“An unnecessary federal bailout of state and local governments has given an undeserved mulligan to some money-losing government-owned golf courses.
That’s despite the fact that some of those same courses reported an increase in customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to reports submitted to the Treasury Department and reviewed by Reason, Union County, New Jersey, has committed $929,000 of its federal COVID funds to a pair of county-owned golf courses: Galloping Hill and Ash Brook. That spending will help the courses cover “costs associated with increased use” as a result of “an increase in play at county golf courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
That’s the sort of problem that many private businesses would probably love to have. Either as the result of government-imposed lockdowns or changes in consumer behavior during the pandemic, recreational spending on restaurants, bars, concert venues, and theaters plummeted. If that made golfing—an outdoor, socially distanced activity—more popular, why should taxpayers now have to bail out a business that got more successful?”
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“In a report published earlier this year, the Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this website) found that 155 local governments lost a combined $61 million by running golf courses during their 2020 fiscal years. One of the biggest losers was Thousand Oaks, California, which lost a staggering $800,023 on a single city-owned golf course in 2020.
Naturally, that course got a piece of the federal bailout too. The Treasury Department’s tracker of American Rescue Plan spending shows that Thousand Oaks plans to spend more than $14 million on “revenue replacement” on a variety of items, including “city-owned theatres and golf course.” It’s not clear from the data provided to the Treasury Department how much of that money will be spent on the golf course (nor is it clear why the city owns multiple theaters, but that’s for another day).”
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“”Congress really put taxpayers in the rough,” says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscally conservative nonprofit. He says Congress should have placed stricter limits on how the $350 billion state and local government bailout could be used.
Those funds were included in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress in March 2021, and were ostensibly meant to cover pandemic-related public health costs or to offset lost tax revenue due to the economic consequences of COVID-19. Even before the law was passed, there were questions about whether such a large bailout of state and local tax coffers was necessary or prudent.
It seems to have been neither, as most governments did not experience a significant revenue shortfall due to the pandemic. Now flush with extra cash from Washington and few restrictions on how to use it, some state and local governments are blowing the money on pet projects like government-owned golf courses and bonuses for government workers”
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“Other obviously vital public health costs being covered by the American Rescue Plan’s local government bailout fund include the planting of new trees “including ash, spruce, maple, pine, [and] cherry” and the installation of a new irrigation system at a government-owned golf course in Elmira, New York, according to Treasury Department data. That’ll burn through $1.2 million of federal funds.
In Lexington, Kentucky, a government-owned course that brags about containing “the longest par-5” hole in the state, will be getting a new irrigation system with the help of more than $1.3 million from the federal bailout. The course is already “a local favorite and an attraction to visitors,” the county wrote in its project summary submitted to the Treasury Department, but the desired upgrades haven’t been made due to a lack of funding from the local government.”
“President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill apportioned $1.2 trillion for such projects as roads, bridges, and airports. But it also designated $65 billion “to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet” by funding broadband expansion. This included a $45 billion “Internet for All” program, under which Biden pledged to expand broadband access to all Americans by 2030.
But this was not the first tranche of federal funds dedicated to expanding internet access: The 2009 stimulus bill allocated more than $7 billion toward broadband grants for rural areas, and expenditures have grown since. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that the return on that investment has been underwhelming.
The report, titled “Broadband: National Strategy Needed to Guide Federal Efforts to Reduce Digital Divide,” was released…Based on Biden’s pledge of getting to universal broadband access by the end of the decade, the GAO studied the government’s current broadband programs and expenditures, looking for shortcomings or areas of improvement.
What it found was a jumbled mess.
“Federal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping,” with “at least 133” programs “administered by 15 agencies,” the report found. These agencies varied widely, with the three largest being the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is part of the Department of Commerce. Between FY 2015 and FY 2020, these programs collectively dispensed at least $44 billion in broadband assistance.
In practice, so many programs from so many agencies all pursuing the same goal leads inevitably to waste. In one case the report cites, “multiple providers received funding from different programs to deploy broadband to the same county in Minnesota.” If the goal of the federal broadband effort is to expand into areas that lack access, then there is no reason to fund multiple providers in the same area.”
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“Overall, the report determined, “The U.S. broadband efforts are not guided by a national strategy with clear roles, goals, objectives, and performance measures.””
