Can Shame Stop Senate Holds?

This weekend might have marked a turning point in U.S. Senators putting holds on Barack Obama nominations for executive branch positions. On Saturday, the Washington Post had a story with the uncharacteristically assertive headline: “Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama holding up Obama nominees for home-state pork.” The piece, by Scott Wilson and Shaliagh Murray, then reports the claims of Harry Reid that Shelby is holding up more than 70 nominees for two home-state projects: the manufacturing of the KC-135 Air Force Tanker Fleet and a demand that Congress continue to fund an FBI terrorist analysis center in Alabama.

Also, Reid pointed out that during the Obama administration holds have become an even greater Senate problem: Read more »

Chicago Blogging: Recession, Old People to Blame For Less Public Transit

The Chicago Sun-Times Mary Wisniewski reports on the Chicago Transit Authority scaling back service:

Starting Sunday, the CTA cut 18 percent of bus service, 9 percent of rail service. It eliminated 9 express bus routes and cut service hours on 41 other routes. The CTA is also cutting 1,057 jobs and closing the 102-year-old Archer Garage.

The cuts were needed to make up a $95 million budget deficit, which the agency blames on low sales tax and property transfer tax revenues.

This is partly a story of economic forces beyond the control of a local transportation agency. Wisniewski focuses on how union concessions could undo some service cuts. But there are more immediate actions CTA and the state of Illinois could take. First, there’s the question of whether low-income minorities are unduly hit by the service cuts: a lawsuit contends this has happened and from scanning the list of impacted bus routes, the more affluent lakefront area seems less affected then the city’s west side.

Also, thanks to the state government, the CTA has indefensibly continued to give free rides for anybody and everybody over 65. Introduced by Rod Blagojevich, the free ride for seniors program costs the transit system $60 million each year. Non-seniors, meanwhile, have seen the price of one ride increase twice in the past four years (it’s now $2.25). Maybe as a compromise seniors could pay the “2005 vintage price” of $1.75 a ride.

Should Miners Get Permits Quicker?

This blog, and Understanding Government, pushes for better federal government regulation of the environment, but that almost always means more federal regulation. Here, though, is a report by the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Guy Matthews that makes a fairly persuasive case that the process for obtaining mining permits is unreasonably time consuming: Read more »

Stimulate The Schools

The New York Times’ Sam Dillon relays a study that state governments have spent almost all of the $100 billion in emergency education funding from last year’s federal stimulus bill. So since there’s still a recession and multiple state budget crises across the nation, states will cut programs and lay off teachers and other school workers.

Education funding to states was a great use of low-hanging fruit in the stimulus: you give the states X amount of money and then X amount of teachers won’t be laid off. Unless Congress passes a second round of stimulus for states, thousands of teachers will soon lose their jobs.

Better Than Nothing: EPA Does What It Can To Avert Catastrophic Climate Change

A cap-and-trade bill will probably not happen this year.  However, 2010 should go down as the first year that the U.S. makes laws to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. While the Senate has dithered on cap-and-trade, the Environmental Protection Agency has moved forward plans to police the emissions that come out of car tailpipes and – eventually – from the factories and power plants that emit the vast majority of greenhouse gas pollutants. The regulations will mark the first time ever that the U.S. government has substantively responded to climate change. They will be, arguably, the most significant regulatory action that EPA has taken since passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act.

But the regulations can’t come close to the impact of Congress passing cap-and-trade legislation. Unlike cap-and-trade, it is unclear what effect EPA regulations will have on industry, the energy economy and the overall level of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Also, any regulation is expected to prompt lawsuits. EPA action might be a historic first step. But it’s still not clear if and when second and third steps might follow. Read more »

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Now What?

Christopher Beam had a good piece in Slate a couple of days ago that pointed out that it might take a while to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

…the military is taking its time. First, [Defense Sec. Robert] Gates is appointing a study group to figure out how best to implement the repeal if it’s passed. That means examining potential changes in Pentagon policies on benefits (say, if two men are married), base housing (can they live together?), fraternization (can they, er, hang out?), and misconduct. The study will also examine questions of whether or not gays in the military hurt “unit cohesion”—a phrase that became a rallying cry for DADT supporters when it was passed in 1993. That could take as long as a year. The military would then have another year actually to put the policy in place.

And this is assuming Congress actually passes the law repealing the policy. Which may be the trickiest part. Neither chamber has taken up a bill that would lead to repeal.

The testimony by Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen was, deservedly, a front page news: the two top military officials telling Congress that gays have the right to openly serve in the military. But the way the political system works is that the issue will likely fade from the headlines for months.

It will be up to members of Congress principled enough to take a stand for gay rights and savvy enough to write passable legislation to make DADT appeal a reality. It’s also up to Mullen, Gates, and Obama to keep the issue visible. The next time the president speaks out against DADT should be well before the next State of the Union.

