Tucked away in Congress’ appropriations bill (Division G, Title II) is funding for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grants,
a program which should instead have been discontinued. DERA grants have
been used to pay for new or retrofitted tractors and cherry pickers in
Utah ($750,000), electrified parking spaces at a Delaware truck stop ($1
million), a new engine and generators for a 1950s locomotive in
Pennsylvania ($1.2 million), school buses in San Diego County ($1.6
million), and new equipment engines for farmers in the San Joaquin
Valley ($1.6 million).
The Senate omnibus appropriations bill continues two riders (p.541)
limiting the Postal Service’s ability to make necessary changes in
operations to allow them to return USPS to solvency. Specifically, USPS
is barred from discontinuing Saturday deliveries, and from closing rural
post offices. Both of these limitations should be removed.
The omnibus continues to entangle taxpayer funding with an organization
that reportedly has ties to China’s coercive family planning regime. The
bill appropriates $35 million for the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA)
Instead of cutting transportation spending in the FY 2014 omnibus,
lawmakers have doubled down on spending on federal programs—many of
which are outdated, duplicative, or outside of the federal government’s
responsibility. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic
Recovery (TIGER) grants are one such program, and lawmakers have awarded
it whopping $600 million—up $125 million from FY 2013. Begun in the
2009 stimulus bill to generate economic recovery, this grant program has
been reincarnated in fiscal years 2010 through 2013, for a total of five rounds grants.
The omnibus appropriations bill includes increases for Head Start
& Early Head Start, as well as $36 million in new funding for the
Child Care Development Block Grant (taking the program to $2.36
billion).
Increases funding for Head Start and Early Head Start by
$612 million, to $8.6 billion. Head Start has been evaluated by the
Department of Health and Human Services and deemed ineffective at
improving child outcomes on numerous measures. In December 2012, the HHS released the evaluation
of the program. The scientifically rigorous evaluation of more than
5,000 children found that Head Start had little to no impact on
cognitive, social-emotional, health, or parenting practices of
participants.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA),
which provides federal funding to states for students with special
needs, is set at $11.5 billion, $498 million above the 2013
post-sequester level. In order to more effectively serve students with
disabilities, IDEA should be reformed to allow states to make their IDEA
dollars portable, following students to a school or educational option
of choice.
Title I funding for low-income school districts is set
at $14.4 billion, which is $629 million above the 2013 post-sequester
level. To better serve low-income children, Congress should allow states
to make their Title I dollars portable. Title I of No Child Left Behind
provides federal funding to states in order for the states to provide
additional funds to low-income school districts.
The maximum Pell Grant award per student is increased to
$5,730. Pell grants, which do not have to be repaid by students, are
already funded at historically high levels. Pell grant funding has more
than doubled since President Obama took office in 2008; the $34 billion
Pell Grant program provides grants to some 9.4 billion students.
Funding for Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges and related health
insurance regulatory activities is principally funded through the
“Program Management” account of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS). The 2013 appropriation for CMS Program Management was
$3.86 billion. The President requested an increase of $1.35 billion (35
percent) for this account, and the Democrat-controlled Senate
Appropriation Committee agreed to that request.
The Omnibus Appropriations bill sets the level at $3.67 billion,
which equals a 5 percent reduction from the 2013 level. However, the
bill also allows CMS to augment that appropriation with the user fees it
collects. To fund the operation of the Obamacare exchanges, the
Administration has imposed a user fee of 3.5 percent of premium on
coverage sold through the exchanges. Thus, while it appears to be a cut
in the appropriations for implementation of Obamacare, the Omnibus
provides a funding lifeline through user fees.
Taxpayer dollars spent trying to lower the costs of energy or spent
on conventional energy sources is merely another subsidy for energy
technologies. In total, the bill allocates $10.2 billion for energy
programs within DOE. This includes:
Renewable Energy and Efficiency – $1.9 billion—Much
of this spending is largely toward commercialization, which should be
undertaken by the private sector. Any government support for technology
applicable to efficiency and renewable energy (or any energy) should be
part of basic scientific research, for which plenty of funding already
exists within the Office of Science.
