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So, it's Tax Day, and there are a lot of protesters in town who for "Tea Parties" are, to say the least, not so happy about President Obama's tax and fiscal policy. But fortunately, it's also a day when people say useful things about the impact of taxes and provide interesting charts about where our taxes actually go. And it's a good time to reflect on the art that taxation's created.

President Obama kicked off the serious bit of that tax conversation by noting that Tax Day "is an important opportunity for those of us in Washington to consider our responsibilities to the people who sent us here and who pay the bills." It's not quite as pithy--or snarky--as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' statement that “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization,” but it'll do. And if you need a specific reminder of what kinds of civilization you're purchasing with your taxes, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a useful breakout chart (on a workforce note, benefits for federal retirees and vets makes up 6 percent of the budget).

Continue reading "Tax Day and Art" »

Ed O'Keefe has a good point about last night's press conference today. Obama may not love the way the procurement process now, but what's he going to cut? And how is he going to reexamine existing contracts without disrupting important programs?

The FAA's broken out its stimulus spending on airports by project in a pie chart. It's clear and understandable, even if you're not an aviation expert. All the departments should release something like this; it could be a great public confidence tool to help people understand where their money is going.

Obama issues a signing statement for the Omnibus bill that appears to give agencies a fair amount of latitude on how they spend the money that's coming to them. Most importantly, they're allowed to treat the opinions of Congressional committees as advisory when they spend or reallocate the funds. Relevant portion of the signing statement is here:

Legislative Aggrandizements (committee-approval requirements). Numerous provisions of the legislation purport to condition the authority of officers to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. These are impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement in the execution of the laws other than by enactment of statutes. Therefore, although my Administration will notify the relevant committees before taking the specified actions, and will accord the recommendations of such committees all appropriate and serious consideration, spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of congressional committees. Likewise, one other provision gives congressional committees the power to establish guidelines for funding costs associated with implementing security improvements to buildings. Executive officials shall treat such guidelines as advisory. Yet another provision requires the Secretary of the Treasury to accede to all requests of a Board of Trustees that contains congressional representatives. The Secretary shall treat such requests as nonbinding.

The stimulus has a new logo! Pres. Obama said at the Dept. of Transportation yesterday that the administration will begin stamping an emblem on stimulus projects to clearly denote that they are being funded by the recovery program.

"We’re also making it easier for Americans to see what projects are being funded with their money as part of our recovery. So in the weeks to come, the signs denoting these projects are going to bear the new emblem of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” Obama said. “These emblems are symbols of our commitment to you, the American people -- a commitment to investing your tax dollars wisely, to put Americans to work doing the work that needs to be done. So when you see them on projects that your tax dollars made possible, let it be a reminder that our government -- your government -- is doing its part to put the economy back on the road of recovery.”

Now I'm not entirely sure how you can put an emblem on a project -- does it go on a sign outside the construction site? on the contract itself? just on the websites? -- but it's clear someone put a lot of time and thought into the emblem's imagery. What do you think of it? A good transparency measure? Gimmicky? A little of both?

(Hat tip: ABC News, The Cato Institute)

The New Yorker writer is reading and blogging the entire stimulus package. Coll says "I don’t intend to censor my skepticism about the federal bureaucracy," but he says he might need some help interpreting the programs that are getting funding. Email him, if you're up for lending a hand.

Elizabeth Newell hunted through the budget summaries yesterday and came up with a whole bunch of management tidbits the administration has planned. What I found most interesting about her article though, was the hints of how the Obama team feels about performance management as a concept:

The summary said Obama will address criticisms of PART by opening up the "insular performance measurement process" to the public, Congress and outside experts. The administration pledged to eliminate "ideological performance goals and replace them with goals Americans care about and that are based on congressional intent and feedback from the people served by government programs."

I guess I find the idea that performance management is perfectly clear to a group of people in government and the process is just being nefariously concealed a little absurd. Performance management is really, really complicated. Setting goals is one thing, but measuring progress towards them is something that everyone involved acknowledges is extremely difficult. And the idea that all the really important goals are ones that can, have been, and will be set by poll numbers seems...well, wrong. Certainly, a whole lot of things agencies were directed to do under the Bush administration were determined by that administration's agenda and ideology. But actual performance management criteria are a lot more procedural than that a lot of the time.

The first union to send out a general press release about the budget summary is the American Federation of Government Employees. And while they're not thrilled about the pay raise President Obama proposed, it doesn't look like they're going to the mattresses about it yet either:

“However, AFGE is not happy with less than a full comparability pay raise but understand it given the severity of our nation’s economic situation, including the crisis for public workers at the state and local level,” said AFGE National President John Gage. “We understand that only modest steps can be taken this year to close the remaining pay gap between the federal and non-federal salaries. We also are optimistic in seeing an emphasis on controlling health care costs in the years to come.”

The politics of the pay raise are going to be fascinating to watch. Last year, President Bush proposed that members of the military receive a 3.4 percent pay increase, and members of the civil service receive a 2.9 percent increase, for a 0.5 percent disparity between the groups. The result? Lots of protest by unions, a movement for pay parity on the Hill, and a 3.9 percent pay hike for both groups sent to the President by Congress.

As a matter of politics pay raises were one fight unions seemed to be able to win fairly reliably during the Bush years. The membership of the Federal Labor Relations Authority and the Federal Service Impasses Panel was set by the president. The ability of Transportation Security Administration workers to bargain collectively was controlled by a presidential appointee. The fight over the National Security Personnel System kept union members out of it, but failed to kill the system entirely. The Federal Career Intern Program expanded. The president issued an executive order stripping Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employees of their bargaining rights. Unions couldn't do a ton of things about those issues, but they could fight over pay raises, and they could win those fights.

Now, in the young Obama administration, federal employee unions have the potential to rack up a whole bunch of wins. Their ally is, at least for now, leading the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is contemplating expanding bargaining rights at TSA. A-76 competitions have been suspended.

When you're going to lose a lot of battles, it can be easier to decide where to focus your political capital, because you don't have a lot of choices. When you're going to win, the hard work starts. What priorities do you set? What do you choose to complain about? How much loyalty do you expect from the people you supported? The federal employee unions will have to answer those questions repeatedly over the next four years.

As a big PDF here. Obama's asking for a 2.9 percent increase in pay for members of the military and 2.0 percent for civilians. More to come, of course, but the numbers are here and they're firm.

The Obama administration let White House pool reporters sit in on the breakout sessions at the fiscal summit yesterday, and the reporters, especially Jon Ward, the Washington Times writer assigned to the procurement breakout session, came away with some interesting tidbits on how lawmakers from both parties view the fiscal challenges facing government. In the procurement session, Ward wrote, lawmakers returned repeatedly to the workforce issues involved.

Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, cited the large number of procurement workers who are retiring. “It all comes down to an insufficient number of procurement officials," she said.

Joe Lieberman, who chairs the committee, said of agencies, “It is obvious that they're not following that law,” against contracting out inherently governmental functions in services contracts. Claire McCaskill, who will be chairing a subcommittee on procurement, said "it's stupid" that it's easier to hire contractors at the Department of Homeland Security than it is to bring in less expensive federal employees. And Darrell Issa, the new ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the federal government should be paying premiums to federal employees who stay beyond retirement age.

All of these issues are going to be big this year, so it's great to get a preview of where key lawmakers stand, at least on how hiring and pay ought to work. I just wish Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Secretary, hadn't started the breakout session by warning that it might be dry. She shouldn't downplay these issues--they're vital, and they'll get more attention if she calls attention to them without denigrating them.