Category: Budget

Good Government Policy from The Last Place You Would Expect

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Specifically, the Washington, D.C. City Council, which has voted to double the property tax on vacant properties, to $10/$100 evaluation (that’s right 10%, it had been 5%, as compared to $1.85/$100 for commercial properties, and $0.85/$100 for residential properties).

Additionally, the Council has made it more difficult to get an exemption, cutting back on the numbers of exemptions granted, though there is still a 3 month exemption for a property for lease, a 1 year exemption for residential property for sale, and a 2 year exemption for commercial property for sale.

In many inner cities, vacant properties blight the landscape, and this is a very good way of dealing with it.

Dems Set to Cave Again on Extension of Unemployment Benefits

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Steny “Mr. Capitulation” Hoyer is saying that House Dems are, “likely to drop a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits” from the Iraq supplemental.

This is both craven and stupid. Make the Republicans, and for that matter the Bush Blue Dogs, vote against the unemployment extension.

Not only is it good policy in an economy in a tailspin, it’s good politics, since the extension is popular.

It passed with 75 votes in the Senate. If Bush vetos it, come back again, and again, and again, and again.

Wimps.

Dutch Industry Getting Cold Feet on JSF

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In 2002, the Dutch government agreed to invest €858 million in developing the JSF, “on condition that it would not cost more than buying an aircraft off the shelf”, with significant offsets to the local aerospace industry.

As a part of this contract, the Dutch aerospace industry agreed to cover any shortfalls in funding, but this number has grown signifantly from the €191 estimated in 2002, and inudstry wants to renegotiate the deal, claiming that, “financial benefits of the project are now far greater than originally thought and that the deal will benefit the taxpayer at the industry’s expense”.

Basically, they are saying that are getting hosed by cost escalation on the project, which is almost certainly true, and it will be getting a lot worse if the program continues in its current form.

The Good Guys, and the Veterans Win

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The new GI bill passed by a vote of 75-22 in the Senate, and so was attached to Bush’s Iraq war supplemental.

Republicans, including the sick old man running for president, John Sidney McCain III, argued against this, saying that it was “too generous”, and so might lure soldiers out of the military because they would want to go to school and better themselves now.

Note also that McCain couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the damn vote.

They included some other extras too:

The bill also includes money for housing and levees devastated by Hurricane Katrina, heating subsidies for low-income families, the space shuttle program, the Food and Drug Administration, biomedical research, roads and bridges, federal prisons, grants to local police departments, aid to rural schools, suppression of wildfires and preparations for the 2010 census.

The bill would extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks nationwide, with an additional 13 weeks for workers in states with high unemployment.

The only thing that surprises me here is the fact that we aren’t already paying for preparations for the 2010 census.

The Bush Blue Dogs in the House are insisting that there be some sort of tax to offset these costs, but I think that they will fold, as this is ready made for the campaign slogan, “Congressman voted not to support our veterans”.

School Districts Employ Snitches to Throw the Newly Foreclosed Out of School

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Yep, school districts are employing private investigators to find foreclosed children so that they can thrown them out of school.

I would note that it’s frequently illegal, “The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, an updated version of a 1987 law, says school districts can’t deny enrollment to children who are homeless because of foreclosure or other economic hardship.”

As the good Rev. Wright says, “God bless America.”

H/T Calculated Risk

Aggressive Challenges to Property Tax Assessments Rising

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This is not surprising.

People are struggling, and their assessed property value often is well over market rate, so it is no surprise that a rapidly growing industry is evolving to help people challenge property tax assesments, particularly among people attempting to sell their homes.

The fact that one has successfully lowered the taxes makes the home more salable.

Of course, it’s going to devastate the tax revenues of municipalities just as an economic downturn increases demand for their services.

Future Combat System Facing Funding Cut

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The House Armed Services Committee is sticking with the 5% cut in funding recommended by the Airland Subcommittee, and it’s likely that the house as a whole will stick with the cut.

Good idea. While some of the technologies are intriguing, the program as a whole is bloated, over ambitious, over budget, and over schedule.

Full disclosure, I worked on FCS from 2003-2006.*

*Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Is Canada Upgrading Its Military, Or Is Stephen Harper Downgrading Its Social Safety Net?

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Stephen Harper is is looking to double the Canadian Defense budget over the next 20 years.

While there are doubtless some needs driven by the wear and tear from operations in Afghanistan that need to be addressed, this proposal is far more ambitious, calling for extensive upgrades in weapons systems capabilities, most of which have very little correlation to any future needs, which would be in a peacekeeping/counterinsurgency scenario, where legacy systems with communications and networking upgrades could meet the needs of the conflict just as well as new equipment.

In all fairness though though in a counter insurgency scenario the roughly 10% increase in force size may make sense.

