Substance Abuse Prevention CBA

Cost-Benefit Analysis is a common tool used to assess the advantages and disadvantages of public programs and policies. One of challenges, however, can be determining the proper assumptions of value. The commonly-used question to illustrate this challenge is, what is the value of a human life worth?

A good example of the use of cost-benefit analysis is found in the below report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The goal of the analysis is to essentially determine whether substance abuse programs, as administered by HHS, are worth it. From the report:

This report summarizes existing estimates of the cost of substance abuse and its damaging consequences. These cost estimates are used to evaluate the benefits of prevention in existing cost-benefit analyses and are available for use in new analyses. The estimates reviewed highlight the total annual cost of substance abuse from a number of perspectives including social cost and the direct costs to State government. The social perspective includes everyone's costs and benefits: People who abuse substances, family members, the general public, communities, and all level of government (Federal, State, and local).

On Modernizing Government

Earlier this year, the White House held a Forum on Modernizing Government, which brought together business, government, and labor leaders to talk about ways government can become more efficient and effective through technology and improved practices.

The Office of Management and Budget recently released the follow-up to that forum, found in PDF here. The introduction reads:

The private sector leaders who participated in the Forum shared business best practices—ideas on leveraging technology to streamline Federal operations, improve customer service, and maximize technology return on investment. The discussions focused on how these lessons from these leaders who have driven progress and productivity in the private sector can best be applied to the operations of the Federal government.

The report is relatively short, but provides an interesting look into how the federal government is trying to evolve. Additional resources on government performance issues can be found via the Office of Management and Budget; the Government Accountability Office also performs significant analysis on the topic.

START Agreement Reached

The United States and Russia made big news on Friday when American President Obama and Russian President Medvedev announced an agreement on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. The bilateral arms reduction treaty is a follow-up to the START I agreement, which was signed between the US and the USSR in July 1991, just months before the latter country fell. That agreement expired in December 2009.

Information about the announcement can be found on the White House blog. According to the post, the new treaty will limit arsenals to:

• 1,550 deployed warheads, which is about 30% lower than the upper warhead limit of the Moscow Treaty;
• 800 deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear weapons; and
• 700 for deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear weapons.

There are several excellent government sources that provide information on international strategic arms control. As they often do, the Congressional Research Service provides a good introductory overview, found here. The State Department provides relevant arms data under the treaty.

For a bit of historical analysis, the Congressional Budget Office issued an in-depth analysis of the original START agreement in October 1991, just a few months after the agreement was signed. A PDF of that report can be found here; a hard copy can also be found in Fenwick Library Government Documents.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and other committees will likely hold hearings on the new treaty in the near future. Many hearings have been held over the years; Fenwick Library possesses many of these hearings on microfiche, for example here, here, here and here. Additional hearings on strategic arms control can be found via GPO Access (1995 and later) or LexisNexis (Mason only).

Full text of the original treaty can be found on the State Department's website. The State Department's Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation also provides a legal analysis of the treaty.

Education Policy Blueprint

The No Child Left Behind Act has been a controversial portion of education law in the U.S. (for a thorough overview of the act, see this Congressional Research Service PDF). The Obama Administration has proposed making some changes in response to the criticisms the legislation has received.

Those proposals are contained in a "blueprint" document that can be found here. From the introduction:

This blueprint builds on the significant reforms already made in response to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 around four areas: (1) Improving teacher and principal effectiveness to ensure that every classroom has a great teacher and every school has a great leader; (2) Providing information to families to help them evaluate and improve their children’s schools, and to educators to help them improve their students’ learning; (3) Implementing college- and career-ready standards and developing improved assessments aligned with those standards; and (4) Improving student learning and achievement in America’s lowest-performing schools by providing intensive support and effective interventions.

Students looking for further research can search the Mason Libraries catalog, or see an extensive list of resources provided by the PBS program Frontline here.

National Broadband Plan

Over the past few years, many have argued the importance of improved high-speed Internet access via broadband technology. The term "digital divide" has come to refer to the separation between those who have high-speed Internet access (such as those in urban areas) and those that don't (such as those in rural areas). This has prompted questions as to whether government should intervene in the broadband market to rectify access disparities. The Congressional Research Service summarizes the debate in this report on the issue (PDF):

Broadband technologies are currently being deployed primarily by the private sector throughout the United States. While the numbers of new broadband subscribers continue to grow, studies and data suggest that the rate of broadband deployment in urban and high income areas are outpacing deployment in rural and low-income areas. Some policymakers, believing that disparities in broadband access across American society could have adverse economic and social consequences on those left behind, assert that the federal government should play a more active role to avoid a “digital divide” in broadband access.

