College Lobbying

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Lynchburg College President Kenneth Garren was sipping wine at a reception before Virginia’s gubernatorial inauguration last year when he spotted a familiar face: Sen. Mark Warner.

Mr. Garren had known the senator for years and had met with the lawmaker’s daughter on campus when she was considering applying to the small Christian college. At the inauguration party, Mr. Garren says, he buttonholed the senator and urged him to oppose a plan from President Barack Obama to create a ratings system for colleges.

Mr. Warner (D., Va.) announced two months later that he opposed Mr. Obama’s plan, saying he had been persuaded by Mr. Garren and other Virginia college presidents. Scores of other members of Congress did the same, and this summer, Mr. Obama announced that he was backing off key elements. The Education Department released a searchable database about colleges in September, but left the ratings possibilities to others.

Colleges and universities have become one of the most effective lobbying forces in Washington, employing more lobbyists last year than any other industries except drug manufacturing and technology. There are colleges in every congressional district, and 1 in 40 U.S. workers draw a paycheck from a college or university.

Over the last two decades, the higher-education industry has beaten back dozens of government proposals to measure its successes and failures. It has killed efforts to tighten rules for accrediting schools, defeated a proposed requirement to divulge more information about graduation rates and eliminated funding for state agencies that could have closed bad schools. The proposals had support from both sides of the political aisle.

 

Boom!

From: http://www.aoa.gov/aoaroot/aging_statistics/future_growth/future_growth.aspx

http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/Files/Documents/Timelines/SocialSecurity.pdf

From: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2010/figure5.pdf

From: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/aarp_report_final_pdf_3_29_11.pdf

http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/government_watch/

Workers per social security beneficiary

 From: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2012/tr2012.pdf

People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It's a historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Previous generations got a much better bargain, mainly because payroll taxes were very low when Social Security was enacted in the 1930s and remained so for decades.

"For the early generations, it was an incredibly good deal," said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy Social Security commissioner who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "The government gave you free money and getting free money is popular."

If you retired in 1960, you could expect to get back seven times more in benefits than you paid in Social Security taxes, and more if you were a low-income worker, as long you made it to age 78 for men and 81 for women.

As recently as 1985, workers at every income level could retire and expect to get more in benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes, though they didn't do quite as well as their parents and grandparents.

Not anymore

From: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/07/new-retirees-receiving-less-in-social-security-than-paid-in-marking-historic/



From: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2011/08/26-census-race-frey

2009 Bush Budget Proposal Highlights c/o the Politico

The Politico, my favorite DC news source even though it lacks a certain ex-majority leader of the Congress Simulation, has delivered some highlights of Bush's Budget Proposal for this year.

Of course, the new and improved President Bush v2.0, who actually vetoed spending bills--see SCHIP--last year, an idea unthinkable during his first term, maintained his "tough" stance on spending by attacking Medicare, in addition to "effectively fr[eezing]" spending in the Dept. of Education:

Not having to run for re-election this year, Bush is more aggressive in proposing major savings from the two health programs most important to the elderly, poor and disabled: Medicare and Medicaid. The goal is to slow the rapid cost growth in both entitlements, but the president’s budget demands as much as $195.6 billion in five-year savings and $603 billion over ten.

All card-carrying members of the GOP under 60 should be wiping tears from their eyes as W stands against the spendthrift, nay, profligate, Democratic-controlled Congress in an effort to corral spending! Until, of course, we get to the part of the budget reserved for Republican politicians not named Ron Paul:

The core Pentagon budget - not counting emergency funds for wars overseas- would grow to $515.4 billion, a $35.9 billion increase over current funding.

For those of you like me who cannot do math, I've painstakingly run the numbers and found this spending increase to be equal to just over 7%. A Republican President asks for more military funding even with military spending, at least in nominal dollars, at an all-time high? Nope--no surprises there. But this is more intriguing:

The National Science Foundation would grow to $6.85 billion, a 14 percent increase of $821 million.

I'm sure someone is behind that. And by someone, I of course mean several groups allied to "get that money." My guess is that this sum is headed straight to R&D grants in sectors like Big PHARMA, of whom I'm a huge fan. But if anyone else can offer any insight on where this money is going, please do so.

But this last bit is my personal favorite:

But the Park Service snares a $161 million increase for operations and new money is provided for programs to try to prevent wildfires in the West. Among the new initiatives is a $9 million “Birds Forever” program in Interior to try to reverse the dramatic decline in wild birds in the U.S. in the last 40 years. [bold mine]

I fear that the wild bird lobby has grown too powerful. We must move quickly if the Beltway Order is to survive.