Downsizing Blog
House Budget Committee Testimony on Debt
I testified to the House Budget Committee yesterday on the history of federal debt and reasons to balance the budget. John Taylor, Jared Bernstein, and Ryan Silvey also testified.
Wasting Billions on Disability Insurance
The federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides income to low-income, disabled individuals, including children. In 2014, SSI paid benefits totaling $56 billion to 8 million people. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests that a substantial share of that money was spent improperly.
After Another Failure, Time to Privatize TSA
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has another failure on its hands. In recent tests, undercover investigators smuggled mock explosives and banned weapons through U.S. airport checkpoints 96 percent of the time. According to ABC, “In one case, agents failed to detect a fake explosive taped to an agent’s back, even after performing a pat down that was prompted after the agent set off the magnetometer alarm.”
NYT Infrastructure Story Crumbles
Government spending on highways and streets (light blue) and transportation (brown) have been roughly flat the past five years after surging the prior five years. It is spending on education (dark blue) that has plunged, and which has dragged down overall government construction spending. I don’t know why construction on schools and colleges soared and then plunged, but that is the main cause of the recent downward trend in public construction, not any form of transportation.
Failing Aviation Administration (FAA)
The federal government operates the air traffic control (ATC) system as an old-fashioned bureaucracy, even though ATC is a high-tech business. It’s as if the government took over Apple Computer and tried to design breakthrough products. The government would surely screw it up, which is the situation today with ATC run by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Over-Budget Hospitals
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is plagued with problems. Veterans wait months for medical care and have few options for accessing non-VHA providers. In addition to all of the issues relating to providing health care, construction of VA medical facilities is mismanaged, which costs taxpayers billions of dollars in extra costs.
The House Budget Proposal Leaves Much to Be Desired
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) released his budget proposal this morning, which outlines spending priorities for 2016 through the next decade. The proposal is a mixed bag. It includes some reform steps, but also fails to aggressively confront the dire fiscal realities facing the nation with specific spending-cuts.
Long Range Bomber’s Big Bill
Over the next several months the Pentagon will award the contract for the Long Range Strike Bomber. If the Department of Defense’s history repeats itself, cost overruns on the project seem likely.
DHS Shutdown
Policymakers are battling over a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The disagreement over the bill involves the funding of President Obama’s recent immigration actions.
Admitting FutureGen’s Failure
The Department of Energy (DOE) is admitting that it failed. Last week, it announced that it will stop development of FutureGen 2.0, a federally-financed, coal-fired power plant in Illinois. FutureGen, and its successor FutureGen 2.0, wasted millions of tax dollars, and was beset with multiple delays and cost overruns.