Stan Collender
- May 22, 2012 - 11:50am
Originally published at Capital Gains and Games.
It’s not hard to understand the political motivations behind Boehner taking the position he took on the debt ceiling. He needs the support of the House GOP caucus to remain Speaker. All indications are that, as has been the case since the 2010 election, House Republicans are not in a compromising mood on anything having to do with the federal budget.
Threatening another cliffhanger battle as he did last week doesn’t provide the leadership Boehner said was needed to deal with this. Instead of simply complaining that the president had “lost his” courage when it came to the budget, Boehner should have displayed some of his own.
- May 21, 2012 - 3:33pm
Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.
I can't tell you the number of focus groups I've watched and polls I read where the overwhelming opinion was that federal spending could be cut without any decrease in the quantity and quality of what the government does.
Hell...As I posted about in 2010, even the recommendation from the co-chairs of the Bowles-Simpson commission -- who definitely should have known better -- proposed a reduction in the number of federal employees and the number of consultants but, presumably based on the assumption that the government wouldn't have to stop doing anything it was already doing, didn't suggest any activity be eliminated.
That's why this story in The Washington Post from several days ago caught my eye. The Defense Department has decided that what since the 1950s has been an annual show for the public at Andrews Air Force Base (now officially Joint Base Andrews) in suburban Maryland will now be held every other year. The savings are projected to be $2.1 million a year.
- May 7, 2012 - 12:12pm
Originally published at Capital Gains and Games
After a week off for...well, it's not really clear why other than to campaign Congress took the first week in May off...the House and Senate are returning to Washington this week and immediately getting back to their old tricks when it comes to the federal budget -- doing something that is purely symbolic, has no chance whatsoever of being enacted, and is bad policy to boot. Other than that, it's a great idea.
As far as we know now (Would anyone be surprised if something else popped up?), the most egregiously silly thing that's going to happen on the budget this week is the House's consideration of what House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is calling a "reconciliation" bill.
- April 19, 2012 - 2:19pm
Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.
If you weren't convinced that anything related to the federal budget on Capital Hill is completely nuts this year, just think about these three things, all of which are happening this week:
- April 2, 2012 - 12:42pm
Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.
From the beginning there were two reasons I didn't think the plan that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson proposed to the deficit reduction commission they co-chaired was as special or game-changing as they and their supporters wanted us to believe.
First, as I said at the time it was announced, rather than being new thinking that would change the debate in some way, the plan appeared to be little more than the two chairs' selections from the deficit reduction options book published by the Congressional Budget Office every year.
Second, it was hardly innovative. In fact, any and every comprehensive deficit reduction plan will have to include the same general mix of elements that Bowles and Simpson included in their plan.
- March 27, 2012 - 2:50pm
Originally published on Capital Gains and Games.
I was sorely tempted to devote this week’s Fiscal Fitness to what happened in the 1970s when some very well-intentioned people tried to implement an Etch-A-Sketch federal budget process called zero-based budgeting.
ZBB, the concept that failed so ignominiously during the Carter administration, really is nothing more than asking every department and agency to wipe the fiscal slate clean every year and start over.
That makes it remarkably similar to what one of the senior campaign advisers to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney last week said the GOP presidential nominee hopeful would do once the general election began. It was a great setup for a column, but I decided to resist the urge.
- Published Paul Ryan Is Making The GOP Walk The Plank So He Can Run For President In 2016 (Blog entry)March 26, 2012 - 12:54pm
Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on Fox yesterday that he would consider running for vice president this year if the Republican nominee asked him to be his running mate.
Asking Ryan about the vice presidency this year was the wrong question. What Ryan should have been asked was whether everything he's doing now...especially the politically very difficult budget resolution he put together that the House will vote on this week...is part of a master plan to run for president in 2016.
Here's my thinking:
- March 22, 2012 - 3:05pm
Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.
We now have some real indications that the fiscal 2013 budget plan proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is going to be as much a political albatross as a plus for Republicans.
- March 13, 2012 - 2:32pm
- March 1, 2012 - 12:42pm
Originally published at Capital Gains and Games.
Corporate tax reform as it's most often discussed these days sounds great in theory: Lower the overall tax rate and offset the budget impact by eliminating various special provisions.
Who isn't in favor of that?
As Greg Ip in the latest issue of The Economist notes, the answer is lots of people.
Not surprisingly but largely overlooked in the reports on the plan announced by the White House several weeks ago, the biggest opponents (other than House and Senate Republicans, that is) to any substantial corporate tax overhaul come from the corporate world itself: They are the companies, industries, and sectors that currently benefit from the current system at the expense of the corporations, businesses, industries, and sectors that don't get the same special treatment.
And that's just the beginning.
