Blog: The Fine Print / Revenue & Spending

Rash Report of Reformers' Retreat on Revolving Door

Jun 5, 2007 by Dana Chasin

A story by Jeanne Cummings in today's Politico on the status of the lobbying and ethics bill now headed for conference includes this sentence: The reform community has all but given up on extending from one year to two the so-called revolving-door component that would bar former lawmakers from lobbying their old colleagues.

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Who is the Bush Administration Kidding on PART?

Jun 5, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Abstinence education is back in the news as a recent study from Mathematica Policy Research continues to cast significant doubts on the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education in preventing teen pregnancy, early sexual activity, and sexually transmitted infections. The report, which was commissioned by Congress in 1997, followed 2,057 U.S. teenagers in late elementary and middle school who participated in four abstinence programs, as well as students in the same grades who did not participate in such programs. While this is a topic that is a bit outside the scope of things we comment on here at the Budget Brigade at OMB Watch, I raise it to compare congressionally mandated studies to evaluate programs and the efforts undertaken by the Bush administration with the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). Congress commissioned this study to compare the impact of abstinence-only programs with a control group of students who did not participate - a helpful comparison in determining if it is the abstinence-only programs that are actually making a difference (and the result has repeatedly been that they do not make a difference). Let's compare that to the PART's performance measurement evaluations. According to the PART review from 2006 of the "Abstinence Education" program, the way program performance will be measured is through tracking teen pregnancy rates, percentage of teens who report never having had sex and who continue to abstain after participation in a program, percentage of teens who have had sex and then report abstaining following participation in a program, and decreases in percentage of 9-12 grade students who report having had sex. These are all fine indicators of the level of, well, teen pregnancy and sexual attitudes and actions of teens in the country. Unfortunately, they will not show whether it was the abstinence-only education programs that caused the improvements or goals unless there is a comparison to difference programs or a control group that does not participate in any program. What's even more appalling than faulty methodology within the PART is the outright fabrications that the administration actually uses PART survey findings to inform its funding priorities. The PART review for the abstinence program references a "forthcoming" Mathematica study (question 4.5) and say it "uses a rigorous experimental design with random assignment of control and experimental group." But when the results of that "rigorous" study were released this past April, Harry Wilson, a top official in the Department of Health and Human Services, told the Washington Post that the study "isn't rigorous enough to show whether or not [abstinence-only] education works." Incredibly enough, Wilson added that the administration has no intention of changing funding priorities in light of the results. Do I really need to say more about what a sham the PART is?

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Pre-emptive Nutrition-Assistance Would Save Money

Jun 5, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

A new report commissioned by the Sedexho Foundation estimates the annual costs associated with hunger in America is $90 billion. This estimate excludes government programs for nutrion-assistance - which amount to approximately $53 billion in FY 2006. The report finds that increasing anti-hunger investments by an additional $10 billion to $12 billion a year is cost-effective and could even almost wipe out hunger in America. The lead author of the report, J. Larry Brown from the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, believes the United States is wasting money by not tackling the issue of hunger head-on: We ought to debate this, because if we're right, we're spending far more by letting hunger exist than it would cost to end it." Washington Times: Cost of hunger calculated at $90 billion

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Obey Sets FY08 Approps Spending Caps

Jun 4, 2007 by Dana Chasin

8 of 12 of Them Defy Bush's Veto Threats Tomorrow, the House Appropriations Committee is expected to approve the twelve subcommittee spending allocation caps for FY 08 set out today by Committee chair Rep. David Obey (D-WI). Eight of these twelve exceed the amounts requested by the president last February. Although Bush has threatened to veto any bill that exceeds his request, the House Appropriations Committee allocation indicates that Democrats are prepared to challenge him on several spending bills, some of which fund highly popular programs and might be politically perilous to veto.

