Understanding Government

Illinois environmental investigators found alarming levels of lead near an elementary school in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, reports the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne, prompting state and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials to conduct a joint investigation intended to determine the lead’s source. The fact that U.S. EPA is even devoting resources to the lead problem near Perez Elementary School is a relative triumph for environmentalists and the Pilsen community — a low-to-middle income neighborhood that is more than 90 percent Mexican. Recent history and the current federal government budget battle show how fragile political support is for complex pollution investigations, even those where the affected party is school children. (more…)

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is standing up for regulatory agencies as Congress’s budget battles proceed. Bloomberg reports that the Senate’s no. 2 Democrat is particularly concerned about financial regulation: that the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodities Future Trading Commission will not get enough money to enforce the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform bill.

It is difficult, though, to know what budget proposal to contest, especially with the government now operating on a two-week budget. Can regulatory champions like Durbin take the lead on a passable budget by March 18?

The Washington Post’s spy reporter Walter Pincus can’t contain his excitement:

The United States spent $75 billion over the past year to finance worldwide intelligence operations that employ 200,000 people, according to an unprecedented disclosure by the nation’s top intelligence official.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair disclosed the figures while introducing his four-year national intelligence strategy during a Tuesday morning conference call with reporters.

This isn’t that big of a deal — the Bush administration told Congress, and the public, that the 2008 fiscal-year intelligence budget was $47.5 billion. But it does show Obama’s spending priorities — intelligence spending (this includes the CIA and 15 other agencies) has gone up. It is more than twice as much as the State Dept. $32.8 billion budget.

Blair won’t categorize how much money each agency gets or what missions the money goes toward. But it does help to know the substantial investment taxpayers made in mysterious and controversial national defense work.