A House plan to eliminate earmarks that largely benefit military contractors has made headlines the past couple of days. But these earmarked projects make up only $1.7 billion of the federal budget. The Washington Post’s Dana Hedgpeth reports on a much bigger instance of government waste:

Michael Sullivan, the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s top analyst on Lockheed Martin’s jet fighter, also known as the F-35 Lightning II, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing that the cost of the program has increased substantially and that development is 2 1/2 years behind schedule. (more…)

It looks like the U.S. Senate will tack student loan reform onto their final health care bill after all, reports the New York Times’ David Herzenhorn and Tamar Lewin. So if the bill passes, the federal Education Department would administer all federal student loans instead of subsidizing private banks to handle some of these loans. Also, the education provisions in the bill would increase money for Pell grants, the Education Department’s main grant program to help students pay for college.

I’m not a big fan of attaching provisions to bills that have little to do with the overall bill. But the current student loan system is notably bad and the upper chamber’s recent track record suggests they might not otherwise do an up-down vote on stand-alone student loan reform.

By Marci Greenstein

When it comes to protecting citizens from unfair credit card and lending practices, what does the chair of the panel overseeing the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street want? She wants Congress to cut through the “complexity machine” created by the financial industry – in the form of hidden fees, arbitrary rate hikes, and unintelligible, lengthy, one-sided contracts for credit cards, homes loans and cars. Elizabeth Warren wants to make obtaining credit simple, clear, and fair.

Elizabeth Warren

“I expect to pay for what I get, but I don’t want to be tricked.”  That was the message, delivered with extraordinary clarity by the Harvard Law School professor, a noted expert on bankruptcy law and chair of Congress’ TARP oversight panel, to an audience March 11 at the New America Foundation’s Washington, D.C. offices.

According to Warren, the “complexity machine” got started in the 1980s as banks began complicating and increasing the small print in credit card and other lending agreements. (more…)

The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau reports that House Democratic leaders have banned budget earmarks provided for government projects handled by for-profit companies. These earmarks are mostly no-bid military contracts that lawmakers write for home-district defense contractors.

The earmark ban is a worthy response to a recent Office of Congressional Ethics Report that documented the snug relationship between defense lobbyists and lawmakers on the House appropriations subcommittee on defense. But it’s hardly a landmark for either lobbying and ethics reform or fiscal responsibility. (more…)

There’s been talk that the Obama administration will use the final health care legislation bill as a vehicle to reform the awful, wretched, wasteful, unfair and embarrassing federal student loan system. But Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post say it’s probably not going to happen:

Democratic leaders met for a second day Wednesday with administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), but reached no decision on the student loan measure. One participant said a consensus appeared to be emerging that it would be unwise to risk the health-care bill by including the education measure.

This makes sense in theory: student loan reform has very little to do with health care reform. But Obama and Congress better accomplish student loan reform in 2010. (more…)

John Cassidy’s New Yorker profile of Tim Geithner mostly makes a single argument, with that argument contained in the  sub-head: “Timothy Geithner’s financial plan is working — and making him very unpopular.” This has become the prevailing wisdom on the Geithner beat — summarized equally well a few weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Solomon. This part of Cassidy’s conclusion, though, is fresh and interesting: (more…)

The Chicago Tribune’s Mary Owens has a good piece on one consequence of the recession — the lack of summer jobs for teenagers. Jobs that teens in Chicago, and elsewhere, used to get at fast food restaurants or retail stores either no longer exist or have been taken by college graduates or more experienced employees laid off from their previous jobs. Owens writes that the lack of teen jobs, “leaves the city susceptible to more gang violence, teen pregnancy and drug use — known consequences of idle teenagers.”

Ironically, the one part of the stimulus bill where the federal government directly created employment was a youth jobs program last summer. Chicago still has $17.3 million in federal stimulus money for summer youth jobs. But the money is only expected to reach a fraction of applicants. And those who get jobs will likely be working about 20 hours a week for minimum wage.

As I’ve reported, the summer jobs program was largely successful. But it didn’t do enough to help troubled teens — or alter a teen unemployment rate that stands at a record 26 percent.

The Food and Drug Administration claims that the company Basic Food Flavors has knowingly sold vegetable protein laced with salmonella. The Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton reports that a food maker who purchased products from Basic Food Flavors tipped off the FDA and the agency subsequently inspected the Food Flavors plant. But why did federal regulators wait until after the dangerous vegetable protein was discovered to inspect the offending plant?

Well, because of the U.S. Senate. “Legislation that would require companies to take measures to prevent contamination was overwhelmingly passed by the House last year,” Layton writes,  “but has been held up in the Senate.” (more…)

The Washington Post’s Nick Anderson reports that all 50 of the nation’s governors have approved national standards for what students are expected to know in math and English. This is really good news. An argument against national standards is an argument against standards-based education policy.  However, both Democratic and Republican politicians have expressed a clear desire for education standards (often measured through standardized tests). So…if you’re going to have standards, it’s critical that some states don’t set easier standards and then make empty claims about proficient students and quality schools. This has happened repeatedly in enforcement of No Child Left Behind. It no longer will.

In my piece on the ten-year U.S. Census as a jobs creator, I mentioned that the count determines billions of dollars in federal funding. The Chicago Tribune’s Oscar Avila has a more precise report of how much money is at stake — in 2008, Illinois received $19.1 billion in federal funds tied to Census figures. Chicago alone got $12.6 billion. The money is especially important for covering highway costs and Medicaid reimbursements.

Avila gets his information from a new Brookings Institution study — the study finds that the Census count will determine $500 billion in federal funding.