Shutdown Fatigue

The federal government shut down at midnight, when Congress proved to be unable to agree on a another stopgap spending bill.  As is usually the case, the Democrats and the Republicans used the looming shutdown to try to increase their leverage to obtain their political goals — whether those goals are immigration reform, or health care funding, or something else — and when neither side blinked, the shutdown occurred.  Of course, each side then blamed the other.

We’ve been through this scenario multiple times before, most recently in 2013.  We somehow made it through each of those prior cataclysms, and I’m pretty sure that the sun will come up today as well.

I may be wrong about this, but out here in the heartland I’m sensing a lot less angst, generally, about this shutdown than seemed to be the case with prior shutdowns.  Maybe it’s because we’ve been through this same, pointless charade multiple times before, and the country just has a lingering case of shutdown fatigue.  Maybe it’s because, with the flood of scandals and tweetstorms and investigations and unseemly behavior that has been washing over the nation in recent months, we’ve already used up our storehouses of outrage and have just been psychologically bludgeoned until we’re functionally insensate.  Or maybe, just maybe, we’ve come to recognize that all of this shutdown stuff is just more callous political maneuvering by both parties, and we’re heartily sick and tired of being viewed as mere pawns to be manipulated in the stupid power games that are always being played in Washington, D.C.

Whatever the cause, we’ll just go on living our lives, without paying too much attention to the yammering politicos and their efforts to pin all of the blame for this unnecessary disruption and unending dysfunctionality and irresponsibility somewhere else.  Who knows?  Maybe if we just ignore this latest shutdown, the politicians might realize that their shutdown gambit isn’t working anymore and actually go back to doing their jobs.

Spreading Out The Federal Effect

Where are the richest counties in the United States, as measured by median household income?  You might think one of the counties in Silicon Valley, or one of the high-end areas in Connecticut, or around Boston, or the home to bustling computer, software, and internet companies around Seattle . . . but you would be wrong.

According to recently released census data, the top four counties in the United States for median household income are all located in Virginia and Maryland — and all just happen to be suburbs of Washington, D.C.  In each of those counties, the median household income doubles the national average.  Moreover, nine of the top 20 highest household income counties in America are suburbs of our nation’s capital.

This shouldn’t really surprise us.  The federal government is by far the biggest spender in the country, and there are lots of people — lobbyists, consultants, media analysts, messaging advisors, and countless others — who make a lot of money advising other people and groups about how to get their share of the money gushing out of the federal spigot.  And because Congress and the vast majority of the federal agencies are headquartered in the D.C. area, of course the money flowing in to try to line groups up for a share of the money flowing out is going to be concentrated in the D.C. area, too.

This is probably one reason why, in this past election, there was a clear disconnect between the political punditry and the rest of the country.  People in D.C. looked around, sipped their $10 caramel lattes after their hot yoga sessions, saw housing values going through the roof, and thought things were going pretty well in the U.S. of A.  They were blissfully unaware of what it was like in the parts of the country between the coasts — and the anger that many people apparently felt for the fat cats in Washington who were gleefully lining their pockets while the rest of the country struggled.

What to do about the income disparity?  How about considering whether some federal departments and agencies should move out of the D.C. metroplex, to be closer to the folks that they are regulating?  Is there any reason, for example, that the Department of Agriculture shouldn’t be headquartered in Iowa or Nebraska, the Department of Energy shouldn’t be headquartered in Texas or Louisiana, and the Department of Labor shouldn’t be headquartered in, say, Cleveland or Chicago?  And why can’t the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Commerce be moved to some other locations away from the D.C. Beltway?

The census data makes clear that the federal government has a significant impact on wealth production.  The U.S. is a big country; why not take steps to spread that income effect around a little?  Maybe doing so would also bring the regulators closer to the people they’re affecting, and at the same time help to minimize the “inside the Beltway” mentality that appears to be an increasing problem in the country.

