The president’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal is scheduled to be released on February 13th. State officials are predictably sounding the alarm on the coming “deep cuts” to federal subsidies now that stimulus funds are running out and Washington is being forced to confront its mounting red ink.
Downsizing Blog
FHA and the Foreclosures of Tomorrow
The recently released Federal Reserve White Paper on the Housing Market has received considerable attention, at least for its policy proposals. I found one of the more interesting pieces of data in the paper to be the number of mortgages with negative equity, reproduced below (Figure 3 in the Fed paper).
U.S. Postal Service Fares Worse in Recession than Foreign Posts
A new paper from postal expert Michael Schuyler compares the financial performance of the U.S. Postal Service to foreign postal service providers. Not surprisingly, the USPS, which has lost over $25 billion since 2006 and ranks near the bottom of the Postal Index of Freedom, doesn’t fare too well.
Setting the Record Straight on Military Spending Levels
As David Boaz recently demonstrated, the jeremiads emanating from Washington over proposed cuts in military spending are unfounded. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon’s op-ed in the Washington Post is only the latest to decry the “damaging blow to our military” that will be done by “massive defense cuts.”
Obama Proposes New Department of Corporate Welfare
Contrary to what various news outlets are reporting, President Obama is NOT proposing to cut government. The administration is proposing to take four independent federal agencies that specialize in corporate welfare – along with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative – and combine them with corporate welfare programs at the Department of Commerce to form what I would argue should be called the Department of Corporate Welfare.
Misleading Images on Defense Spending
The Washington Examiner ran this Heritage Foundation chart on January 10 under the title (not online) “Defense spending at lowest levels in 60 years”:
Too Much Ado about the Pentagon’s New Strategy
There’s more to the Pentagon’s new strategy than the emperor’s new clothes, but barely. It’s hardly new and not particularly strategic.
Pennsylvania Moves to Starve Poor People
That’s the message I came away with after reading an online article from a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter about a decision by the state of Pennsylvania to limit eligibility for food stamps. The article is a perfect example of the difficulty advocates for limited government face in communicating their ideas through the mainstream press.
But Don’t We Really Need Government Research?
It’s a valuable public good, research is, isn’t it? Think of where we’d be without it! I mean, it was government research that came up with the Internet, for heaven sake.
Keep the Federal Pay Freeze
The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama administration will propose a 0.5 percent cost-of-living pay increase for federal workers in its upcoming budget. The paper says that the modest cost of living increase in federal compensation would be the first pay jump for federal workers since before President Obama ordered a two-year freeze in late 2010.