Downsizing Blog
The following headlines were on a magazine cover I saw over the weekend:
The New York Times has another example of what could be considered a form of corporate welfare: excessive federal reimbursement rates for anti-anemia drugs used by dialysis centers.
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times ran a column repeating the simplistic notion that since homeownership is “good” then subsidies for homeownership must therefore also be “good.” Never asked, or apparently even contemplated, is the question of whether all our various homeownership subsidies actually deliver homeownership.
The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold counts six budget “showdowns” in Washington over the past two and half year. The looming battle this fall over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling will be number seven. That led Fahrenthold to examine what the six showdowns have accomplished with regard to the size of government.
Well, this is awkward. OK, not really. Because despite the fact that a mooted Ex-Im loan will help my homeland (or, more precisely, a company based in my homeland), it is still not ok.
Combined outlays on Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income have roughly doubled over the last decade and will cost taxpayers almost $200 billion this year. The complex and often subjective disability determination process, which is essentially the same for both programs, has created an opportunity for specialty law firms to grab a piece of the action.
This morning, I discussed Social Security Disability Insurance on C-SPAN's Washington Journal:
Earlier this month, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said that without a new farm bill to replace the 2008 farm bill, the USDA would not have the authority or the funds to continue paying the $147m per year bribe we had settled with Brazil in 2010 as part of a trade deal.
A new essay at Downsizing Government focuses on infrastructure investment. The essay discusses problems with federal infrastructure spending and the advantages of privatizing infrastructure to the full extent possible.
Unfortunately, the current administration’s infrastructure policy has been mainly focused on increasing spending on misguided activities such as high-speed rail. But here are some of the problems with such a federal-led approach to infrastructure:
Next Monday, the Cato Institute will release a new study looking at the state-by-state value of welfare. Nationwide, our study found that the value of benefits for a typical recipient family ranged from a high of $49,175 in Hawaii to a low of $16,984 in Mississippi.
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