Further, many advanced European and East Asian countries, most notably South Korea, have invested heavily in their national broadband infrastructures, raising additional questions about American competitiveness.

In response to these issues, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday released the National Broadband Plan. At nearly 400 pages, the full plan addresses a wide array of relevant issues related to Internet policy, including economic growth, national security, disaster preparedness, environmental impacts, and civic engagement. The FCC outlined the basic principles of the plan in the executive summary:

1. Design policies to ensure robust competition and, as a result maximize consumer welfare, innovation and investment.
2. Ensure efficient allocation and management of assets government controls or influences, such as spectrum, poles, and rights-of-way, to encourage network upgrades and competitive entry.
3. Reform current universal service mechanisms to support deployment of broadband and voice in high-cost areas; and ensure that low-income Americans can afford broadband; and in addition, support efforts to boost adoption and utilization.
4. Reform laws, policies, standards and incentives to maximize the benefits of broadband in sectors government influences significantly, such as public education, health care and government operations.

The report is likely to generate significant debate in the coming weeks and months. The plan can be downloaded in full or by specific chapter via the FCC's website here. It's an excellent resource for students studying the social, economic, and political implications of information technology and digital policy.

Solar Technology Review from National Laboratory

Many see energy technology as an important component of the future world economy. In the US, much of the public sector work on energy technology research is driven by the Department of Energy through the national laboratories, which employee over 30,000 scientists and engineers.

Many of these labs regularly issue useful reports for students interested in energy research or policy. One example is the 2008 Solar Technologies Market Report (PDF), issued by the National Renewable Energy Lab. The report is a great one-stop resource for information on this topic. From the executive summary:

The focus of this report is the U.S. solar electricity market, including photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies. The report is organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of global and U.S. installation trends. Chapter 2 presents production and shipment data, material and supply chain issues, and solar industry employment trends. Chapter 3 presents cost, price, and performance trends. Chapter 4 discusses policy and market drivers such as recently passed federal legislation, state and local policies, and developments in project financing. Chapter 5 provides data on private investment trends and near-term market forecasts.

Other recent NREL publications can be found here; a full list of all national laboratories and research centers can be found on the Department of Energy's website, here.

One More Health Care Bill Analysis

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in conjunction with the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, has again issued an analysis of the health care bill, this time focusing on the proposal that passed the Senate, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The official CBO blog has an overview of the analysis here; the full analysis is available here (PDF). From the overview:

CBO and JCT now estimate that, on balance, the direct (mandatory) spending and revenue effects of enacting H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $118 billion over the 2010–2019 period. (Direct spending—as distinguished from discretionary spending—is spending that stems from legislation other than appropriation acts.) In our earlier estimate, the budgetary impact was a net reduction in deficits of $132 billion.

Mexican Border Violence

Drug-related border issues between the United States and Mexico have long been documented. There has been a recent uptick in violence across the border in Mexico in recent months, and it's increasing concerns that the violence could spill into the US. The Congressional Research Service recently looked into the issue, issuing a report that can be found here (PDF).

In an examination of data that could provide insight into whether there has been a significant spillover in drug trafficking-related violence from Mexico into the United States, CRS analyzed violent crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report program. The data, however, do not allow analysts to determine what proportion of the violent crime rate is related to drug trafficking or, even more specifically, what proportion of drug trafficking-related violent crimes can be attributed to spillover violence. In conclusion, because the trends in the overall violent crime rate may not be indicative of trends in drug trafficking-related violent crimes, CRS is unable to draw definitive claims about trends in drug trafficking-related violence spilling over from Mexico into the United States.

2009-2010 Congressional Directory

The Government Printing Office has just added the 2009-2010 Congressional Directory (111th Congress) to its websites, available on FDSys and GPO Access .

The Congressional Directory is one of those little books that every lobbyist and Hill activist keeps handy. It's the official directory for the U.S. Congress, made available in the first session of every Congress. It provides short bios of every elected official, office contact information for both DC and district offices, committee assignments, and key staff listings. For example, here is the listing for Fairfax's own Rep. Gerry Connolly:

ELEVENTH DISTRICT

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Democrat, of Fairfax, VA; born in Boston, MA, March 30, 1950; education: graduated B.A., Maryknoll College; M.A., public administration, Harvard University, 1979; professional: member, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, 1995-2003, chairman, 2003-07; religion: Roman Catholic; married: Cathy; children: Caitlin; committees: Budget; Foreign Affairs; Oversight and Government Reform; elected to the 111th Congress on November 4, 2008.