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GAO Still Not Pleased With Long-Term Fiscal Outlook

Jun 4, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released the latest version of their "The Nation's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook" report today. As with previous reports, GAO finds little change in the long-term outlook and warns that current fiscal policies are unsustainable (duh!). Despite re-stating the important fact that current policies are unsustainable, the report also helps to distinguish what is driving long-term imbalances. Instead of lumping Social Security and Medicare together and labeling the problem as an "entitlement" one, the GAO report highlights health care costs generally as the major obstacle. The relevant paragraph from the report states: Although Social Security is a major part of the fiscal challenge, it is far from our biggest challenge. Spending on the major federal health programs (i.e., Medicare and Medicaid) represents a much larger and faster growing problem. In fact, the federal government's obligations for Medicare Part D alone exceed the unfunded obligations for Social Security. Over the past several decades, health care spending on average has grown much faster than the economy, absorbing increasing shares of the Nation's resources, and this rapid growth is projected to continue. For this reason and others, rising health care costs pose a fiscal challenge not just to the federal budget but to American business and our society as a whole. Under the leadership of Comptroller General David Walker, the GAO continues to bring an important and under appreciated voice to long-term fiscal policy debates. The short report is worth a read: GAO: The Nation's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook

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OMB Sets Standard for Tracking FY08 Earmarks

Jun 1, 2007 by Dana Chasin

In a memo to "heads of departments and agencies" entitled "Tracking Earmarks in the 2008 Appropriations Process," OMB Director Rob Portman announced yesterday the requirements and timeline for the 2008 earmark tracking and internet disclosure process:

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I'll Take Market Demand for $100, Alex

Jun 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Adam's post got me thinking. It really is a slow week. So, I will take this opportunity to quibble with Adam's misunderstanding of the cow market and PETA's well-intentioned, but ill-conceived scheme to use the tax code to incetivize people to be vegetarians.

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Honey, Did You Pack the Veto Pen?

Jun 1, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

President Bush will not want to leave for weekends in Crawford this summer without his veto pen. Yesterday, his OMB Director Rob Portman renewed his threats to veto any appropriations bill that exceeds the budget request the president submitted to Congress in February. On May 11, Portman had warned only that the president would veto any spending bill not on a "sustainable path" to complying with the president's $933 billion total discretionary spending limit.

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Put that Burger Down and Get Out of Your SUV!

Jun 1, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Since it's Friday and we've had a slow week here at the Budget Brigade, I wanted to put up a little light-hearted reading today. Enter this article from The Hill newspaper about an effort by the advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to give a tax credit to - get this - vegetarians. The logic goes like this. According to researchers at the University of Chicago, becoming a vegetarian would reduce carbon emissions 50 percent more per person than switching to a hybrid car. This certainly seems logical since a recent U.N. report cited the livestock industry as "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including global warming. One problem though. Let's suppose you stop eating meat - no more steak dinners at Morton's, sausages on the grill, or chicken burritos at Chipotle. How much will your individual decision in this case actually reduce the level of activity of the livestock sector? How many fewer cows, chickens, pigs, etc, would be slaughtered and shipped around the country? Probably not too many. The estimates of reduction in emissions from this choice is an aggregate number - the average of each meat-eater's contribution to the emissions of an entire industry - not the actual reduction by each individual's decision to stop eating meat. To have an actual impact on emissions, a large enough number of meat-eaters would have to act in conjunction with each other over a long-enough period of time to be able to shrink the size of the livestock sector. Given that meat consumption has doubled over the last fifty years, my guess is you'll have to convince a whole bunch of your friends to join you at the salad bar. A hybrid car, on the other hand, actually reduces your own physical emissions immediately. You don't have to wait for your neighbor to trade in his Hummer for a Prius for your individual decision to make a (albeit very small) difference. I'm not saying I think you should keep eating meat - that's really up to you. I just wanted to point out the relative benefits of a tax credit for hybrid cards vs. for being a vegetarian. Besides, this line of thinking probably isn't that important anyway beacuse I don't think you could really implement this type of credit - how in the world would the government be able to verify that you, in fact, had not eaten meat?

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Administration Drops Opposition to Data Collection Program

Jun 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

About a year ago, we reported on the administration's opposition to continued funding of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, or "SIPP." SIPP, you may recall is an ongoing program that ""collect[s] source and amount of income, labor force information, program participation and eligibility data, and general demographic characteristics to measure the effectiveness of existing federal, state, and local programs." It is an indi

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