Droning About Drones

Recently the Federal Aviation Administration announced that Americans who own “hobbyist” drones — those that weigh between .55 pounds and 55 pounds — must register their drones starting on December 21.  Registration is free if it occurs before January 20; after that, it will cost $5.00.  Failure to register can result in civil penalties of up to $27,500, or criminal fines of up to $250,000 — and the FAA estimates that, through 2020, it will cost $56 million to operate its drone registration program.

In our outsized federal government, the institution of a new program is a barely noticeable event.  Still, $56 million over 5 years seems like a lot of money to me, so I wonder:  are the operation of hobbyist drones really a problem that can be dealt with through registration?  Notwithstanding the institution of a nationwide registration program, the answer isn’t very clear.  In 2014, the FAA received 238 reports of unsafe drone use; so far in 2015, it has received 1,133 reports of unsafe drone operations.  The FAA also reports that pilot sightings of drones are increasing.  So far, there hasn’t been a catastrophic incident in which a drone has produced a safety problem by, for example, colliding with a commercial aircraft.

Although you see humorous commercials featuring skies filled with drones ready to dive-bomb workers heading to their cars, and drones seem to be prominent in oddball news stories, most of us have never seen a drone being used — at least I haven’t.  That may be about to change.  The federal government forecasts that as many as 1 million drones will be sold in America this year to hobbyists, and drones outfitted with cameras are available for less than $600.  So, if you want to spy on your neighbors, catch people misbehaving in their cars, or try to get footage that you can sell to a website, buying your own drone won’t break the bank.

Maybe that means there will be a lot more drones overhead in 2016 and beyond, and the droneless among us will come to view them as colossal pests someday soon.  But still — is requiring registration by the federal government, and the institution of some new bureaucratic office of Federal Drone Registration And Enforcement, really a necessary or appropriate response?  Isn’t the better approach to simply ban the use of drones in the areas where they might create a safety issue, such as around airports, above highways, or in places that might interfere with the work of firefighters or emergency personnel, and then prosecute people who violate such safe-use laws?  And how is the mere act of registration going to ensure safe or appropriate operation of drones in any event?

I’m all for being proactive in trying to make sure that new technology is used safely and properly, but I also think we are way too quick to establish costly nationwide programs that don’t really address the problem.

The Ever-Present Direct Government Payment Solution

Yesterday I saw an article that I think capsulizes what has gone wrong with the direction of our country.  The article reported that Senator Elizabeth Warren, that darling of the progressives, wants to send every senior citizen in the country a check for $580.

Why?  These days, I’m not sure that there actually needs to be a reason for a politician to propose a direct government payment to some constituency or another, but the stated reason is that Senator Warren believes the payment is needed because the cost of living for Social Security recipients increased last year.  Social Security benefit payments already are indexed to inflation, of course, but this year the formula that calculates the cost of living indicated there should be no increase.  So why do we need to make a $580 payment?

Photo credit Tim Pierce 

Well, Senator Warren contends that “Congress’s formula is volatile and does a poor job of reflecting what older Americans actually spend.”  She apparently has more perfect insight into the true spending habits of seniors.  She notes that part of the reason why the index didn’t increase this year is that gas prices fell and argues that seniors don’t drive as much as other Americans.  If there’s an empirical basis for that conclusion, I haven’t seen it, and working stiffs who walk to work, or take public transportation, might properly be skeptical of that claim.  But in any case it makes no sense as a policy matter:  in past years, when gas prices have surged, the existing formula has yielded increases to Social Security payments.  So if seniors, in fact, drive less than other Americans, then in prior years they got a windfall when their benefit payments increased to reflect higher gas costs that they weren’t paying.  In short, even if the cost of living formula is improperly weighted as to gas prices given senior spending habits, the advantages and disadvantages even out.

