I'm back in Athens, working for the man and learning from the man. Soon I will kill the man in his sleep...
Just kidding.
I have been busier than poodle in heat at a Milkbone testing facility. I don't see things slowing down either.
I know what you're thinking. Every one is busy. So I won't complain. But this blog will need to take a new format if it is going to survive.
Instead of being a place for me to comment, this will now function strictly as a news aggregation site.
I will copy and paste stories (and their URLs), videos and photos from other sites. The content will all be political issues that directly affect our generation (The Millenials in case you are a virgin to the 800 lbs Gorilla. I know there's a joke to be made after that sentence, but I choose to let it go).
I'll try to do this a couple days a week and visitors should be able to use this site as a place to get news, rather than reading all of the shit I go through.
Here we go...
How To Get Rich Off Wall Street Scum
Obama Appoints Government Performance Officer
The goal of government is to be efficient? Who knew?
January 7, 2009
Updated 4:02 p.m. ET
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/01/obama_picks_government_perform.html?hpid=topnews
President-elect Barack Obama has picked Nancy Killefer to serve as the federal government’s chief performance officer (CPO), a newly created post designed to help improve government efficiency and reform budget practices.
“We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways of getting the job done,” Obama said during a news conference this morning at his transition office. “Even in good times, Washington can’t afford to continue these bad practices. In bad times, it’s absolutely imperative that Washington stop them and restore confidence that our government is on the side of taxpayers and everyday Americans.”
The new chief performance officer will also serve as the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director for management, according to two congressional sources. During the presidential campaign Obama originally proposed having a CPO report directly to the president.
Obama said Killefer is “uniquely qualified” to serve as the nation’s first CPO, calling her “an expert in streamlining processes and wringing out inefficiencies so that taxpayers and consumers get more for their money.”
To illustrate her strong desire to enact reforms, Obama said that when she was offered the opportunity to serve in the Clinton administration, Killefer said “If you’re willing to embrace significant change, then you’re looking at the right person. But if you just want to keep the trains running on time, don’t ask me to do this job.”
Killefer served as assistant secretary for management and chief financial officer and chief operating officer at the Treasury Department from 1997 to 2000. At McKinsey, Killefer worked with the retail, hotel and pharmaceutical industries on management, marketing and efficiency issues. She also chaired the IRS Oversight Board from 2001 to 2005 and has served on the board of the Partnership for Public Service since 2006.
In a brief statement, Killefer made it clear she understands the personal element of government service -- a comment sure to bring praise from federal workers unions and the rank-and-file.
“The people who deliver those services, the government employees themselves, will be central to this effort,” she said. "I am convinced that the success of every policy of this administration will be influenced by the people executing it. And I am committed to engaging and drawing on the talents of the federal workforce in order to deliver on our promise of a new, more efficient and effective government."
Killefer has drawn wide praise from colleagues.
“You couldn’t design a better person for this job,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service.
“You often find management consultants who are amazingly adept in the private sector, and McKinsey certainly has a lot of them, but the translation to government is a challenging one,” he added. “What Nancy brings is a wealth of experience of working in the government on management issues. That combination of expertise from the public and private sectors will be what she needs to draw on to do a very challenging job.”
"Improving the performance of public sector organizations is an important objective at a time when governments everywhere are being challenged to do more with less," McKinsey managing director Ian Davis in a written statement. "Nancy brings a unique blend of skills and experience to the task."
In a written statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Obama's pick, saying it demonstrates "real commitment to changing Washington by ensuring lofty campaign ideals are not forgotten when governing begins."
As for what Killefer might do with her new job, she wrote in a 2006 Business Week article that:
"Government is a sector -- structured and regulated in ways that can foster or stunt productivity growth at its "firms" (agencies). And while it may not be possible to use competition in government to exert pressure to perform, Congress and the White House or state legislators and governors have plenty of tools to improve public agencies."
In that article, Killefer also proposed a model for measuring government performance:
“A body we call 'Gov-Star,' modeled after fund-rating agency Morningstar, to provide completely independent measurement of government program performance; to develop comparable program data over time – between programs, between governments, and with the private sector; and to make the data and their implications clear to appropriators and citizens.”
During the presidential campaign, Obama proposed the creation of a “SWAT team” composed of “top-performing and highly-trained government professionals” that would work with government agency leaders and the Office of Management and Budget to eliminate government waste and improve efficiency.
"The CPO will work with federal agencies to set tough performance targets and hold managers responsible for progress," according to the campaign proposal. "The president will meet regularly with cabinet officers to review the progress their agencies are making toward meeting performance improvement targets."
Obama said that Killefer will work on “identifying where there are areas that we can make big change that lasts beyond the economic recovery plan and save taxpayer money over the long term.”
But observers say the CPO will need at least some budget control of government agencies in order to make a meaningful impact.
"The chief performance officer has to have some linkage, some control of the budgets of the agencies,” said Ken Mead, a former inspector general at Treasury. “That’s what gets their attention.”