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“A previous GAO report noted that while the federal government invested over $47 billion in rural broadband infrastructure between 2009 and 2017, the broadband industry invested $795 billion over the same period. To the extent that federal funding would ever be necessary, it would be to fill in any gaps the private sector was unable to cover.
“The problem is the Biden administration is prioritizing the government being the provider,” rather than the private sector, says Swarztrauber. “The rhetoric is all about how we should prioritize the local government being the owner and operator of the network.”
In the past, such plans consistently lead to higher costs, corrupt bidding processes, and technology inferior to what’s offered by the private sector. But the Biden administration is moving full steam ahead, with NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson saying last month that his agency would “press” states to allow more municipal broadband programs.”
“Despite their cost, the Zumwalts have been plagued by equipment problems. Soon after its commissioning in 2016, the USS Zumwalt broke down in the Panama Canal. The second ship in its class, the USS Michael Monsoor, failed during sea trials the following year.
As a 2018 report from Military Watch Magazine noted the Zumwalts “suffered from poorly functioning weapons, stalling engines, and an underperformance in their stealth capabilities, among other shortcomings.”
“They have almost entirely failed to fulfill the originally intended role of multipurpose destroyer warships, while the scale of cost overruns alone brings the viability of the program into question even if the destroyers were able to function as intended,” the outlet said.
The Zumwalts lack several vital features, including anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine torpedoes, and long-range area-air defense missiles, the military expert Sebastian Roblin wrote in a 2021 National Interest article. Roblin called the destroyers an “ambitious but failed ship concept.”
And, noted Roblin, their weaponry wasn’t cheap. The ship’s long-range land-attack projectile guided shells cost roughly $800,000 each — about the same price as a cruise missile. The munitions were eventually canceled, considered too pricey to merit producing.
Roblin said the Zumwalt was produced based on “unrealistic” estimates that banked on minimal cost, despite coming in 50% over budget.”
“The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) lost nearly $2.4 million on data plans for iPhones and iPads that were supposed to help homeless veterans connect to telehealth services. Ultimately, 85 percent of the iPhones meant to be loaned went unused and remained in storage one year after their purchase, according to a new inspector general’s report.
Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the V.A. received $14.4 billion to be used on health services for homeless veterans and those at risk of becoming homeless. A chunk of that money went to the department’s Office of Connected Care, which has loaned communications devices to veterans since 2014 so they can access telehealth services.
Connected Care launched a new program in the summer of 2020 that loans iPhones and iPads, equipped with prepaid 12-month data plans, to veterans. Officials spent $63 million on 80,930 iPads and $8.1 million on 10,000 iPhones during FY 2020 and the first two quarters of FY 2021.
“Connected Care’s procedures led to excessive wasted data plans while the iPads and iPhones remained in storage,” according to the report. In July 2021, one year after their initial purchase, “8,544 iPhones (85 percent) remained in storage.” In addition to the money lost on buying phones that went unused, the V.A. also wasted cash on unused data plans. Because contractors activated data plans before shipment to the V.A. and not upon delivery to veterans, the agency lost roughly $1.8 million on data for iPhones and $571,000 on data for iPads as the devices sat in storage.
“This occurred because Connected Care officials were not able to identify the quantity needed for the targeted veteran population because of uncertainties associated with COVID-19 and the lack of data on the quantity needed for a new initiative,” concluded the report. Ultimately, demand for iPhones “was much lower than anticipated”—but the V.A. failed to predict this prior to its purchases and did not take sufficient corrective actions along the way. Excess devices ended up getting shuffled to a separate office within the department for distribution to homeless veterans, but not before losing the V.A. millions of dollars simply by sitting on shelves.”
“Writing in The Wall Street Journal, the president outlined three policy choices to deal with an inflation caused, he seems to believe, largely by pandemic-related supply-chain obstructions and intensified by the war in Ukraine. His plan is simple: Continue to trust that one of the main architects of our current inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, will raise interest rates fast and high enough to tame inflation without crashing the economy, dispense more subsidies and tax credits, and let the deficit melt away—by some miracle—without cutting spending.
Absent from the piece is any acknowledgement of what readers of this column know all too well: that inflation was fueled by Biden’s own reckless spending policies, especially the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021. Half a dozen or so studies have shown that fiscal policies implemented during COVID-19 are a main culprit behind today’s inflation. Biden also fails to mention the Fed’s overly accommodating monetary policy and its current slow response to inflation.