How did Senator Warren come up with the proposal to send Social Security recipients a check for $580, or about 3.9 percent of their current benefits?  According to the article linked above, it’s not by using the alternative inflation calculation Democrats propose for seniors, which would produce a 0.6 percent increase in benefits.  No, according to Senator Warren 3.9 percent represents the average increase of compensation for CEOs last year.  It’s not clear how that 3.9 percent number was calculated and which CEOs were included in any analysis that was done — was it limited to CEOs of America’s largest public companies, for example, or did it include the CEOs or proprietors of every business in the country? — but in any case there is no correlation between “CEO compensation” and Social Security benefit levels.  You might as well determine Social Security payment increases by looking to changes in the salaries of NBA players, or law school professors, or federal bureaucrats, or the presidents of unions.

So why choose CEOs?  Because people like Senator Warren consider them to be the evil greedheads in our society.  They make lots of money and run impersonal corporations — so they must be evil by definition.  Of course, the CEOs of public companies have enormous management responsibilities, their salaries are set by boards of directors whose members can be removed by shareholder vote and paid by the corporations themselves, and they often get sacked if their company is struggling.  But those realities don’t matter.  Senator Warren’s proposal will allow some people to argue that Congress favors CEOs over senior citizens.  And, of course, there are a lot more senior citizens than CEOs.

This is what we’ve come down to:  politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren will do just about anything to rationalize the government cutting checks to directly pay off a chunk of the population and build her resume as a populist icon.  She’s not alone, of course, which is why we have a federal government that runs jaw-dropping annual deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars despite taking in record levels of tax revenue.

I’m afraid that the system is broken.

When A Reporter’s Story Makes A Difference

Earlier this week The Associated Press reported that the federal healthcare.gov website — the portal that many Americans have used to search for health care plans under the Affordable Care Act — was sharing private information about users with a number of third-party entities that specialize in advertising and analyzing internet data for marketing purposes.  The AP reported that the personal information made available to those entities could include age, income, ZIP code, and whether a person smokes or is pregnant, as well as the internet address of the computer that accessed the healthcare.gov website.

The federal government responded that the point of the data collection and sharing was simply to improve the consumer experience on the healthcare.gov website and added that the entities were “prohibited from using information from these tools on HealthCare.gov for their companies’ purposes.”  The latter point seems awfully naive — once data gets put into detailed databases on powerful computer systems, who is to say it is not used to help a third-party company better target pop-up ads for their other clients? — and in any case ignores the ever-present risk of a hacking incident that exposes the personal information to criminals.  Privacy advocates and Members of Congress also argued that the extent of data collected went beyond what was necessary to enhance customer service.

On Friday the AP reported that the Obama Administration had changed its position and reduced the release of healthcare.gov users’ personal data.  Privacy advocates remain concerned about the website’s data collection and storage policies and the available data connections with third parties — connections which conceivably could be used to access personal information — but the Administration’s response at least shows some sensitivity to privacy issues and is a first step toward better protecting personal information.

It may not amount to a huge matter in the Grand Scheme of Things, but it’s gratifying when an enterprising reporter’s story can expose a troubling practice and cause a change in a way that benefits the Average Joe and Jane.  It’s how our system is supposed to work, and it’s nice to see that it still work when journalists do their jobs and do them well.

Uncle Sam, The Scooter Sap

Over the weekend the Washington Post carried a terrific article about how fraudsters ripped off Medicare — and through Medicare, the American taxpayer — in the Great Scooter Scam.  It’s another troubling, cautionary tale that shows how good intentions can run awry, how fraudsters are always ready to pounce, and how our ponderous governmental apparatus is just not well-suited to ferreting out fraud.

The fraud scheme grew out of Medicare’s requirement that claims be paid promptly, and the vast scope of coverage that Medicare supplies.  With millions of claims being received, there was no way to check them out before making the required prompt processing decision.  So Medicare’s default approach was to pay claims first, investigate later.  The fraudsters learned this, and rubbed their hands with glee.  But fraudsters can’t perform surgery or other medical care, so how do they take advantage of that gaping vulnerability in the system?  Medical equipment was the answer . . . but the crooks then had to find just the right kind of equipment, where real money could be made.