We already know that Mr. Harper is very much of the Western Province (Alberta) tradition, which by Canadian standards is rather wingnutty, so I wonder how much of this is driven by a real need to upgrade forces, since any foreseeable conflict would resemble Afghanistan, where the existing systems are more than adequate, and how much is an attempt to pre-allocate money so it won’t be available for things like the national health service and public education.

There is also a 3rd explanation, which is that if there is a common thread among right wing parties world wide, it is a fetish among the about the creation and maintenance of large military establishment, even when threats do not justify this.

It may also be a combination of all three.

Eating Seed Corn

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Yep, Schwarzenegger is proposing borrowing against lottery future earnings to balance this year’s budget.

What the Governator is doing is exactly what destroyed the Ottoman Empire, the sale of revenue sources in order to fund the current budget, with the inevitable crash.

Of course, as a Republican, he wants the crash, it’s the whole wanting to reduce the government, “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”, and insolvency works just as well as everything else.

I would hope that at some point, the voters of California come to their senses and repeal proposition 13.

Murtha Proposes Giving Army $20B to Cancel FCS

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John Murtha, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, has proposed an additional $20 billion to develop FCS* technologies, while canceling the program.

Basically, he’s looking at canceling the most ambitious aspects of the program, and the $20 billion would be used to redirect the program towards nearer term technology.

When I worked on the FCS‡, it was an article of faith that the systems, at least the manned systems, would never be fielded in large numbers, but that the underlying technology would be a part of an upgrade to legacy systems, and it looks like Murtha is of the same mind.

There is a lot to admire in the way of technology, the article mentions the use of robots to investigate IEDs and advanced communications systems, for example, and the initial release of this technology could benefit the troops now, as opposed to the full up system, which may not benefit the troops ever.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts.
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Senate Bill Drops C-17s, Funds F-22s (Sort Of)

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The Senate Armed Services Committee has passed a Defense Authorization bill which funds 20 additional F-22s, but does not fund additional C-17s. (more details at link)

Half way there. We don’t need either, though the F-22 funding also includes $497M for shutting down the F-22 line too.

The idea is to leave both options open to the next president.

Hopefully, the next president will have the guts to kill the white elephant that is the F-22.

Navy Ship Building Programs Face Budget Scrutiny

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It looks like there are a couple of very prominent targets for law makers looking to pay for Iraq, the DDG-1000, and MPF-F.

The DDG-1000, aka the Zumwalt class destroyer, is a very large, about 14,500 tons displacement (the Arleigh Burkes in service are about 8,500 tons, and the Ticonderoga class cruisers are only about 10,000 tons). It’s also very expensive, and as a result, the proposed buy has been cut from 32 ships to 7.

It is very much a product of the US Navy’s big ship fixation. It now looks to cost about 5x as much as the Burkes, and prices are still rising, and the benefits of a larger ship are largely outweighed by the disadvantages of having fewer ships.

Simply put, you cover less area with fewer ships, though the Maine delegation will certainly fight hard for these, as will Mississippi, as they will likely be manufactured at Bath Iron Works in Maine and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi.

The MPF-F (Maritime Prepositioning Force-Future) is basically an amphibious invasion fleet that will be standing ready around the clock:

But Democratic leaders of the House and Senate seapower subcommittees are discussing cutting their authorizations for the destroyer program to redirect funds elsewhere, and they have notably complained about shifting MPF-F definitions to a degree that they seem less enthusiastic about them than Littoral Combat Ships, for instance, which also have experienced programmatic troubles but appear to continue to enjoy congressional backing.

“I am concerned with the plans for the so called Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) commonly known as the MPF(F),” House seapower chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said. “I am not convinced that the Navy and Marine Corps are in sync with the requirements for this force and I am not sure that the Navy has a reasonable plan to build these ships efficiently,” he said last month.

This is basically a way of saying that he does not think that the Navy has its sh%$ together on what it really needs from this.

My take is that the DDG-1000 is arguably inferior and more expensive solution to buying more Burkes, and I’m not sure that investing in “amphibious invasion fleets in a box” is something our current budget realities can support.

Zumwalt in Trouble

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The DDG-1000 class ships are losing Congressional support, with Rep. Murtha proposing that they be delayed for other needs.

There were originally supposed to be 24 of these, then 7, and now 2, and they are being delayed, and the price has gone through the roof, with it now being quoted at $3 billion each, with realistic estimates putting it at $5 billion.

It’s a bad program. 80%+ of any surface combatant’s benefits are simply a product of their being afloat and available, so going with what are very large boats and fewer numbers gets fewer boats in the water, and this does is not outweighed by the additional capabilities of the larger boats.

The problem is that the US Navy has a fixation on size.