Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act

While the nation grapples with wars overseas and health care reform at home, climate change legislation is steadily making its way through Congress. The House of Representatives already passed a climate package; the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works passed their own legislation, dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

The legislation would create a cap and trade program targeted at greenhouse gas emissions, push forward carbon capture and storage research, and appropriate funds for a variety of climate and energy-related work at EPA, the Department of Energy, and other agencies. The Congressional Budget Office just completed a cost estimate of the bill to determine budget and deficit impacts. The estimate, worth reading in its entirety here, finds the bill would:

• Increase federal revenues by about $854 billion; and
• Increase direct spending by about $833 billion.

In total, those changes would reduce budget deficits (or increase future surpluses) by about $21 billion over the 2010-2019 period. (All estimated effects would be on-budget.) In years after 2019, direct spending would be less than the net revenues attributable to the legislation in each of the 10-year periods following 2019. Therefore, CBO estimates that enacting S. 1733 would not increase the deficit in any of the four 10-year periods following 2019.

Has the Stimulus Package Worked?

Has the stimulus package worked? It's a question that many inside and outside of government have been asking for a long time. It will likely be some time before anyone is able to say with minimal uncertainty. That said, a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has attempted to provide an answer, at least in terms of job creation. There is still significant uncertainty, however.

The CBO writes in its report (PDF available here):

Recipients report that about 640,000 jobs were created or retained with ARRA funding through September 2009. Such reports, however, do not provide a comprehensive estimate of the law’s impact on employment in the United States. That impact may be higher or lower than the reported number for several reasons (in addition to any issues about the quality of the data in the reports).

Another resource on the stimulus package is this excellent overview (PDF) of fiscal stimulus policy by the Congressional Research Service.

Health Care Bills & Premiums

It's not easy to keep up with all the analyses of the various health care proposals in Congress, but here is an interesting report (PDF) that addresses the impact of the current Senate bill on premiums. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates different impacts for different insurance purchasers:

The effects of the proposal on premiums would differ across insurance markets (see Table 1). The largest effects would be seen in the nongroup market, which would grow in size under the proposal but would still account for only 17 percent of the overall insurance market in 2016. The effects on premiums would be much smaller in the small group and large group markets, which would make up 13 percent and 70 percent of the total insurance market, respectively.

CBO estimates that higher impacts would happen for non-group purchasers than for employer-based group insurance purchasers, who could see a small increase or decrease in premiums. The full report is worth checking out.

Jobs and Growth

With the recession dragging on for many individuals, and the unemployment rate hovering around 10%, there is talk of new legislation to further stimulate job creation. This begs the question, how effective is policy in counteracting the business cycle and creating positive employment outcomes?

Much work has been done on the subject of employment policy and the workforce. Here's a partial reading list for those who are interested. The President's chief economic adviser, Christina Romer, co-authored one paper on the subject in the '90s that gives a good overview of federal responses to recessions; the Government Accountability Office has done extensive work reviewing the Workforce Investment Act; the National Renewable Energy Lab has looked at the economic and employment effects of renewable energy on a state-by-state basis; and the CBO has performed some macroeconomic analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the stimulus bill.

Fall Depository Library Conference Meeting, 2009

Now, you can read all about the Fall Depository Meeting whether you attend it or not. The full descriptions of the presentations are available here.

One of the most interesting sessions was "Demystifying Digital Depository: What it is and What it could do for the future of the FDLP." The concept of a digital depository system is that each depository library stores its selected digital documents on its local server in order to ensure access and long-term preservation. This practice would provide additional protection against any financial risk that no single system such as GPO FDsys can provide alone. View this site for the further discussion including the methods of storing documents locally.

Housing Market Report

A major driver of the current financial crisis is the burst housing bubble; many have asked the question, why did the housing market collapse?

The Atlanta Fed Reserve attempts to answer this question in a new study, "Decomposing the Foreclosure Crisis: House Price Depreciation versus Bad Underwriting." In this study, the authors build a model employing exhaustive housing and mortgage data from the past two decades, and then focus on the housing market experience in Massachusetts to try to gain some insight into root causes. The authors come to an interesting conclusion:

We argue that relaxed underwriting standards did severely aggravate the crisis by creating a class of homeowners who were particularly vulnerable to the decline in prices. But, as we show in our counterfactual analysis, that emergence alone, in the absence of a price collapse, would not have resulted in the substantial foreclosure boom that was experienced.

Chesapeake Bay Bill Committee Report

The environmental status and health of the Chesapeake Bay has long been a source of concern for many in our region. There is currently a bill in Congress that attempts to address these issues, by directing OMB and EPA to undertake budgeting and planning for restoration and management.

The bill was approved by the House Committee on Natural Resources over the summer; the House Committee report (PDF) on the bill has just been added to GPO's online catalog. Follow the link to learn more about the bill's provisions, background, and legislative history to date.