogosphere yesterday, Washington's talking heads and pundits had all but named U.S. Circuit Court Judge Edith Clement of New Orleans the nominee to the Supreme Court.

Then President George W. Bush stepped in, and Clement's name moved into the great pantheons of speculative missteps.

From fabulously famous to footnote in one day. Wonder what it was like waking up as Edith Clement this morning.

Whole story here.

For more on the one who did get the nod, see Orin Kerr.

And Matt Welch poses seven questions to John Roberts. My favorite:

5) You're on a lifeboat, but it can only hold 8 of the original 10 amendments without sinking, killing your whole family. Which ones go?

Here’s a profile of the guy who W will nominate to the fanciest bench in the land.

Well, it's not as much as the Administration wanted, but it's a start:

House-passed government spending bills would shut down 37 of the 99 federal programs the [Bush] administration recommended for elimination in 2006. About two-thirds of those are Education Department programs.

Those bills also target another 62 federal programs for elimination that the administration had not recommended be scrapped.

[...]

In its 2006 budget proposal, the administration targeted the Education Department for the most program cancellations. Of 48 programs the administration proposed to cut, the House agreed to 21.

The administration’s proposed program cuts would have saved more than $8 billion, while the House plan would save $4.5 billion.

So far, the Senate has passed only the Interior, Energy, and Legislative Branch spending bills. Those bills would ax at least four programs proposed for elimination by the administration: Interior’s Jobs in the Woods and Water Quality Cooperative Agreements, and Energy’s Nuclear Energy Plant Optimization and Nuclear Energy Plant Research Initiative. The House, however, disagreed with the Senate and the administration to cut the Water Quality Cooperative Agreements program.

(from the Federal Times)

They’re always careful to blend into their surroundings. They use high powered binoculars, telescopes, and other surveillance equipment to scope out areas. They’re sometimes found snooping near dams or military bases.

No wonder the U.S. government is targeting birdwatchers:

Birdwatchers in certain areas are being forced to provide photographic identification, submit themselves to background checks, and even pay for a police escort.

Via Sploid.

This was a bit of unwelcome news to hear on Independence Day:

A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report on federal regulation finds that while the number of new rules declined slightly from 2003, costs are at record levels compared to other economic measures. Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., author of the report Ten Thousand Commandments, reports that regulatory costs exceed all pretax corporate profits ($745 billion) and all personal income taxes ($765 billion). The number of pages in the Federal Register, where new regulations are published, has increased 6.2 percent to 75,676 pages—an all-time record.

President Bush proposed $2.57 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending in the federal budget. Although those costs do fully account for the on-budget scope of the federal government, environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations add over $870 billion in off-budget costs every year.

"As we approach Independence Day this weekend, anyone who looks at the current size and complexity of the federal regulatory state is struck by the growth of government since the nation’s founding," said Crews. "In the republic's early days the kind of intrusive, detailed rules so prevalent today simply didn’t exist. In the years since, the creep of new regulations has resulted in an unwieldy mass of expensive rules that attempt to control things which would have shocked the Founding Fathers."

There are now 4,266 new rules and regulations at various stages of implementation, with 135 of them expected to have annual economic impacts of over $100 million each. The number of these "economically significant" rules increased 6 percent between 2003 and 2004.

The full report can be found here. I guarantee that it won't be happy reading...

Reason asks libertarian legal experts: Who are your favorites—past, present, and future—on the nation’s highest court?

Check it out.

Orin Kerr has a list of quick takes on O’Connor leaving the bench.

Here’s an interesting one, especially since we will certainly be bombarded with news reports that assert her departure will turn the Court upside down:

O'Connor's retirement may shift the Court a lot less than people think. In the big ideological cases of the last Term, Justice Kennedy was the swing vote as often as (or maybe even more often than) Justice O'Connor. Let's assume for now that O'Connor is replaced by a consistently more conservative Justice; even if that's true, the left-of-center Justices presumably still have 4 very reliable votes and a good shot at picking up a 5th vote with Kennedy. Plus, new Justices are hard to predict, and it's often hard to tell whether a new Justice will vote consistently one way or another.

Rumor around Washington has Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) introducing a bill to stop the raid on social security later this week.

The bills goals are simple:
1. provide a first step toward a permanent solution
2. forces Congress to recognize future obligations ("stops the raid" presumably on the "lockbox")
3. gives workers a legal right to their account benefits (which, by the way, you are not entitled to now...thanks Supreme Court)
4. with ownership, retirement nest eggs can be passed on to family members

Good luck Senator, we're rooting for you!

For more information on social security reform visit the Free Enterprise Fund

As my colleague Geoff Segal noted last week, OMB recently released its Report on Competitive Sourcing Results, Fiscal Year 2004 (press release | full report). He noted that every dollar spent on competitive sourcing during fiscal 2004 will produce $20 in savings. Here are some other highlights from the report:

• Public-private competitions completed in FY 2004 are expected to yield $1.4 billion in savings over the next five years, a 27 per