Need Unnecessary

This just in from the GAO on US wind energy subsidies (emphasis mine):

GAO identified 82 federal wind-related initiatives, with a variety of key characteristics, implemented by nine agencies in fiscal year 2011. Five agencies--the Departments of Energy (DOE), the Interior, Agriculture (USDA), Commerce, and the Treasury--collectively implemented 73 of the initiatives. The 82 initiatives incurred about $2.9 billion in wind-related obligations and provided estimated wind-related tax subsidies totaling at least $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2011, although complete data on wind-related tax subsidies were not available. Initiatives supporting deployment of wind facilities, such as those financing their construction or use, constituted the majority of initiatives and accounted for nearly all obligations and estimated tax subsidies related to wind in fiscal year 2011. In particular, a tax expenditure and a grant initiative, both administered by Treasury, accounted for nearly all federal financial support for wind energy.

The 82 wind-related initiatives GAO identified were fragmented across agencies, most had overlapping characteristics, and several that financed deployment of wind facilities provided some duplicative financial support. The 82 initiatives were fragmented because they were implemented across nine agencies, and 68 overlapped with at least one other initiative because of shared characteristics. About half of all initiatives reported formal coordination. Such coordination can, in principle, reduce the risk of unnecessary duplication and improve the effectiveness of federal efforts. However, GAO identified 7 initiatives that have provided duplicative support--financial support from multiple initiatives to the same recipient for deployment of a single project. Specifically, wind project developers have in many cases combined the support of more than 1 Treasury initiative and, in some cases, have received additional support from smaller grant or loan guarantee programs at DOE or USDA. GAO also identified 3 other initiatives that did not fund any wind projects in fiscal year 2011 but that could, based on their eligibility criteria, be combined with 1 or more initiatives to provide duplicative support. Of the 10 initiatives, those at Treasury accounted for over 95 percent of the federal financial support for wind in fiscal year 2011.

Agencies implementing the 10 initiatives allocate support to projects on the basis of the initiatives' goals or eligibility criteria, but the extent to which applicant financial need is considered is unclear. DOE and USDA--which have some discretion over the projects they support through their initiatives--allocate support based on projects' ability to meet initiative goals such as reducing emissions or benefitting rural communities, as well as other criteria. Both agencies also consider applicant need for the support of some initiatives, according to officials. However, GAO found that neither agency documents assessments of applicant need; therefore the extent to which they use such assessments to determine how much support to provide is unclear. Unlike DOE and USDA, Treasury generally supports projects based on the tax code's eligibility criteria and does not have discretion to allocate support to projects based on need. While the support of these initiatives may be necessary in many cases for wind projects to be built, because agencies do not document assessments of need, it is unclear, in some cases, if the entire amount of federal support provided was necessary. Federal support in excess of what is needed to induce projects to be built could instead be used to induce other projects to be built or simply withheld, thereby reducing federal expenditures.

Full GAO Report is available here.

To recap: 82 wind subsidy programs; 9 different federal agencies; 2.9 billion taxpayer dollars in 2011 alone; "fragmented," "overlapping," and "duplicative" subsidies; and no formal indication that any of that taxpayer money was actually needed to get these projects off the ground or keep them afloat.

One last note: the US National Debt as of today is $16,753,612,387,626.67.

No Joke: US Export Promotion Effort Funded by... Taxing Exports

The Office of Senator Jim DeMint has done some worthwhile digging into the Obama administration's new US tourism promotion effort, "Brand USA," and what they've uncovered is actually more ridiculous than you'd expect.  The report's goal is to show that the new export promotion program - remember: domestic tourism is actually an "export" because foreign dollars are spent here on US goods and services - is rife with cronyism, over-spending and general mismanagement.  (The lede: "High-powered executives are enjoying luxury accommodations all over the world, all in the name of promoting tourism for the U.S. government." Yikes.)

Now, this news is certainly not good for US taxpayers, but let's face it: this type of stuff is unfortunately pretty commonplace in government and we're not talking about a lot of money here.  On the other hand, it's this seemingly-innocuous passage that caught my attention:

Established through the 2010 Travel Promotion Act, Brand USA is eligible to receive up to $100 million annually generated through new taxes paid by foreign travelers.

I freely admit that prior to today I had only a vague recollection that this Act - passed during the halcyon days of total Democrat control of the White House and Congress - even existed.  A little Googling reveals a snazzy Brand USA website and the text of the Travel Promotion Act, which was included as Section 9 in another bill reauthorizing the Capitol Police (no joke) and provides in subsection (d) for the establishment of a "Travel Promotion Fund" and then in subsection (e) for a "Travel Promotion Fund Fee."  The good folks at Global Trade Alert have summarized that fee as follows:

The law institutes a new fee of $10 or more on visitors traveling to the United States from the 35 countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) . This new tax is supposed to raise an estimated $200 million per year, which will be used to help fund a new “Corporation for Travel Promotion.” The purpose of this new corporation is to promote tourism to the United States.

