Downsizing Blog

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

It appears likely that congressional Republicans are eventually going to accept a tax increase in exchange for real spending cuts smaller spending increases in the future. If and when that happens, Speaker Boehner should surround himself with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy at the press conference on the deal.

My Washington Examiner column this week focuses on an important new study from the office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S.

As we slide towards the “fiscal cliff,” President Obama’s stance seems pretty clear: Americans want lots of stuff but shouldn’t have to pay for it. (It’s a position the GOP has also often taken.) A new education survey suggests the President’s position is politically smart.