Office Listings
http://www.geraldconnolly.house.gov

327 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515.
(202) 225-1492 FAX: 225-3071
Chief of Staff.--James Walkinshaw.
Legislative Director.--Dominic Bonaiuto.
Communications Director.--George Burke.

4115 Annandale Road, Annandale, VA 22003
...............(703) 256-3071
District Director.--Sharon Stark.

4308 Ridgewood Center Drive, Woodbridge, VA 22192
...............(703) 670-4989
Prince William Director.--Colin Davenport.

Counties: Fairfax (part), Prince William (part). Cities: Alexandria, Annandale, Burke, Centreville, Clifton, Fairfax, Fairfax Station, Herndon, Lorton, Manassas, Oakton, Occoquan, Springfield, Vienna, and Woodbridge. Population (2000), 643,509.

ZIP Codes: 20069-70, 20109-10, 20112, 20119-22, 20124, 20136-37, 20155-56, 20168-69, 20171, 20181-82, 22003, 22009, 22015, 22027, 22030-33, 22035, 22038-39, 22044, 22060, 22079, 22081-82, 22102, 22116, 22118-21, 22124-25, 22150-53, 22156, 22158-61, 22180-83, 22185, 22191-95, 22199, 22308-09, 22312

It also includes extensive Executive and Judicial branch contact information, as well as contacts for media, embassies, state governors, and DC city government.

In addition to find the Directory on FDsys and GPO Access, you can purchase it from the U.S. Government Online Bookstore. It also will be distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program in hardcover format (meaning Mason Libraries will get a copy). The classification info will be: Y 4.P 93/1:1/111; if you need it but aren't sure where to find it, ask a librarian.

The Global Automotive Industry in the Recession

Much has been made of the decline of Detroit's "Big 3" car companies. However, the current global recession has also hurt the automotive industry in several other advanced economies as well. The OECD recently published a report looking at these challenges, found here (PDF). From the report's abstract:

This paper considers the role of the automobile industry in the current cycle. It shows that the industry is economically important and its cycle is intertwined with business cycles. After casting some light on the sources of the collapse in car sales at the start of the crisis, the policy measures, in particular car scrapping programmes, put in place to support the automobile industry are discussed. The paper also derives short and medium term projections of car sales. While a rebound in car sales is likely in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom, car sales in Germany have been pushed significantly above trend and may weaken going forward. Over the medium term, in mature markets such as Europe and North America, trend sales are likely to remain stagnant. By contrast, rapid increases are foreseen in China and to a lesser extent in India.

The report is a useful resource for students studying the consequences of the current international recession, or simply how economic cycles generally harm important industries.

Health Care Reform Update

The big news yesterday was the daylong summit between President Obama and several members of both major parties from the House and Senate, including party leadership from both houses. While it's best to leave discussion of the summit's political and legislative consequences to strategists and pundits, it is worth taking a quick look at some of the more recent analyses of this important issue.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has created a good introductory report providing an overview of some of the salient health care reform issues here (PDF); it is six months old but still very relevant. CRS doesn't make their reports public, but many organizations collect these reports and make them available. Students can use Open CRS as a gateway to search for more reports from the CRS on health care reform.

After reading through the above report, another indispensable resource is the Kaiser Family Foundation's page on reform proposals. It allows the user to make easy side-by-side comparisons of two or more proposals, including the House bill, the Senate bill, the White House proposal, and many of the previous proposals.

Lastly, students looking for more in-depth analysis and information can browse the Congressional Budget Office's regularly updated catalog of health care reform-related reports.

Critiquing Macroeconomic Policy

Macroeconomic policy tools are those that allow the world's governments and central bankers to manage national economies. These include monetary policy - which means controlling a nation's money supply through interest rate adjustments, for example - and fiscal policy, which includes tax and expenditure changes like stimulus packages.

The recent financial crisis has many economists re-thinking the conventional wisdom on many of these topics. A good, concise, and highly readable example of these critiques is this policy note (PDF) recently released by the International Monetary Fund. The report reads:

It was tempting for macroeconomists and policymakers alike to take much of the credit for the steady decrease in cyclical fluctuations from the early 1980s on and to conclude that we knew how to conduct macroeconomic policy. We did not resist temptation. The crisis clearly forces us to question our earlier assessment.

