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Friday, February 3, 2012

Election 2012: What should the primary role of government be in your life? Tell us with #MyGovernment

We’re inching closer to South Carolina’s Republican primary, with no shortage of campaign trail drama (read: Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife issues, Rick Perry’s surprise debate vacancy and Herman Cain’s “South Cain-olina” rally).

Occupy Charleston protesters demonstrate outside the CNN Republican presidential debate in Charleston, S.C. (Joe Raedle - Getty Images) The Republican primary drama hurtles on as public sentiment toward government continues its dismal downward trend: 84 percent of Americans disapproved of Congress in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll. In another poll, 54 percent blamed former president George W. Bush for the bad economy, compared to 30 percent for Obama, which may bode badly for Republicans.

Such is the political climate as the 2012 election kicks off in ernest.

As the candidates work to convince us that they have what it takes to get our country back on track, we ask you:

What is the primary role of government in our lives?

And which presidential candidate’s priorities align best with your view of good government? Submit us your responses on YouTube by tagging your video “My Government WP” or on Twitter with the hashtag #MyGovernment. Be sure to tell us your name and where you’re from when submitting videos. We’ll be publishing them over the course of the entire campaign. We asked a few voters in South Carolina this question, and here’s what they had to say:

View the original article here

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Editorial Board: Can the government fix housing?

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The Post’s ViewCan the government fix housing?

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EVEN AS THE U.S. housing market was at the top of what we now know was a disastrously unsustainable boom, top officials of the Federal Reserve had no clue about the looming bust, according to newly released transcripts of internal Fed deliberations. “I think we are unlikely to see growth being derailed by the housing market,” newly installed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in March 2006, precisely the moment at which home prices were peaking. As late as December 2006, Mr. Bernanke was still predicting “a soft landing.” Timothy F. Geithner, then-president of the New York Fed and now Treasury secretary, voiced general agreement.

There’s a lesson here. It’s not that Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Geithner are a couple of incompetents. Rather, the point is that even brilliant and conscientious public officials are susceptible to inertia and conventional wisdom or incomplete information. As a result, there will always be a limit to government’s ability to foresee “systemic risk,” let alone act against it in a timely manner.

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The Dodd-Frank regulatory reform bill set up a Financial Stability Oversight Council to spot the next catastrophic threat. The group has issued its first report, and, while it’s a perfectly sound work, there’s not much you couldn’t find in any number of think-tank pieces. Sample sentence: “The impact on the U.S. financial system of events in Europe depends on how the peripheral European sovereign debt crisis evolves and on the resilience of U.S. financial institutions and markets.”

It is a little surprising, in this light, to see the Federal Reserve wading into the policy debate over how to fix the housing market now. On Jan. 4, Mr. Bernanke sent an unsolicited memorandum to the relevant Senate and House committees, outlining a series of measures. The Fed is no doubt right to worry that bottlenecks in housing credit have limited the stimulative impact of the Fed’s low-interest policy. The question is whether the benefits of the options it described to Congress necessarily outweigh the risks.

In particular, the Fed memo calls on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do still more to subsidize housing finance by relaxing conditions for refinancing and speeding the conversion of foreclosed homes in its possession to rental properties. The problem, as the memo recognizes, is that this would add to Fannie and Freddie’s potential losses at a time when they are in government receivership, dependent on taxpayer funding and, as such, legally bound to minimize their losses.

The Fed memo suggests that its recommendations would, in a sense, pay for themselves — that “greater losses to be sustained by the .?.?. [government-sponsored enterprises] in the near term might be in the interest of taxpayers to pursue if those actions result in a quicker and more vigorous economic recovery.” But obviously there’s no guarantee of that.

Congress ought to weigh the Fed’s ideas seriously, with due skepticism. Housing needs help, but most government attempts to fix the market so far have underperformed or failed outright. If this crisis has taught us anything, it’s that risks might be hiding anywhere — and even the Fed doesn’t necessarily know what it doesn’t know.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Obama seeks more power to merge agencies, streamline government

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Obama seeks more power to merge agencies, streamline government

Video: President Obama announces he will seek the power to consolidate parts of the federal government, proposing a first step of merging several trade- and commerce-related agencies. (Jan. 13)

Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By David Nakamura and Ed O’Keefe,

After a year of interminable feuds with congressional Republicans who made smaller, cheaper federal government a political crusade, President Obama on Friday signaled his intention to do some sail-trimming of his own.

Obama asked Congress for the authority to consolidate the roles of several federal agencies which he said would lead to streamlined services and a smaller government workforce.

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The proposal comes at a politically opportune moment for the president, who has faced sustained Republican criticism that his administration has failed to tame a bloated federal bureaucracy.

With an eye squarely on his reelection campaign, Obama announced that he would initially focus on merging sprawling entities that deal with small businesses in a bid to save $3 billion by eliminating more than 1,000 jobs over the next decade.

Almost a year ago, Obama promised in his State of the Union address to create a leaner, more efficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, Republicans — both on Capitol Hill and in the presidential campaign — have charged that the administration’s health-care, environmental and financial reforms have added layers of red tape and costs at the worse possible time.

For a president who has spent months pushing his $447 billion jobs bills, the proposal sought to establish that he is also committed to reducing spending over the long term. His announcement came a day after he notified Congress of his intent to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion to cover increased U.S. spending commitments.

Obama noted before an audience of small-business owners at the White House that the federal bureaucracy includes five different entities involved in housing and more than a dozen that regulate food safety.

“No business or nonprofit leader would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations,” Obama said. “So why is it okay in our government? It’s not. It has to change.”

Obama is scheduled to deliver this year’s State of the Union address on Jan. 24, and Republican critics, while embracing the spirit of paring the government’s size, questioned whether Obama was scrambling to make good on his pledge with his reelection effort looming.

“A year after raising the issue .?.?. it’s interesting to see the president finally acknowledge that Washington is out of control,” said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Other lawmakers expressed concern that the reorganization could harm U.S. trade policy, noting that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is among the agencies the president would consolidate, was established to serve a distinct role.

In a joint statement, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) questioned whether the legislation would hamper the government’s ability “to aggressively open new markets to American-made goods and services and create U.S. jobs.”

Yet the White House was banking on muted opposition from GOP lawmakers, because the consolidation proposal goes right to the Republicans’ core ideological belief that the government is too large.

Continued12Next Page

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