Oil, Coal and Natural Gas – $562 million—The fossil
energy industry makes plenty of money to support its own research and
development efforts. Funds that go toward fossil energy either simply
offset spending that the private sector would have undertaken or
supports efforts that have no market viability.
Nuclear Energy – $889 million —Federal programs to
help the existing nuclear industry to operate more efficiently or to
build its own workforce should be cut. Further, the Department of Energy
should not be picking winners and loser in the reactor technology
business. Instead, to the extent that the federal government spends
resources related to nuclear energy, those resources should go to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build their regulatory expertise. And
finally, any money for nuclear waste that does not support Yucca
Mountain should be cut.
Office of Science - $5.1 billion —While federal
support for some basic scientific research can be justified, much of the
money in the Office of Science goes to programs to advance pet projects
or develop technologies to support commercial activities.
ARPA-E – $280 million – The Advanced Research
Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) is another energy program designed to
fund high-risk, high-reward projects that the private sector would not
embark on on its own. The problem is that ARPA-E does not always seem to
follow this clear guideline: The federal government has awarded several
ARPA-E grants to companies and projects that are neither high-risk nor
something that private industry cannot support.
I love government. There is no program government cannot fund.
A pox on both their houses.
ReplyDelete17.3T and counting
1773-2009
Despite my twisted liberal ways, the pork spending bothers me enormously. If the laws of reality didn't apply, I would say lets just hack everything by 20% and call it a day. But it's not that simple. I fully empathize with your anger here, but what's the solution that works within the parameters of our reality? Everyone thought the across the board cuts in the sequester were awesome until it started to cause real pain and now, they are basically just walking it back piece by piece, pretty much like they did with tax loopholes after the allegedly "historic" loophole closing under Reagan.
ReplyDeleteWe've embraced gridlock and screaming from mountaintops about it, but that hasn't worked either. Any chance that adult discussion could at least shift some of the spending into things that might pay dividends down the road?
The federal government has set a record for tax revenues collected through the first 11 months of fiscal 2013 — yet still ran a deficit of $755 billion during the same period.
DeleteThe government collected nearly $2.5 trillion — $2,472,542,000,000 to be exact — and spent $3,227,888,000,000 from Oct. 1, 2012, through Aug. 31, according to the monthly Treasury statement for August.
The revenue was up about $285 billion from the first 11 months of fiscal 2012.
The increase was due largely to legislation passed at the end of 2012 raising taxes. The top income tax rate rose from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains rose from 15 percent to 20 percent, and certain personal exemptions and deductions were phased out for high earners, CNS News reported.
An additional 3.8 percent tax on dividends, interest, capital gains, and royalties also took effect this year.
Yet the deficit in August alone was $148 billion.
The largest outlay during the 11 months was by the Department of Health and Human Services, $832.8 billion. Interest on the debt was $395.8 billion during the 11 months.
When revenue figures are adjusted for inflation, the first 11 months of fiscal 2013 exceeds the revenue collected through August in any of the last 16 years, except for 2007, when the government collected $2.25 trillion in current year dollars and $2.57 trillion in constant 2013 dollars.
© 2014 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Imagine that, taxes went up and revenue increased and the deficit closed a bit. The deficit has been shrinking since Obama has been in office. Mark my word on this though William, given our past history, it is clear that Republicans love to deficit spend. If we have a Republican president and Republican control of either house, I guarantee that our deficit and debt will again swell.
DeleteI've said before, I voted for Bush instead of Gore in 2000. Like everyone else, I wanted my tax cut and comparatively, Gore appeared to me to want to go left instead of maintain the centrist tone of Clinton. The result of the Clinton years of gridlock and fights between Clinton and Republicans ultimately created a surplus and tiny paydown of debt. Tax cuts, two wars, 9/11 and the fiscal collapse of 07-09 blew the hell out of all that. Now, we have started to slowly close the deficit again but once we get the deficit closed, I have no faith that we will stick with what helped close it.
