The U.S. Department of Energy claims lineage from the Manhattan Project of World War II, and its official history cites none other than Albert Einstein. Actually, the DOE dates its inception from 1977: “[T]he twelfth cabinet-level department brought together for the first time within one agency two programmatic traditions that had long coexisted within…
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Let’s take a moment to flash back to the distant past of January 8, 2015. That Thursday was the day that President Obama bragged about the state of the recovery in the U.S. housing market, at least according to The Hill‘s report on the president’s claims: President Obama bragged Thursday it was “no accident”…
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Californians are paying off $5 billion in cost overruns on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, which came in, count ‘em, ten years late, with its safety still in doubt. Governor Jerry Brown wants to spend $68 billion on a “bullet train” that would be slower and more expensive than air travel. He also wants…
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Sometime between President Obama’s 2015 and 2016 budget proposals for the federal government, President Obama’s idealistic promises failed to meet the tests of the real world, and now Americans are being asked to pay the price. At least, that’s the distinct impression we have after considering the major changes in the amount of spending…
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In 2009, the U.S. federal government effectively took over the student loan industry in the United States as one of President Barack Obama’s major initiatives. Seeing student loans as a way to boost the amount of revenue it collects from the low- and middle-income students who take out these loans to pay for higher…
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As we have noted several times, the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was $5 billion over budget and, count ‘em, ten years late. That’s a full decade but after all that time and money, safety issues linger with faulty welds and such, which California governor Jerry Brown dismissed with his…
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Political Calculations revisits the Zero Deficit Line: ********** How much would the U.S. federal government need spend per household to even come close to balancing the annual U.S. federal budget? The latest update to our Zero Deficit Line chart reveals the answer! Our estimated median household income of $53,601 in 2014 would correspond with…
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What do taxpayers get for $13.2 billion in government spending on mental health? Not much, according to a new report by California’s Little Hoover Commission. In fact, as David Siders explains in the Sacramento Bee, the state cannot even document whether the $13.2 billion even improved any Californians’ lives. That is the legacy of…
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What does President Obama’s new budget proposal mean to the typical American household? The following chart illustrates the amount of spending per U.S. household that President Obama is proposing to do in the federal government’s 2016 fiscal year as a percentage share of the median income earned by U.S. households. And, as a bonus,…
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California governor Jerry Brown derides critics as “declinists,” but when it comes to the cost of government, he’s definitely an increasist. As Jon Ortiz and Phillip Reese note in the Sacramento Bee, last year California paid out $1.1 billion more to state employees than the year before. The new tab comes to $16.43 billion,…
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