“I think the challenge for her is to figure out what are the good aspects of the way the government currently evaluates government performance, and where are the bad parts," said Adam Hughes, director of federal fiscal policy at OMB Watch.
“History has shown us that’s not an easy task. Plus, whatever recommendations she develops, she’s going to have to get them through Congress.”
Killefer's appointment requires Senate confirmation and will be handled by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which promises to consider the pick "as quickly as possible so the President-elect has his budget team in place at the earliest possible date," said committee spokeswoman Leslie Philips.
Stimulus on Track, Despite Huge Deficit
Accumulate debt and pass it on down. That's American.
January 7, 2009
The Wall Street Journal Online
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123134135565860959.html#
President-elect Barack Obama's economic team is pressing ahead with a costly economic-stimulus plan despite a projected $1.2 trillion budget deficit this year.
The incoming administration is convinced that international lenders will be more likely to keep the U.S. government afloat if they see aggressive action to emerge from recession, and that the potential costs from insufficiently bold action are greater than the dangers of rising interest rates from swelling deficits.
And Mr. Obama appears ready to up the ante. In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, he acknowledged that the plan's price tag, currently $775 billion, is likely to rise. "We've seen ranges from 800 [billion] to 1.3 trillion and our attitude was that given the legislative process, if we start towards the low end of that, we'll see how it develops," he said.
Mr. Obama and his senior economic aides confronted projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday that the federal deficit will reach $1.2 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. That would shatter the nominal dollar record of $455 billion set in fiscal 2008. Measured against the size of the economy, the deficit -- at 8.3% of gross domestic product -- is expected to eclipse the postwar record of 6% in 1983.
Mr. Obama pledged Wednesday to attack surging spending on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, and he promised to lay out specific federal programs to cut when he unveils his first budget blueprint next month.
But he also framed the dilemma he is inheriting Wednesday as he introduced at a news conference a new federal "chief performance officer," Nancy Killefer, a senior director at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. "If we do nothing, then we will continue to see red ink as far as the eye can see," the president-elect said. "And at the same time, we have an economic situation that is dire, and we're going to have to jump-start this economy with my economic recovery plan, creating three million jobs. That's going to cost some money."
Mr. Obama will deliver what aides describe as a major speech on the economy Thursday morning at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he will detail his plans to tackle the recession.
In the next decade, the CBO forecasts the federal government piling on more than $3.1 trillion in additional debt. In the short run, the government faces a $166 billion plunge in tax revenue compared with last year, the CBO says.
Spending will grow this year by almost $622 billion. More than half of that growth will come from the Wall Street rescue fund and the federal takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unemployment compensation will nearly double, to $79 billion from $43 billion last year. Nutrition assistance will surge to $50 billion from $39 billion.
But those figures likely understate the problem. The debt total doesn't include the stimulus plan, estimated at $775 billion but likely to go higher as it winds through Congress. It assumes all of President George W. Bush's tax cuts will expire on schedule in 2010, although Mr. Obama has promised to extend all of them except those affecting families earning more than $250,000. And it assumes that Congress will allow the alternative minimum tax to grow unchecked. The AMT went into effect in 1969 to ensure that the super wealthy pay income tax, but it is increasingly hitting the middle class. Extending the Bush tax cuts and holding the AMT at bay by linking it to inflation would add a further $761 billion in debt.
In past recessions, surging deficits have been fed by an upward spiral. The Treasury had to sell more government bonds. To attract buyers, interest rates would rise, leading to ever higher interest costs for the government and higher deficits. This year, federal interest payments are expected to plunge by more than 20%.
That is because foreign governments, financiers and savers are stashing their money in Treasury bonds. They will continue to do so until the world economy recovers, Obama aides and congressional leaders agree. But deficit hawks worry that economic recovery will present other investment opportunities and could lead to a rapid flight from U.S. government debt. That would cause a surge of interest rates and possibly "an inflationary bow wave out in the future," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota.
Senior Obama economic officials have been studying that scenario closely. For now, Democratic economists say even with a trillion-dollar deficit, there aren't enough Treasury bills to satisfy world demand for a savings safe harbor. The economic crisis has actually put much of the world at more risk than the U.S. And an aggressive response -- both through fiscal stimulus and the second $350 billion tranche of the Wall Street bailout fund -- will be more reassuring, not less.
But the Obama team recognizes that position won't last indefinitely. The ratio of debt to GDP has to stop growing and must stabilize at what they see as a reasonable rate. The problem is determining when to ratchet back the stimulus. Obama officials are determined not to pull back too fast for the sake of fiscal discipline and risk plunging the economy back into recession.
"When you start seeing the private sector lending again, when credit is flowing to families and businesses, they can get auto loans, they can support their mortgage, that the job market has stabilized, then we will want to pull back," Mr. Obama said on CNBC.
On Capitol Hill Wednesday, top Democrats for the first time broadened the stimulus discussion to rank-and-file lawmakers, beginning Wednesday to lay the groundwork for action in the House and Senate later this month.
—Greg Hitt and Naftali Bendavid contributed to this article.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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