House Republicans engineered a continuing resolution for fiscal 2011 that would trim $61 billion in “regular” discretionary budget authority versus fiscal 2010. The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in the Senate balked at the cuts, and a two-week continuing resolution will be passed in order to avoid a “government shutdown” and give the sides more time to reach an agreement. 

A Government Accountability Office report on duplicative federal programs is prima facie evidence that the government is a bloated mess. For example, there are 82 federal programs involved in teacher quality, 80 programs involved in economic development, and over 100 programs involved in surface transportation.

The Washington Post reports that several governors are advocating that Medicaid be converted to a block grant program. Block grants would free the states to experiment with cost-effective ways to provide health care to low-income populations by removing burdensome federal rules and regulations. Giving states a fixed lump-sum payment would also allow federal taxpayer costs to be directly controlled.

New data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows that reported air traffic control errors have increased by 81 percent since 2007. Errors that were most likely to result in a collision or accident jumped 26 percent from 2007 to 2010. 

Two recent audits conducted by the Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general find that the agency continues to do a poor job of making sure tax credits go to intended beneficiaries. 

The latest installment in a decades-long series of showdowns on Capitol Hill over raising the statutory debt ceiling is imminent. The ceiling has been raised ten times in just the last nine years to make room for almost $8 trillion in additional debt. But the stakes are much higher this time around, as the electorate is showing increasing awareness of the danger of having allowed Uncle Sam to abuse his credit card.

Talk of a government shutdown is heating up. The current continuing resolution funding the government is set to expire on March 4th. Last week, House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the remainder of fiscal 2011 at $61 billion below fiscal 2010 levels. Senate Democrats are balking at the $61 billion in cuts and the president has issued a veto threat.

The Washington Post recently featured an op-ed by Reps. James McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) on the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. This particular bipartisan pairing isn’t particularly noteworthy; the two men have collaborated before. But the arguments presented in the piece — one set designed to appeal to conservatives, the other aimed at liberals — have the potential to join together a much broader left-right coalition in opposition to an open-ended mission that, according to McGovern and Jones, has already cost U.S. taxpayers $450 billion dollars, and whose costs are accumulating at a rate of nearly $10 billion every month.

I testified this week to a a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee looking at the effects of the 2009 stimulus bill (the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”).

Chris Edwards recently penned a piece that makes the case for cutting federal subsidies to state and local governments. In a related budget bulletin, he shows that there are now over 1,100 federal aid programs for state and local governments.