Ultimately, they realized that scooters and motorized wheelchairs were perfect.  The need for them was plausible, and there was a huge gap between the actual cost of the devices and the inflated amount Medicare would pay.  The fraudsters created elaborate schemes that included “recruiters” who identified seniors to receive the scooters and bogus medical supply companies — and seniors who willingly participated because they thought there were getting a freebie, even if it was something that they didn’t need.  When Medicare changed the rules to require in-person doctor visits to try to stop the fraud, the crooks recruited doctors who were willing to participate in the fraud in exchange for a cut.

The result?  Perfectly able-bodied seniors with wheelchairs, still in their wrapping, gathering dust in their garages or serving as the perch for oversized teddy bears.  Seniors riffing on the Seinfeld episode and having scooter races in their neighborhoods.  And huge amounts of federal money lining the pockets of criminals.

The scope of the fraud is astonishing.  The Medicare system has paid billions for motorized wheelchairs, and they don’t even know how many of the purchases are legitimate.  One recent audit of paid bills showed that 80 percent were improper.  And even after the federal government became aware of the scooter scam, in 1998, it continued to pay billions in phony claims.  Since 1999, Medicare has paid $8.2 billion for 2.7 million motorized wheelchairs and scooters.  In 2003 alone, $964 million was spend on the devices.  These seem like huge numbers, but they are only a blip in the vast Medicare system — which is part of the reason why it took so long to meaningfully tackle the problem.

The Medicare system now says that it has effectively addressed the scooter scam, and the amounts spent on motorized wheelchairs fell to only $190 million in 2013.  Should we have confidence that all of that money — and all of the billions of dollars shelled out for other forms of medical equipment — is being spent in response to legitimate medical needs?  Not really.  The system is too large, oversight is minimal, and there are too many gaps where the fraudsters can take advantage.  And, perhaps most distressingly, there apparently are lots of “recruiters,” doctors, and seniors who apparently are all too willing to participate in a criminal scam so long as they get something out of it.

The Washington Post article about the Great Scooter Scam should be required reading for every Member of Congress who thinks the best way to solve a problem is to create a governmental program that pays out money to address it.

Adding Up The Obamacare Tab

When the Affordable Care Act was passed, its drafters contemplated that states would design their own health care exchanges, with the federal healthcare.gov website serving as a kind of backstop.  That turned out to be a miscalculation.  More than 60 percent of the states — 36 out of 50 — elected not to create their own health care exchanges.

At the time, some critics argued that the decisions of states with Republican governors to refrain from building their own websites was politically motivated.  In retrospect, however, the decisions to eschew developing state-specific health care exchanges seem more like a wise recognition of the limitations of state capabilities, because the experiences of states that did attempt their own websites have been decidedly mixed.

Six of the 14 states that chose to create their own exchanges — Masschusetts, Oregon, Nevada, Maryland, Minnesota, and Hawaii — have had severe functionality problems and have become tremendous cash drains and political albatrosses.  In Massachusetts, Oregon, Nevada, and Maryland alone, the federal government has paid at least $474 million to support the establishment of non-functional exchanges, and that cost total seems certain to increase significantly.  In those states, Democratic politicians are blaming the website contractors and threatening litigation, and Republicans are saying that the states never should have attempted to build the exchanges in the first place.

Obamacare has become such a political football that every fact and development gets spun to death — but if we can’t learn from the current reality, and recognize that mistakes were made in the legislation and its conception, then we are just compounding our problems.  In all, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that about $5 billion in federal funds that have been shelled out to states to allow them to assess whether to create state-specific exchanges and then, in some cases, to support their creation.  That’s an enormous sum of money, and it is becoming clear that a significant part of it has been wasted.  Whatever happens with Obamacare, let’s at least hope that in the future we refrain from enacting statutes that require states to develop large-scale, complicated technological systems, on their own, with the federal government picking up the tab.  As the mounting Obamacare costs demonstrate, that approach is fraught with peril.