Worst Education Policy In Country Endures

The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau reports that the private lending industry could successfully derail the Obama administration and Congress’s push to have the federal government eliminate private lenders from student lending. A bill to eliminate private lenders passed in the House but has stalled in the Senate.

Most education policy issues are complex and have legitimate competing points of view. That’s not the case at all with student lending, which is what makes Lichtblau’s piece frustrating to read. The status quo is that private lenders make a loan to a college student and then pocket it the interest. But if the student defaults, the federal government makes up the difference. Lichtblau explains what eliminating this all-reward, no-risk taxpayer subsidized private lending program would do:

The money that would be saved by cutting out the private-industry middlemen — about $80 billion over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis — could instead go toward expanding direct Pell Grants to students, establishing $10,000 tax credits for families with loans, and forgiving debts eventually for students who go into public service, administration officials say.

The bill would also shift tens of billions of dollars in expected savings to early learning programs, community colleges and the modernization of public school facilities.

There is no merit — none — for keeping the current system going. Lobbyists argue that thousands in the private lending industry will lose their jobs. Maybe 10,000 of those laid off employees could be paid to dig holes and the other 10,000 paid to fill them. That way, at least, they wouldn’t be needlessly complicating the college financial aid process.

Threat of Fewer Tchotchkes for College Admissions Officers

What I love about this story on the attempted clawback by college loan companies (from Eric Lichtblau in the New York Times) is the closer.  Lichtblau got the top financial aid officer at Yale to say the following:

‘It really felt like the administration was just shoving this down our throats,’ he said. ‘It feels a bit like a federal takeover.’ With competition among lenders, he said, ‘We get better prices and services.’

Wow.  First, it is a federal takeover.  And it will save America $80 billion.  Second, congrats on the mindless parroting of Fox News.  Third, we all know that what this guy and other financial aid people at colleges and universities are really going to miss are the free trips, shirts, pens, and other souvenirs that fit into what the Yale employee calls “services.”  Remember, that’s what got them into trouble in the first place…

“Never Go to an Interview Alone”

“Never Go to an Interview Alone”:  Public Information Officers and the Politics of Communication in the Executive Branch

By Norman Kelley

Did you know that nearly every time a reporter interviews a public official on the record for a publication like Understanding Government, there are usually three people in the room? That’s right – there’s the reporter, the subject of the interview (in our case, officials at different government agencies we have been talking to for our “Public Service Announcement” series), and one other person.  That person usually has the unassuming title of Public Information Officer, or PIO (also known as “public affairs specialists”).  And that person’s job, in a nutshell, is to make sure that the interviewee says the right things and that the reporter doesn’t report the wrong things.

Given the Obama administration’s stated support for open government and transparency in decision-making, we decided to take a look at exactly why the Obama Administration, and many administrations before his, have been so convinced that their high-ranking staff members need to have such close supervision when they “meet the press.”  Are we talking about information-restricting “handlers,” or experts who are guarantee that the public is getting correct information about what government is doing?  The role of public information officers (also known as public affairs specialists) may be well-known to reporters who want to learn the truth, but it is more or less invisible to the general public. Read more »

End to DADT Makes All Kinds of Sense

As Matt Blake writes about the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the president should move immediately to stop the implementation of the policy in the Armed Services if it is clear that Congress is going to act.  This absurd policy had people willing to step into harm’s way in defense of our country not allowed to do so because of some bizarre concept of “unit cohesion.”

What was really at stake, it seems to me, was something much more fundamental: when would America get leaders who were man enough to say that they didn’t mind the idea of having gays in the military?  This is just me talking — and I’m no expert (something JCOS chief Admiral McMullen was also at pains to say yesterday), but it seems to me that this was never about military effectiveness.  It was about homophobia, plain and simple.  Homophobia isn’t about them, it’s about you.  So in our strange, sex-obsessed yet mock-Puritan society, it truly is courageous to stand up and say you don’t care about the sexual preferences of the person next to you who is also getting shot at, or fixing an engine, or translating a terrorist rant.  Dana Milbank is right that Mullen deserves a medal, though I’d guess the medal for valor in normal human relations hasn’t been minted yet.

Regulators Should Have Put the Brakes on Accelerator Problem

By Marci Greenstein

Why did it take federal regulators so long to look into unexplained acceleration by Toyota automobiles?  Peter Whoriskey and Frank Ahrens report in the Post that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is just getting around to investigating whether “engine electronics” caused Toyota’s acceleration  problem, not the brake pads or the floor mats, after “years of complaints” by motorists.  NHTSA will look at all manufacturers’ electronic gas pedals, not just Toyotas.  All newer cars are affected because, as Whoriskey and Ahrens report, “[i]n newer cars, that connection is made electronically, with pedal sensors relaying the driver’s intent to a computer. The operation of such systems can be unpredictable, critics say.”

Why the announcement of an across-the-board investigation now?  Because Congress is about to hold hearings on the problem, calling Toyota executives and regulators as witnesses. Read more »