The bill developed from the “Travel Promotion Act of 2009” (S.1023 as originally introduced...), a bill that would establish a program for the promotion of travel to the United States, and provide for two separate means of funding this program. One would be a fee of at least $10 on each traveler from certain countries that enter the United States, and the other an unspecified set of assessments on the travel industry in the United States. These fees might be inconsistent with the national-treatment principle of GATT Article III and (perhaps more appropriately) GATS Article XVII.

I'm certainly not going to get into the trade law weeds regarding the WTO-consistency of the Travel Promotion Fund Fees (although that is an interesting issue).  Instead, I just want to clarify that this is an actual US law that is designed to promote tourism exports by imposing a new tax on - and thus discouraging - tourism exports.

Seriously.

Now, I'm no mercantilist, but even I can see that if you want to encourage exports it's probably not a good idea to - you know - tax them.  (Then again, this is the same US government that imposed new taxes on imports in order to fund trade-liberalizing free trade agreements, so maybe they're just being consistent.)

This export promotion law becomes an even worse idea when we learn, as Senator DeMint's office helpfully informs us, that a good portion of these export taxes aren't even funding tourism exports but instead are helping, among other things, "CEOs from some of the nation’s most successful hotels and resorts... to book top-of-the-line venues to entertain other members of the travel industry."

So, really, we have an export tax that's bizarrely intended to promote exports but really just promotes the lavish expenditures of certain big exporters and, of course, the generous and helpful bureaucrats facilitating those expenditures.

You simply cannot make this stuff up.

(h/t Ben Domenech)

Details, Shmetails

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has a new pro-ObamaCare op-ed in the Post today. I'll save you the 10 minutes and summarize (you can thank me later):

(1) The current healthcare system, run by evil insurance barons (who presumably look like this), is paralyzingly scary: uncovered college grads, overburdened small business owners, laid-off workers with pre-existing conditions who have an rare form of ebola that isn't covered by their uncle's policy, you get the idea. It's scary stuff! Oogaboogaboogabooga!

(2) ObamaCare will solve all of these problems. (Although with nary a mention of its $1 TRILLION pricetag, one is left to assume that ObamaCare involves unicorns and magic beans.)

(3) The price of inaction will be... yep... CATASTROPHE, so WE MUST ACT NOW:

Without reform, we will miss out on these [magical] benefits. And our health-care system will still be a fiscal time bomb. Recent estimates indicate that by 2040, health-care costs will eat up 34 percent of our gross domestic product. By comparison, the entire federal budget today is just 20 percent of our GDP. By acting now, we have the chance to slow health-care costs in a way that doesn't slash benefits or reduce care. Instead, we can make investments in prevention, wellness and health information technology that will allow the health-care system to deliver incredible results at prices we can all afford. Imagine a system in which your doctor spends as much time trying to keep you healthy as treating you when you're sick, in which you and your doctor have all the information you need to choose the treatments that work best for you, in which you never have to fill out the same paperwork twice. Health reform is the first step in that direction.

President Obama and I are working closely with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and health-care experts to make sure we get the details of health reform right. But we can't let the details distract us from the huge benefits that reform will bring. The urgency behind reform has nothing to do with the schedule of Congress and everything to do with the needs of the American people.

Nor should we let ourselves be distracted by attacks that try to use the complexity of health reform to freeze Americans in inaction. We've learned over the past 20 years that "socialized medicine" and "government-run health care" are code words for "don't change anything." With some insurers raising premiums by more than 25 percent and 14,000 people losing their health insurance every day, Americans want to hear something more from their leaders than "wait and see" and "more of the same." People have enough to worry about these days. Americans deserve the peace of mind that only health-care reform can provide.

Unfortunately for Secretary Sebelius, embarrassing new video popped up yesterday of her utterly failing to explain the ObamaCare "urgency" (point #3) - as manifest in Congress' willingess to pass ObamaCare without reading the underlying legislation - to an audience of curious (and admittedly agitated!) Pennsylvania voters:



Talk about bad timing!

I assume that the op-ed was drafted before the Pennsylvania townhall, but who knows? Maybe the reason why Sebelius is urging the American people to not be "distracted" by the "details" is because she is utterly incapable of explaining or defending them. And keep in mind that this is not some first-term congressman from Shelbyville. It's the Secretary of HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES - basically the person who under ObamaCare would be in charge of completely reorganizing one-sixth of the US economy, and the woman who is writing today under that important title to convince the American people that we MUST ACT NOW!

Ugh. Maybe she should send her ghostwriter to the next townhall meeting.