The Governmental Accountability Problem

On Thursday the State Department’s Inspector General issues a report stating that $6 billion in contracting money spent by the Department over the last six years cannot be properly accounted for. The report noted “significant financial risk” and “lack of institutional control” and, astonishingly, reported that the State Department could not even produce contract files documenting precisely how $2.1 billion was spent.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of the report is the apparent utter lack of concern about accountability in spending our tax money. In the State Department, the inspector general position — which is supposed to be a kind of public watchdog — went unfilled for almost six years. Moreover, there have been fraud warnings and prior reports about slapdash controls and accounting for money shoveled overseas and paid to private contractors, and the State Department failed to address the problems.

I have two reactions to this news. First, this is the kind of story that feeds the fury of fiscal conservatives, who believe that the federal government takes too much of our money and then simply wastes a lot of it. The government takes in and spends so much money that even an astronomical sum like $6 billion is only a drop in the bucket — but we’ll never know precisely how that $6 billion was spent and how much of that money was lost to fraud, corruption, or simple overspending by unconcerned bureaucrats. How could an important position like inspector general go unfilled for six years?

People who support big government spending tend to pooh-pooh the focus on “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but I remain convinced that a federal government that actually had to tighten its belt because of budget reductions would find lots of places where money could be saved or spending reprioritized. At present, with the federal government awash in cash fueled by constant, large-scale deficit spending, the government has no incentive to be careful and prudent in its spending — and as a result reports and warnings about financial accountability tend to be ignored.

Second, this story can’t help whatever presidential aspirations Hillary Clinton may have. She ran the State Department for much of the period when accountability was lacking and warnings apparently were disregarded. As I understand it, part of her pitch is that she would be more fiscally conservative than other Democrats who might seek the presidency — but this report really undercuts the perception of careful stewardship of the public fisc that Hillary Clinton is trying to project. If you strongly believe that the government needs to get its fiscal house in order, how can you vote for someone who presided over a department that couldn’t even document how it spent $6 billion? If a public company were in a similar situation, the CEO would be fired, the SEC investigators would be knocking at the door, and private lawsuits would be inevitable.

It may never happen, but wouldn’t it be refreshing if we elected administrations that actually paid attention to the unglamorous nuts and bolts of accounting for their spending, reassessed whether long-time programs were still truly needed, tried to save a penny here and there, and acted like they took financial responsibility seriously, rather than worrying about immediately jetting off to some faraway location for a photo op with a reset button?

Death To The Bake Sale!

When I was in school, the bake sale was a fundraising staple.  Whether it was for band uniforms, field trips, or a new suit for the school mascot, kids and parents turned on their ovens, got out their mixing bowls, and cooked the goodies that brought in the nickels, dimes, and quarters of which fund drives were made.

Now bake sales are becoming an endangered species.  In the Montgomery County, Maryland school district, bake sales are barred.  It’s just part of a growing national trend.  Why?  Because we’ve got lots of fat kids in school these days, and school administrators and food services kingpins think cupcakes, cookies, cakes, and pies are unhealthy.  As a result, kids can’t sell “non-nutritious” food in schools anymore.  Of course, as the article points out, what’s nutritious, anyway?  Pop-Tarts, which are allowed, or home-baked carrot cake, which isn’t?

Even more ridiculous, the federal government will soon weigh in on this topic (pun intended).  Uncle Sam will be publishing its “national school nutrition standards for food sold outside cafeterias.”  Just what we need!  More federal employees getting taxpayer-funded salaries to advise us about things that really should be left to parents.  No doubt there are other federal employees to police compliance, and still other federal employees to administer grant programs to award money to school districts for programs to encourage healthy eating, and state and local employees who will write grant proposals and administer the federally funded efforts — all to combat the lure of the humble brownie and kids who can’t say no.

C’mon, people!  Have we really reached the point where our schools are outlawing bake sales, and the federal government is giving us advice on what our kids should be eating?  Is there any facet of our daily lives that is safe from the heavy hand of taxpayer-funded government regulators?

A Candidate for Everyone ?