In other words, the president’s argument is amazing for its tone-deafness, inconsistent thinking, and sheer economic ignorance.”
“The GAO notes that it would be more cost-efficient to hold off on buying F-35s until they are operationally tested than it would be to pay for the aircraft now and upgrade them later.
But, of course, when did cost efficiency and the military go hand-in-hand? There’s a reason Lockheed Martin brags about building parts of the F-35 in 48 different states, and that’s not because it saves money. The F-35 has been as much an expensive make-work program for military contractors as it has been a vital part of America’s national defense—and in that regard the cost overruns and eventual upgrades might be seen as a feature rather than a bug.
Production of the F-35 fighter was originally supposed to cost about $200 billion, but the price tag has already ballooned to about twice as much. Recently, Lockheed Martin warned that supply chain issues and inflation could cause further delays and cost overruns. Monday’s GAO report confirmed that construction is running behind schedule, with about 28 percent of the 553 completed jets having been delivered late.”
“the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) attempted to attach some math to the difficult policy decisions that lie ahead. Regardless of when lawmakers decide to address the $30 trillion national debt, just stabilizing it (that is, implementing policies to stop it from growing relative to the nation’s economy as a whole) will require that “income tax receipts or benefit payments change substantially from their currently projected path.”
In short, taxes will have to go up and government services—including benefits from programs like Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly—will likely have to be reduced.
That’s hardly a new set of prescriptions. Debt-watchers have been warning for years that benefit cuts and tax increases will likely be needed to have any realistic shot at managing America’s long-term debt. (And, remember, we’re talking about what’s needed to merely stabilize the debt, not reduce or eliminate it).”
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“If policy makers wait until the end of the decade to raise taxes and cut spending, the best-case scenario would leave the debt hovering around 120 percent of GDP over the long term. Waiting longer means higher debt levels forever and more severe consequences.”
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“A larger amount of debt translates into reduced economic growth in the long run, as the cost of interest payments on the debt consumes dollars that could otherwise be put to productive use. As the CBO notes, persistently high levels of debt can also put upward pressure on interest rates and make it more difficult to combat inflation.”
“Over the course of the pandemic, the Treasury Department issued roughly $6 trillion, $2.7 trillion of which was monetized by the Federal Reserve. Americans were sent $5.1 trillion through various programs, including individual checks and unemployment bonuses. Overall federal debt has since risen by about $6 trillion.
This response assumes the 2020 recession was sparked by a demand shock leading to a fall in aggregate demand, rather than the strangling of aggregate supply caused by the pandemic and lockdowns. Under these circumstances, sending people and companies money was never likely to impact output. Instead, it greatly inflated demand for the durable goods still being produced.
Even by the Keynesian economic standards that prompt this sort of fiscal response, COVID-19 relief was larger than any “output gap”—the difference between what the economy is producing and the most it could produce. In March 2020, the gap was $2.3 trillion, and that year alone, the government spent $3 trillion through several relief bills.
In March 2021, Democrats passed the over-the-top $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. At the time, the projected output gap was $700 billion through 2023—the period when most of the spending would take place. As such, the bill was two or three times too big, especially considering the economy was mostly reopened and growing, with unemployment dropping fast from 14.8 percent the year before to 6 percent.”
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“Today, several new studies confirm that this bout of inflation is rooted in demand, not supply. That’s not to say supply-chain chokepoints, originally resulting from the global shutdown imposed by governments and a sudden shift away from services toward goods, played no role.
However, we wouldn’t have such large-scale supply-chain problems without the shutdowns followed by the aforementioned government-fueled increase in demand for durable goods. According to Robert Koopman at the World Trade Organization, artificially inflated demand accounted for as much as two-thirds of supply shortages.
Second, global supply chains are, obviously, global. If inflation were truly the product of supply-chain issues, we would witness roughly the same rates of inflation throughout the industrialized world. But we don’t. Most industrialized countries have lower levels of inflation than the United States. These other countries also implemented significantly lower amounts of COVID-19 spending.”
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“Today, all prices are rising, including wages (though for now at a lower rate), and the inflation is persistent. This is because of overblown fiscal and monetary policies. Tackling the problem requires strong Fed actions and significant fiscal restraint by Congress. Short of both, inflation will persist for much longer, inflicting disproportionate harm on the most economically vulnerable.
