Downsizing Blog
Federal Highway Spending
The federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) is running out of money. Congress will likely pass a short-term fix for the program in coming weeks. Over the longer term, many policymakers favor raising taxes to close the $14 billion annual gap between HTF spending and revenues.
Cato Spending Charts
How much does Congress spend on Veterans Affairs, the IRS, or Customs and Border Protection? How much has spending increased over time?
You can answer those questions quickly and easily with Cato’s updated charting tool for the federal budget.
The tool allows you to plot real outlays for about 500 departments, agencies, and programs, 1970-2014. All data is from the Office of Management and Budget.
California, Drought, and Water Policy
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Stanford economics professor Edward Lazear provides an economist’s view of the California drought situation:
Small Is Beautiful
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IRS IT: $2.4 Billion But Not World-Class
Perhaps the most suspicious thing about the disappearance of Lois Lerner’s emails is that the IRS is not a small business operation that cannot afford high-quality computer, email, and backup systems. It is a huge modern bureaucracy that has computer technology at the core of its operations. The IRS IT budget in 2014 is a massive $2.4 billion (page 149 here).
Ex-Im Bank Weakens American Capitalism
One of the policy fissures in the Republican Party is over business subsides, and the current debate about the Export-Import Bank illustrates the conflict. The Ex-Im Bank is one of many corporate welfare or crony capitalist programs that litter the federal budget. The Bank’s authorization runs out in September, and so Congress must act if it wants to extend the operations of this business subsidy machine.
Border Patrol Spending
A tragedy is unfolding in Texas as thousands of illegal immigrants are pouring over the southern border. Alex Nowrasteh has examined the immigration statistics here. But in this blog, let’s take a look at the budget situation.
Congress May Hike VA Spending $400 Billion
Last week the Senate voted to greatly increase health care spending for veterans. If the new spending were made permanent, it would cost at least $385 billion over 10 years, as Nicole Kaeding noted. The House version of the bill would cost at least $477 billion if made permanent. The chambers will now work out a compromise bill, and—going out on a limb here—I’m guessing that the compromise is also a budget buster.
Lessons from Stamp Collecting
My mom recently handed me a large bag of stamps she had collected as a child. There are thousands of stamps from about 100 countries, most from the 1910s to the 1950s. It’s a treasure trove.
Voting Themselves Bigger Budgets
An implicit principle in a democracy is that the officials who decide how your taxes are spent represent you, the taxpayers, and not the bureaucracies that receive your taxes. But Congress violated this principle when it wrote MAP-21, the 2012 transportation law. As detailed in a proposed rule earlier this month, the law gives transit agencies in major urban areas a vote on how much of each region’s transportation dollars are spent on transit.