I just finished reading a book written by Hugh Hewitt who is a talk show host on the East Coast and he makes a compelling case as to why Mitt Romney would make an excellent president. The reason I decided to read the book is because I have had friends on both sides of the political spectrum that say they would consider voting for him if he becomes the Republican nominee.

Romney’s business qualifications are impressive especially the work he did while employed at Bain and Company and the amazing work he did building a consensus and basically saving the Salt Lake City Olympics. In fact Hewitt asks Romney if the Bain Way (assembling all diverse view points, pouring over massive amounts of data and sustained argument and counter argument) could be applied to our bloated Federal Government. Mitt’s answer was yes, but said there has to be a common interest in achieving success and it will not work against mindless obstructionism.

So based on business success one would expect Romney to be higher in the polls then he currently is, but the problem as the book points out and makes an effort to refute lies in his stance on cultural issues which are dear to the hearts of most Republicans. If Romney becomes the nominee of the Republican party the You Tube video below will most likely be played over and over again prior to November 2012.

I found this book interesting and definitely worth reading and I would very much consider voting for Romney if he becomes the nominee, the only problem is which Romney will I get on the social issues if I do vote for him ? A portion of the book does dig into his Mormon faith which I found quite hard to grasp, however Mitt’s religious beliefs would not keep me from voting for him if I decide not to vote for the president.

Our Nora Desmond-Like Leaders

The Congressional Budget Office recently released its statistics on the federal budget for fiscal year 2011.  The results are staggering — and completely inconsistent with the notion that the federal government has engaged in any kind of belt-tightening.

According to the CBO, the federal government spent $3.6 trillion in fiscal year 2011, and racked up a budget deficit of $1.298 trillion.  Those numbers are titanic.  This is an instance where words are a poor substitute for zeros.  $3.6 trillion, written numerically, is $3,600,000,000,000.00.  Our deficit, for the 2011 fiscal year, was $1,298,000,000,000.00.  According to the CBO, in the last three years our federal government has incurred by far the three largest annual budget deficits during the entire time period since 1945.  Each of those three annual deficits exceeded $1,290,000,000,000.00.  In those three years, we’ve added $4,000,000,000,000.00 to our national debt.

Those are figures that should be read with a shrill, rising mental voice, to properly reflect how truly alarming they are.  But, no one in charge seems very alarmed.  Instead, we have Democrats who act like Republicans are forcing our federal government to accept the most draconian cuts imaginable, Republicans who act like they’ve been budgetary hardasses, and a President who is out on another bus tour, kissing babies and eating barbecue and arguing that we should spend even more than we do.

It’s as if they are in their own little fishbowl world, as divorced from reality as Nora Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.  Does any rational person think we can continue to borrow more than $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year, largely from foreign investors, without experiencing life-changing consequences to our country and our lifestyles?  If we don’t change course, soon we’ll find ourselves floating face down in the pool, like hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis.

The Feds, Below The Mendoza Line

Cristobal Rigoberto (“Minnie”) Mendoza played for the Minnesota Twins in 1970 and hit .188 for the year.  That threshold of futility has come to be known in baseball as the “Mendoza Line.”  If you start the season in a slump and begin to pull out of it, crossing the Mendoza Line and getting above .200 is the first step back to respectability.  If it’s mid-season and you cross the Mendoza Line going in the opposite direction, expect to find a ticket to the minors in your locker.

When it comes to public perception of business and industry segments, lawyers probably set the Mendoza Line.  For whatever reason, most people don’t like lawyers.  In the media, lawyers are often depicted as conniving, duplicitous, arrogant, money-grubbing, and unscrupulous, which are not exactly endearing characteristics.  As a lawyer myself, I think the common characterizations of lawyers are profoundly inaccurate, and I regret that the general reaction to my profession is so negative — but there is no denying the statistics.