This also means that the recent calls to offset inflation with subsidies for gas, housing, child care, and more will require borrowed money. Since fiscal largesse is the source of the problem, and since these efforts make the affected markets more inefficient, the approach raises the risk of a great stagnation spiral.”
“Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has faced a backlash since Politico reported earlier this week that he indirectly funds and wields unusually heavy influence over an important White House office tasked with advising President Joe Biden’s administration on technical and scientific issues.
The ethical concerns surrounding this news are glaring: A tech billionaire with an obvious personal interest in shaping government tech policy is giving money to an independent government agency devoted to tech and science, albeit through his private philanthropic foundation.
The real scandal, however, is that a government office needed philanthropic aid to fund its work in the first place, creating an ethical quandary over potential conflicts of interest.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is responsible for advising the president on a vital and wide breadth of public policy — whether it’s “a people’s Bill of Rights for automated technologies” or the gargantuan effort of preparing for future pandemics. It also has a meager $5 million annual budget — which means it has to get creative to do its work.
“The use of staff from other federal agencies and the armed services, universities, and philanthropically funded nonprofits dates back five presidential administrations — but President Biden was the first to elevate the office to Cabinet level,” an OSTP spokesperson said in a statement to Recode.
According to the office, among the 127 people who currently work there, only 25 are OSTP employees. The remaining are a mix of temporary appointees from other federal agencies, as well as people from universities, science organizations, or fellowships that may be funded by philanthropy.”
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“Both OSTP and Schmidt Futures maintain that their connection has been misconstrued as nefarious; they say this sort of partnership is par for the course.
In a statement, Schmidt Futures highlighted how the OSTP has been “chronically underfunded,” and said that it was proud to be among the “leading organizations” providing funding to OSTP. In other words, Schmidt Futures makes clear that it isn’t the only private organization to charitably provide much-needed monetary support to government agencies.”
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““Outsiders are not subject to government ethics rules or the government’s transparency requirements,” Shaub continued. “They may put their own interests before the American people, and we have no way of knowing how that changes outcomes.”
It’s one thing for the public and private sectors to coordinate on and contribute to a project — it’s another when a government office accepts money from philanthropy that creates potential ethical conflicts. That signals a systematic underfunding of the public sector that all but guarantees some dependence on private interests, and accepting such money creates a problematic trade-off.
Speculating on the true motive behind Schmidt’s involvement in OSTP is almost beside the point. It seems inevitable that the money quietly flowing from him and his foundation to the office would apply pressure that favors Schmidt’s personal and business interests.”
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“Government is expected to be fairly transparent and accountable to the public, while the philanthropy world is often opaque and subject to the whims of private, ultra-wealthy individuals”
“Among other priorities, the plan includes funding for: creating vaccine candidates for each of the 26 families of viruses known to infect humans; developing antiviral medications that can work against a broad spectrum of viruses; building out manufacturing capacity for vaccines, antivirals, tests, and other countermeasures; deploying genomic sequencing as a way to track outbreaks; developing broadly useful diagnostic technologies and better regulatory processes for approving and disseminating plentiful rapid tests; and improving security in laboratories dealing with dangerous viruses.
The White House, to its credit, has already proposed funding around this level. Most recently, in its 2023 budget proposal, the Biden administration asked for $88.2 billion in funding over five years on pandemic preparedness. That includes $40 billion for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the Department of Health and Human Services to “invest in advanced development and manufacturing of countermeasures for high priority threats and viral families, including vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and personal protective equipment (PPE),” as well as $12.1 billion in research funding for the National Institutes of Health for vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics development.
Bumb notes that the Biden proposal actually drew on the original Apollo plan put out by the bipartisan commission. That’s part of why the new commission report is so notable: This is a group that’s capable of driving policymaking at high levels.
That said, Congress has yet to appropriate money at the commission’s desired level to prevent the next pandemic. It’s barely interested in further funding response to the current, ongoing pandemic, which is still killing hundreds of Americans a day. A group of senators recently cut a deal for $10 billion to fund Covid-19 response, after slashing funding the White House wanted to help fight the pandemic abroad — only to have Republicans block the deal on the Senate floor over separate immigration concerns. Even if the funding eventually passes, it’ll have to wait until after the Easter recess ends on April 22.”