Downsizing Blog

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat representing the federal workforce, frets over the impact of sequestration or any alternative on his Fairfax County district: “Undoubtedly, we will take a hit…It’s going to result in a steady retrenchment in government investment in both the civilian and defense sectors.

Cato has released a new study on capital gains tax rates. With rates scheduled to rise in January, the study describes the six reasons why capital gains tax rates should be kept as low as possible. The piece also notes that the new top U.S. capital gains tax rate in January of 28 percent will be much higher than the 16 percent average in the OECD.

Unconscionable levels of waste, fraud, and abuse continue to plague America’s 11 year nation-building mission in Afghanistan. According to an investigation by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), officers with the NATO training mission shredded the financial records of fuel purchased for the Afghan National Army. As a result, “the U.S.

Head Start, the flagship federal education program for low-income preschoolers, doesn’t work. That is the conclusion of yet another high quality, large-scale randomized experimentcommissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program.

I greatly admire Switzerland’s “debt brake” because it’s really a spending cap. Politicians are not allowed to increase spending faster than average revenue growth over a multi-year period, which basically means spending can only grow at the rate of inflation plus population.

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) is the new chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. His father, Bud, chaired the committee from 1995-2001 and would have been a first-ballot inductee into the Porker Hall of Fame if one existed. Having ridden his dad’s coattails into office, the big government apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. 

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has announced that Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) will replace the departing Jim DeMint in the Senate. Scott is a member of the 2010 “Tea Party Class” of Republican freshmen and is considered a solid fiscal conservative. So let’s take a quick look at how he voted this year on opportunities to terminate federal agencies and programs.

The good:

It has largely gone unnoticed amidst the hullabaloo surrounding the fiscal cliff, but regardless of what happens with the cliff negotiations, taxes are going up next year. The president may be calling for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes by 2022 in exchange for not driving the country over the cliff, but that does not count Obamacare, which will impose an additional $1 trillion in new or increased taxes over the next ten years, a big portion of which take effect in 2013.

The Small Business Administration was created in the 1950s to make it appear as though federal politicians cared about the plight of the “little fellow.” A more helpful expression of concern would have been a rollback of the federal government’s increasingly heavy hand in the post-New Deal economy. Instead, they went with the more politically alluring option of using the heavy hand to deliver handouts.

Federal employees are overpaid and underworked (probably a good thing), but a tear-jerker in today’s Washington Post&nb