I therefore found it interesting that, in a recent Gallup Poll, the federal government crossed the lawyer Mendoza Line and ranked the worst in terms of public perception of 25 different business and industry sectors.  Lawyers were viewed positively by 29 percent of respondents and negatively by 45 percent, for a net score of -16.  The federal government, in contrast, was ranked positively by only 17 percent and negatively by 63 percent, for a net score of -46.

If I were in the federal government right now, I’d be looking for that ticket to the minors.

 

Your Landlord, Uncle Sam

Here’s a discouraging follow-up to a post about Fannie Mae’s enormous roster of foreclosed homes that require millions of dollars in upkeep: our government now owns so many homes it is thinking of getting into the rental business.

According to AP, the government owns 248,000 homes, about 70,000 of which are for sale.  What’s more, officials are expecting even more homes to fall into that category as foreclosures pick up after a brief lull.  So, what to do with so many government-owned houses?  One option is to turn them into rental units.  The acting head of the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac says changing the homes into rentals may reduce “credit losses and help stabilize neighborhoods and home values,”  because sales of foreclosed homes are, on average, at a 20 percent discount, thereby depressing the prices of surrounding homes.

I think turning foreclosed homes into rental properties would be a ludicrous mistake.  It’s bad enough that the federal government lost its shirt in the mortgage guarantee business and owns hundreds of thousands of unwanted properties — now we are going to hire countless people to try to rent and manage the properties and collect rent checks and security deposits?  And while the below-market sale of a foreclosed home isn’t great for a neighborhood, often living next to a rental home is worse because the renters could care less about upkeep on the property.  Speaking as someone who once lived next to a rental home, I think it is far better to sell the property to someone who will live there and take care of it, even if the sale is at a discount.

Renting just defers the problem.  I’d rather the federal government do whatever it takes to sell its inventory of homes, get out of the home ownership and upkeep business once and for all, and get back to focusing on doing what federal governments are supposed to do — like, say, providing for our national defense.

Federal Facebook Follies

Does the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs really need to hire someone to manage a Facebook page for the Department of the Interior, to the tune of up to $115,000 a year?  That’s one of more than 1,000 federal government job openings in the Washington, D.C. area that were advertised in March.

My guess is that most Americans would say that, given our current federal budget deficit and debt issues, the Department of Interior can safely do without someone to set up and supervise a Facebook page.  The fact that the opening is even being advertised for filling suggests that the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. really aren’t serious about belt-tightening and holding down spending.  The President should instruct all federal agencies to cut their payrolls and consider carefully whether new hires and replacements really are necessary — and if there is any doubt, the new hire shouldn’t be made.

I recognize that refraining from hiring one Facebook editor isn’t going to solve our spending issues by itself, but as I often tell Kish (to her disdain) every little bit helps.  A big part of our federal budget challenge is changing the culture of spending inside the Beltway.  Telling the bureaucrats that their hiring budget has been cut and that they will be held accountable for unnecessary hires is a good first step.

One Sick Country?

A recent report by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) concluded that in 2009 approximately 20 percent of American adults had some form of mental illness.  That comes out to 45 million Americans.  The report states that 11 million of those people had a serious illness.  Women reported a higher incidence of mental illness than men, and adults 18-25 reported the highest level of mental illness of any age group.

The SAMHSA numbers are an estimate based on responses to questionnaires given to representative samples.  The overall “any mental illness” statistic purports to include only people who have a “diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder,” excluding developmental or substance abuse disorders.  The study’s determination of mental illness in adults was based on modeling the survey participants’ responses to questions on “distress” and “impairment.”  The report suggests increases in the unemployment rate had an impact on the 2009 statistics.

I recognize that many Americans struggle with mental disorders, but I seriously doubt that 1 in 5 Americans has a true diagnosable mental illness.  I suspect that many government studies are structured to produce a result that reveals a problem that needs to be resolved through increased funding and more government-payroll jobs.  The comments of the SAMHSA administrator in response to the 2009 survey results, quoted in the link above, certainly reach that conclusion — that there are many Americans who need help and treatment that aren’t getting it, and through “health care reform” and federal legislation they can get such treatment.