When and if we ever decide to pay workers again, we will have inflation and to some degree that will help us screw the people who have lent us so much money. For the people who have their hair on fire right now over this, the reality is that we are not going to fix it overnight and the world is not going to end because of it. What got us here was to cut taxes and increase spending, it's not rocket science to figure out that the cure is that we need to keep raising taxes and keep cutting spending. But that's not going to do it. Once we get to the point of creating a yearly surplus, we need to leave it alone and pay the debt. THAT is the point where we will give up no matter what party is in power.
They tax more.
DeleteThey spend more.
They regulate more.
Then they wonder why there is no job creation.
Like I said above:
A pox on both their houses.
1773-2009
That's become an empty bromide. Since the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency, we have drastically decreased both taxes and regulations AND we have utterly destroyed the effect that unions used to have on the country. Some areas have more regulation, other like the financial services and banking industry have become almost entirely unregulated.
DeleteYour comment about no job creation seems like an nod to that other tired old saw that if we kiss the ass the of the wealthy, they will reward us with a booming economy, AKA trickle down economics. When personal taxes are 70%, there may be some truth there. But observationally, this is what I have seen in the years since Reagan. Taxes have dropped to historically low levels. Income gains at the top have gone up sharply while wage raises for workers have been non existent. Jobs have left for a variety of reasons and I don't for a second buy the premise that it's all because of regulation. We opened our borders wide to allow third world countries to dump their goods here. .30 cents an hour for labor versus minimum wage. It's pretty simple. With the tax breaks, we've simply given rich people more money to invest overseas to keep building factories to keep taking our jobs away.
It's time we stop pretending that endless breaks for the wealthy are going to somehow save all of us.
It's not about tax breaks or spending but what we spend it on. Imagine the government works like business. Periodically government would bring in an outside auditor and completely review every job, department and program to ensure the programs are effective, minimal duplication, fraud.
DeleteImagine taking all that money and fixing the infrastructure that so many think is broken or some other worthwhile project that has an outside chance of creating jobs.
But this is government we are talking about where no job, program is ever cut and spending increases year after year.
The deficit has been shrinking since Obama has been in office.
And spending has increased over a trillion dollars since 2007. Tax increases are a wonderful thing to offset the trill in spending. The ACA taxes, the tax increase on the wealthy, the payroll tax cut restored. Yep a stellar job of raising taxes. By the way how about that last cut that freed 10 million Americans from paying Federal Income tax.
Not to mention the EITC which refunds money to those that pay zero taxes to begin with.
DeleteReally Lou "fixing the infrastructure that so many think is broken"? Yes our infrastructure is in bad shape. Water and sewer lines 100 years old and deteriorating, highways especially near major cities that can't handle the traffic anymore. An electric grid that is so out dated and so vulnerable to attack that it may be the next big thing that the terrorists go after. Internet that crawls next to some of the systems in Europe. A cell phone system that most foreigners would laugh at. Yea we aren't only falling behind in education my friend we are falling behind in many ways.
DeleteReally Rick. Are that really so uninformed as to how things work?
DeleteFix cell service? Think throwing a trillion at it will fix it?
The government set it up this way. It's called the anti trust laws.
Oh you want more capacity? Think a trillion will fix it? Try running fiber to get to a tower and you run into this little organization called the EPA who stalls attempts to grow infrastructure. Oh that's right infrastructure, the government controls the spectrum. They auction it off to the highest bidder. Not to mention cell service is a private enterprise and they are responsible for their infrastructure.
Water and sewer lines? Oh, that's local issue. State and local government. Why would you raise taxes on people take the money to Washington take a cut for management and return it to the states. Oh that's right they send it to the states that they like like NY and not a republican state. Seems like a waste of time, effort and of course MONEY.
Government has it job and cannot fix everything.
But then again to a liberal government is the answer to all problems and you can never spend enough.
A conservative, the states and local government are responsible for local matters and should address them. The Federal Government should do it's job and pass legislation that makes it possible for business to fix issues and grow.