Tag: budget

The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

10:11 am

The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

What comes through in the Moody’s assessment [the credit-rating downgrade of 15 banks] and in any review of their returns on equity is that banks have lost significant ability to generate earnings to offset the inevitable losses. The lost earnings power is surely due in part to reduced leverage, which helps protects taxpayers.

But 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank and countless other federal efforts to put sand in the financial gears are also taking their toll. The Obama tax and regulatory frenzy, of which Dodd-Frank is a part, weighs on economic growth. Those are our words, not Moody’s, but the rating agency does note that the abysmal economic environment is a drag on ratings for everyone.

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NASA has delayed the first test flight of Orion’s launch abort system by two years to 2017.

9:08 am

NASA has delayed the first test flight of Orion’s launch abort system by two years to 2017.

NASA officials have been warning since last year that work on Orion would be slowed to keep pace with the development of SLS and its launch infrastructure. The agency has proposed trimming Orion’s $1.2 billion budget back to $1 billion for 2013. With the high-altitude abort test facing at least a budget-driven delay, the Langley team has proposed conducting one or more less-expensive tests in its place. Ortiz said conducting a hot-fire test in 2015 or 2016 would “keep the [launch abort system] project moving forward and help alleviate risk.”

I predict that Dragon will not only test its launch abort system first, it will have humans flying on it before Orion. And Dragon will do this for a fraction of the total cost that Orion and SLS spend per year. I also predict that when Dragon does this, Congress will finally begin noticing this disparity, and SLS will die unlaunched.

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The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013.

3:19 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013, not 2020 as claimed.

In 2010, Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary projected that this interest income would keep the trust fund growing in real value through 2020. The 2011 projections moved this date to 2018, and the recently released 2012 projections pushed the date to 2012, meaning that the trust fund will start declining in real value next year. After 2013, the trust fund is projected to decline by greater amounts each year until becoming exhausted in 2033.

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The empty bench of the Democratic Party.

4:03 pm

The empty bench of the Democratic Party.

In comparing the potential Presidential candidates from both the Democrat and Republican parties, this article leaves one with the impression that the future is definitely not with the Democratic Party. As admitted by its own membership, its leadership is old, it has very few candidates with national stature, and the depth of the party is shallower than a pond in Tucson in summer. Meanwhile, the Republicans have many young new faces that already have national standing.

Though the article likes to blame this situation on internal forces within the parties, I see it as the result of actual elections and the circumstances of the time. The Democrats have increasingly appeared bankrupt when it comes to dealing with today’s fundamental problems, especially the out-of-control spending of government at all levels. Meanwhile, Republican candidates, especially those associated with the tea party movement, have come forward with some fresh, reasonable, and thoughtful ideas for dealing with these problems.

Faced with such a choice, it is not surprising that the Republicans have a deep bench compared to the Democrats.

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The House yesterday proposed a spending bill that would cut the EPA’s budget to $7 billion, 17% less than what it received in 2012.

3:09 pm

Progress: The House yesterday proposed a spending bill that would cut the EPA’s budget to $7 billion, 17% less than what it received in 2012.

Considering the federal debt, this is a reasonable cut, as a $7 billion budget would be comparable to the EPA’s budget numbers in the early 2000s, and would hardly cripple that agency.

On a more depressing note, the Senate is moving forward on a bi-partisan deal to pass a massive farm bill, loaded with pork that would spend almost a trillion dollars over the next decade.

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Spending money on silliness at the NSF and NIH

9:43 am

Your tax dollars at work: Spending money on silliness at the NSF and NIH.

Coburn’s report identified a number of projects that will make most Americans—scientists and nonscientists alike—shake their heads. They include studies of: how to ride a bike; when dogs became man’s best friend; whether political views are genetically predetermined; whether parents choose trendy baby names; and when the best time is to buy a ticket to a sold-out sporting event. And it noted that “only politicians appear to benefit from other NSF studies, such as research on what motivates individuals to make political donations, how politicians can benefit from Internet town halls…and how politicians use the Internet.”

Read the whole thing, as it gives a scientist’s perspective of this waste, which is sometimes not as obvious as the examples above.

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The debt of the federal government is projected to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced Tuesday.

10:26 am

The day of reckoning looms: The debt of the federal government is projected to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037, the Congressional Budget Office announced Tuesday.

This CBO report actually supposed to be encouraging, as it indicates that the day of doom has been pushed back a whopping two years! Yowza! Let’s pop the corks on the champagne bottles and start celebrating!

Sadly, the article also has this ridiculous quote:

CBO’s latest prediction is similar to its 2011 report despite the $2.1 trillion in budget cuts enacted in last August’s debt-ceiling deal between the White House and Congress.

Nothing was cut by that deal. All they did was trim the rate of growth. For any journalist to continue to participate in this fraud is sickening.

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