The Stan Collender Archives

Here are two easy-and-quick-to-read pieces on the magnitude of the military spending changes Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta actually announced last week. The simple answer according to two people who know is that the reductions are less than the headlines indicated.

First, over at the Will and the Wallet, CG&G alum Gordon Adams did this very nice post about how what Panetta announced is "promising" in the sense that it shows there is finally the start of a meaningful shift in DOD strategy that could lead to significant savings. But Gordon says the proposal is also "dangerous" because the plans leaves "the long term budget trajectory...unrealistically high" and will leave Pentagon planners with the notion that they'll have more to spend in the future than will be the case.

It was just two weeks ago that I explained why OMB directors in general are seen as good White House chiefs of staff by the presidents they serve.

In a very strong piece in today's The Washington Post, Ezra Klein explained why one particular former OMB Director -- Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels -- was never going to be the strong presidential candidate some were saying he would be and is not the savior some in the GOP are looking for.

Ezra's analysis about Daniels can easily be broadened to OMB directors in general: With very rare exceptions they're just not right for today's presidential politics. The top five reasons are:

It was several years ago during the Q&A portion of a presentation I was giving about the federal  deficit in a VERY socially and fiscally conservative suburb of Detroit that I was asked a simple and very sincere question: Why doesn't the federal government legalize heroin and crack and then tax the sales?

I was stunned both by the question and by the people who were asking it. They were asking about the mechanics of how it would work, how much revenue legalization would bring in, etc. They were specifically asking about heroin and crack.

And they were completely serious.

Which is why this story by Anita Kumar from yesterday's The Washington Post about a Virginia delegate introducing a bill to figure out how much revenue the state would bring in if it legalized marijuana wasn't as shocking to me as it otherwise might have been.

Last night' State of the Union Address almost certainly made deficit hawks very unhappy, extremely angry and, from a policy perspective, close to suicidal. After pushing hard for so long to make the deficit the issue, it was barely a footnote in the president's hour-plus address and wasn't missed that much.

It took less than an hour for the Committee for a Responsible Budget to send out a statement excoriating the White House for missing "...an opportunity to throw down the gauntlet to Congress on the debt and demand a large, bipartisan debt reduction plan this year."

If the speech is an indication, the administration has no interest in throwing gauntlets or anything else on the budget this year.

I was surprised. With Congress unwilling or unable to do much of anything on the budget, I had expected the White House to call for the House and Senate to deal with the budget and to offer to meet anytime, any place, etc. At the very least this would have put it in a good position to be critical when that didn't happen.

I'll be on the "Taking Stock" program with hosts Pimm Fox and Courtney Donohoe on Bloomberg Radio today between 4 and 430 pm EST talking about the budget and the State of the Union. You can listen here.

There are only a handful of times when my day job as a partner in a communications agency and being a federal budget guru come together. As my column from today's Roll Call shows, this is one of them.

Three Good Weeks Ahead for White House on Budget

By Stan Collender
Roll Call Contributing Writer
Jan. 24, 2012, Midnight

This year’s almost three-week period between tonight when President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address and Feb. 13 when the president’s fiscal 2013 budget is expected to be released will give the White House an enormous advantage in getting positive media coverage for what it proposes. It will also put Congressional Republicans on the defensive right from the start of this session of Congress.

Interesting column in yesterday's The New York Times by Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica about the budget strategy the U.S. might be following if it were a private equity firm, that is, if it were run as if it were Bain Capital, Mitt Romney's former employer.

Eisinger's conclusion: Given the current incredibly low interest rates, the management of a private equity firm would be rushing to borrow more to finance its activities rather than to be repeatedly demanding that it deleverage and do less.

In other words, running the U.S. as a business as Romney says if elected he could/would/will do, would actually get him to do the opposite of what he and others running for president and Congress are insisting needs to be done: They would be increasing the deficit and borrowing more rather than reducing it and shrinking federal activities.

My column from today's Roll Call explains why and how the "Perils of Pauline"-like budgeting of 2012 will turn into "The Hangover, Part II" this year. If the thought of that makes you cringe...exactly.

Budget Talks: ‘Perils of Pauline’ or ‘Hangover Part II’?

The 2012 budget debate in Washington is going to be vastly different from the one that took place in 2011.

This doesn’t mean the long-term deficit is no longer an issue. It also doesn’t mean there won’t be the usual noise when it comes to spending and revenues.

Multiple rounds of finger pointing, recriminations and constantly repeated nonsensical statements should be expected.

For the past 2.5 years or so, Wall Street Pit (I'm intentionally not providing a link), which claims to be "a Seattle-based financial website, has reposted many of the things I've written on Capital Gains and Games. They initially did it with my permission, which was granted to someone named Ron Haruni on August 10, 2009. In an e-mail to me requesting the permission, Haruni claimed to be the editor-in-chief.

I've been trying to revoke that permission since the beginning of this month, but all of the e-mails I've sent to the Pits have bounced back. This includes an email to the advertising sales department, which, as any blogger will tell you, is almost always the highest priority for a response.

So here's a message to the person at the Pits who seems to read everything on CG&G and makes the decision to republish it...You are hereby notified that the permission granted to you on August 10, 2009, is revoked.

You can contact me through the contact CG&G form above. Unlike your contact information (which really is the pits), I can promise that you'll get a response.