Empowering the Bureaucrats: The Case of the Debt Limit

Justice Scalia recently dinged Congress for delegating power to bureaucrats.  I just stumbled (via Tyler Cowen) on the CRS study of the statutory debt limit.  It includes this brief history:

Before World War I, Congress often authorized borrowing for specified purposes, such as the
construction of the Panama Canal.28 Congress also often specified which types of financial
instruments Treasury could employ, and specified or limited interest rates, maturities, and details
of when bonds could be redeemed. In other cases, especially in time of war, Congress provided
the Treasury with discretion, subject to broad limits, to choose debt instruments.

 So something which we think nothing of, the regular rolling over of the national debt, the allocating among bills, notes, and bonds, all that is something Congress once reserved for itself.

The Power of the Rules Committee

Farm Policy reports the likelihood the cuts to direct payments included in the House ag appropriations bill will likely be reversed, through maneuvering in the House Rules Committee.  It's a blast from the past, for those of us who supported liberal legislation in the late 50's and early 60's.  Why?

I'm glad you asked.  The House with 435 members, plus a few talking but nonvoting members, is too big to operate without some sort of management.  What happens is, once a bill is reported from a committee of the House, it goes to the Rules Committee to get a "rule".  Without a rule, it requires a supermajority to get the bill to the floor.  The rule sets the guidelines for the consideration of the bill on the House floor: how much debate, what amendments will be in order, what objections can be heard, etc.  So it seems that Rep. Lucas, the head of House ag, has gotten the Rules committee to agree that a member can object to the cuts in direct payments, presumably on grounds the Appropriations committee overstepped its jurisdiction, and if such objection is heard, the cut is dropped. 

That's probably oversimplified, but it's the way Howard Smith, of VA, used to operate in the late 50's--meant he could kill or water down any initiatives the liberals were trying to push.  JFK, if I remember, succeeded in pushing the House to expand the membership of the Rules committee to add a couple more liberals and make it harder for Smith to wield his power.  But that was only a halfway measure, meaning JFK didn't have a good legislative record when he was killed. Smith, as wikipedia reminds me, was responsible for including "sex" in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, so some good came from the most unexpected place.

Crop Insurance Keeps Me in Business

That's a paraphrase of a farm organization leader from the upper Midwest from today's Farm Policy. It's an opportunity to point out the difference between keeping farmers in business and keeping farms in business. If disaster strikes or prices drop, farmers may leave the land, either retiring or finding other occupations.  But the likelihood is the land they were farming is likely to continue to be farmed. Sometimes the crop will change; tobacco farmers who lost their program may switch to other crops while other farmers may use their acreage to get into tobacco.  And in marginal areas, like the valleys of upstate New York may see the small and mid-sized dairy farms go out of business, with much of the acreage reverting to forest.

How Many FSA/USDA/Gov Websites Are Needed

At one time (circa 1997) I was assuming each county office and each state office would have its own website. Later I had an exchange with a county executive director on the issue.  Currently if I understand correctly, in FSA the states have their own sites but the counties no longer do.

Today the White House announced an initiative to cut the number of federal government websites. They've frozen the URL's, they're studying what they have, and trying to determine what they should have, as follows:

While it’s pretty obvious that we don’t need thousands of websites, what we do need is a little trickier. Should there only be one federal website? Is a more practical solution a common set of templates and standards so that sites are better connected to one another and more consistent to the public? A task force will consult with experts from the public and private sector to develop a policy for government websites moving forward. If you’re interested in participating in this process

 I'm not sure what I think. In part there's the matter of definition: does USDA have only one website, since fsa.usda.gov is a sub of usda.gov?  Does the user really care, so long as they can find stuff easily?  What about update authority; how widely should it be spread?  My 1997 starting point was one office = one site = one update authority.  That's simple, but it's also very much stuck in the mud of the past.   As a user I'm not terribly concerned with offices.  For example, I don't care whether it's the White House, OMB, the OCIO's, GSA, NIST, or what; I want to find the documents and information I'm interested in.  How the government does that best I'm not sure.

The new Utah.gov website is interesting--it got some rave reviews at govloop.com.  I thought maybe it'd be instructive in the context of reducing the number of websites, but I'm not sure it is.

Do Vehicles Deserve Privacy: A Suggestion

ProPublica reports on the schemes some bus companies to evade DOT scrutiny (this in the wake of the fatal accident in VA).

I've read that trucking companies now have a gadget on their trucks permitting them to track where their trucks are. Seems to me there's room for a win-win solution, if only we agree that vehicles have no privacy rights. 

First we put the gadgets on buses as well as trucks.

Second we require companies to either make their tracking records available to the government or allow the government to track the buses and trucks.

Third we develop software to determine from the records whether drivers are driving more hours than they are permitted and whether the trucks and buses are speeding.

All You Need to Know

"...sex — a fun, affordable, and ecologically sustainable passtime."  From Matt Yglesias on coed dorms.

Politico's "Errors" and My Jumping the Gun

FarmPolicy links to this Politico story on the outlook for farm programs.  It also links to this ERS graph


From Politico: 

 "At issue is the estimated $15 billion to $20 billion the government spends in subsidies each year. Originally a Depression-era program, farm subsidies have evolved into a complex maze of economic assurances for farmers: direct payments, federal crop insurance programs, counter-cyclical payments (which trigger when commodity prices fall below a certain mandated level) and other programs. "

From ERS: total payments have been below $13 billion for the last 5 years. 


Now Ms. Cogan might be including crop insurance in her definition, though she doesn't say. It would be good if she were including crop insurance, but I suspect it's more likely she's using a figure stuck in her head from earlier years.

[Update:  It should have been obvious from my quote she was including crop insurance as a subsidy.  So: I was wrong and she was right. 


 I emailed her complaining, she responded immediately, very nicely, and I got off my duff and checked the CBO estimates.  Essentially they've upped their estimate from $16.7 to 17.3 billion because increased crop insurance costs offset the decrease in counter-cyclical payments.  ]

Lesson for Web Designers: Use Common Sense and Test

That's the gist of this post at "Partnership for a More Perfect Union", which rates Congressional websites. While their advice is directed to Congressional webmasters, it applies to everyone.

Saddest Phrase of June 12: Prison Is a Safe Place

"...prison appears to be a healthier place than the typical environment of the nonincarcerated black male population." 
From a study reported by Barking Up a Wrong Tree, comparing death rates of prisoners with civilians. Part of it may be healthcare differences.

Different Ways to Skin the Cat--Bus Arrivals

Metro has signs showing when the next subway trains will arrive.  That's new since I stopped riding regularly (meaning about 13 years ago, so not exactly a recent development).  It's very nice, though people now will take it for granted.  There's been efforts over the years to do the same for urban bus systems: have the stop display when the next bus is due.  I think there've been a few implementations of this.

A different approach than displaying the arrival time at the stop is probably better; after all, once you arrive at the stop unless it's very late you're pretty well committed to taking that bus. So this approach of Google's seems a lot better: display the real arrival times on your cellphone.  Presumably there's the same logic behind the scenes as when the display is at the stop, but putting it on the Internet and available to cellphones is so much better.