Got a email from the nice folks over at OMB this morning about my blog post last week on the release of new PART scores and some of the shortcomings of the PART website. The email was surprising for two reasons: first, they read the BudgetBlog. (ok, so that's not so surprising as we all know everybody who is anybody reads the BudgetBlog.) Second, and perhaps more surprising, they have changed the spreadsheet that lists all PART scores that you can download from ExpectMore.gov to include a column for "Last Year Assessed." Now anyone can easily tell when the last assessment was done for each program. Fantastic! Way to go OMB! (I feel slightly more influential today than I did yesterday, which really wasn't very influential at all.)

OMB also reported they are working to improve the search engine on the site so the most recent review links are returned when searching for programs. This is also excellent news, with one caveat: I'd still like to have access to the links to the older reviews available when I search, just not as the first items that are returned from the search engine. Instead of removing those links entirely from the search results (or from the site altogether), it would be better to list the reviews chronologically. Then users can tell when each assessment happened and allows them to compare between assessments to see what has changed. When I searched for our old friend - the Administration on Aging (AoA) - this afternoon, the search returned links to the 2007 review pages, but do not list those conducted in 2003. The links for the 2003 reviews no longer work.

Since I suspect that OMB may read this and was very responsive in taking a previous suggestion of mine, perhaps I'll try it again. Here's what I'd like to see (click the image to enlarge):

1) Expand the posting of "Last Year Assessed" data to the summary view for each program, in addition to listing it in the assessment details page and raw data in spreadsheets.

2) Links to older assessments from previous years (where applicable) on the most recent summary view for each program. So for the AoA, you would be able to click on a link in the 2007 review that took you to all past reviews.

So a big thank you to OMB for incorporating some user suggestions to their website, and here's hoping we can keep improving it. If this works, I'm asking for the out-year discretionary spending details from the President's budget - those always seem to get leaked eventually, but it would be nice to have them upfront. Who knows how far this might go...

Though President Bush signed the ethics and lobbying bill several weeks ago, some conservative critics now contend that the bill is conspicuously lacking, since it applies only to earmarks in appropriations -- and not authorization -- bills.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says he reads the new earmark rules — and that the Senate Parliamentarian will back up his reading of the rules — to not ban Members from including new earmarks into authorization bills during conference talks with the House.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), replies that he had intended the bill to cover both appropriations and authorization bills. But in a Sept. 24 letter to DeMint, Reid informed DeMint that because of a second provision — also written by DeMint that was added to the bill, which does not explicitly include authorization bills in the ban — the provisions only will apply to appropriations measures.

When earmark abuse occurs, it involves the unjustified use of taxpayer money — not the setting of authorization levels. It is appropriate to require full disclosure of all items that involve specific member-requested projects, including authorizations, but only those items that actually spend taxpayer money should be subject to the extraordinary procedure of allowing a point of order to strike a provision that is within the scope of conference from a conference report.

Is an authorization earmark an oxymoron?

We were contacted over the weekend by the Administration on Aging (AoA) in response to my posting last Thursday about the newly released round of PART scores. Saadia Greenberg, Director of the Office of Evaluation at the AoA correctly points out that I was in error when I said it was strange OMB cited the AoA during this release of new scores because it was evaluated by the PART in 2003. In fact, the AoA was reassessed this year (2007) and you can see the results of the reassessment. I apologize for the error. Now I certainly don't want to pass the buck here, but this mistake wasn't really my fault. If you put "Administration on Aging" into the search engine on the ExpectMore.gov website, all you get is information on the program's evaluation from 2003, not 2007. See the screen capture I took this morning:

This brings up two important points about the PART:


Keep Reading About the Two Points...

Posted by Adam Hughes, 10:22:34 AM

Monday, September 24, 2007

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Because He Couldn't Hear Him

NEWS ITEM: Greenspan in 1987 said he had "learned to mumble with great incoherence." (USA Today)

I want to take this opportunity, on the occasion of a cycle of media coverage of the publication of a book by a certain former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to express myself in no uncertain and certainly no less prolix terms than said chairman to say that certain sayings ascribed to the subject of this discursis were subject to such scrutiny as practically, if not irrationally, and often exhuberantly, to confer upon them the status of scripture.

Cultivating a cult of confusion to cover critical questions, especially where one is endowed with authority but without accountability, is indeed a time-honored strategy for suggesting that one is a suitable steward of the sanctified secrets of the priesthood, mindful that mobs, markets, and mere mortals must not meddle in such matters of great moment as monetary policy. Therefore, we mumble.

Posted by Adam Hughes, 01:37:14 PM

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Take the BudgetBlog Reader Survey

We here at the BudgetBlog would like to know what you think of our blog. Please take a moment to fill this short reader survey and give us your thoughts.

Posted by Craig Jennings, 12:40:45 PM

Monday, September 17, 2007

Lobbying and Ethics Bill Enacted

On Friday, President Bush finally signed the lobbying and ethics reform bill. OpenCongress has the story.

Posted by Matt Lewis, 01:13:44 PM

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Halfway Done, FY 2008 Congressional Earmarks Cut in Half

It's only a halftime score, but with all 12 of the House FY 2008 appropriations bills adopted, the total number and dollar value of the congressional earmarks included in these bills -- 6,651 earmarks worth $7.95 billion -- is down by about half from the 13,492 congressional earmarks totaling $18.94 billion in FY 2005.

These numbers reflect calculations based on data from the official OMB earmarks website. Caveat: the site contains a full accounting of earmarks only for FY 2005, and only for congressionally-requested earmarks (omitting all executive branch earmarks requests).

Early signals are less auspicious for the final score, as the Senate had only adopted three appropriations bills by the end of last week, with 4,700 earmarks passed thus far, equaling $12.14 billion. These figures do not include the Senate defense bill. The House defense bill -- $4 billion in earmarks -- accounted for half of the value of House earmarks.

But willy-nilly, certainly the overall number and possibly the dollar value of congressional earmarks will be down from FY 2005.

Posted by Dana Chasin, 02:21:41 PM

Monday, September 10, 2007

Hold-Up in the Senate: Transparency Mugged Again

The elimination under cover of darkness of that magnificent institution, the secret senatorial hold, is, apparently, a baleful "connivance" snuck into the lobbying and ethics bill, catching "rank-and-file" senators unawares and opening up the floodgates for "special interest measures," spoiling a "historic opportunity to expose secretive pork-barrel spending."

If you doubt me, maybe you will believe Robert Novak?

Posted by Dana Chasin, 12:34:44 PM