This is what this paper tries to do. It proceeds in three steps. The first reviews what we thought we knew. The second identifies where we were wrong. The third, and the most tentative of the three, takes a first pass at the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework.

It's a good resource for students interested in these issues.

School Lunch Policies and Nutrition

There's been an ongoing focus of childhood obesity in the U.S., and school lunches can play a role in improving it. A recent report by the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service studied the effects that school lunch policies can have on food nutrition value, dividing schools into categories based on fat content of meals. The report found:

The fat content of school lunches was statistically correlated with many school policies and characteristics in the spring of 2005. Some policies and practices, such as whether french fries are regularly served, can directly affect the nutritional content of USDA lunches. Other policies, such as a school’s allowance of “competitive” foods or foods that bypass nutritional standards, can indirectly affect the content of USDA lunches by offering choices that appeal to students’ taste preferences.

The entire report can be read here.

Economic Report of the President

One of the most interesting documents produced by the Executive Branch every year is the Economic Report of the President, which comes out up to ten days after submission of the budget (which we talked about here and here).

The report is essentially an annual overview of economic activity and policy from the previous year, as well as a statement of political principles and priorities from the administration. A more specific list of some of the things included, provided by the Government Printing Office, includes:

• Current and foreseeable trends and annual numerical goals concerning topics such as employment, production, real income and Federal budget outlays.
• Employment objectives for significant groups of the labor force.
• Annual numeric goals.
• A program for carrying out program objectives.

The 2010 report was just released yesterday by the Obama Administration, and can be read or downloaded in a variety of formats here. The report provides a wealth of information and data about the nation's economic activity, and is useful for students trying to develop an understanding of the state of the economy and the nature of the economic downturn.

Previous reports, for every year beginning in 1947, are available via the St. Louis Federal Reserve website.

FY 2011 Budget Proposal: A Guided Tour

Few things receive as much attention - or have such a broad impact on the nation - as the annual federal budgeting process. With yesterday's budget release, noted here, the annual process begins anew.

It's a complex process with significant moving parts, of which the President's budget proposal is the first step, so here are a few resources for students trying to make sense of it.

• The Congressional Research Service has produced a must-read introductory report on the budget process, available here in PDF.
• In the Executive Branch, the Office of Management and Budget is the lead office on developing the budget proposal.
  
• The President proposes the budget, but Congress must approve or modify the President's request. The key committees are the House and Senate budget committees, which create the initial budget resolution to serve as a budgeting blueprint; and the House and Senate appropriations committees, which actually appropriate funding.
  
• Congress doesn't approve the President's budget as one document. Instead, it divides spending by subject into twelve different appropriations bills, which can be passed individually or combined into omnibus bills.
• The Library of Congress keeps track of each spending bill. This link shows spending bills from last year (FY 2010). The library will update its site when the current (FY 2011) appropriations bills are devised and move forward.

Finally, there are several places to find detailed information about the budget proposal.

• The Office of Management and Budget provides an overview and summaries of the budget requests for each department here.
• Individual departments and agencies provide much more detailed budget information. For example, see Commerce; Energy; Veterans Affairs; State; as well as individual agencies like NASA; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the Small Business Administration; and many others.
• Finally, a good resource for budget analysis is the Congressional Budget Office.
  

Predident's Budget of the U.S. Government , FY 2011

is now available from the U.S. GPO: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/home.action. The online PDF versions of the FY 2011 budget are digitally signed and certified in order to assure users of the authenticity of the documents.

Financial Crisis: Exit and Reform

The financial crisis has hit economies around the world and prompted both short-term questions about how best to alleviate the worst consequences responsibly and long-term questions about reforming the global financial system.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international body of 30 developed countries, recently took a comprehensive look at the current crisis and existing financial institutions and offered a menu of strategy recommendations to help global economic policy managers extricate their economies from the crisis. The foreword to this report (PDF) reads:

Two questions, then, are at the core of this report: How and when can governments safely wind down their emergency measures? And how can we sensibly reform financial markets? The purpose is to draw together and demonstrate the interconnections among a wide range of issues, and in doing so to contribute to global efforts to address these challenges.

The report divides its recommendations into both reforming financial incentives and phasing out emergency measures. The report provides a good resource for students wishing to obtain a deeper understanding the current system of national and international finance.

A Century of Growth

With the arrival of 2010 and the end of the decade, many individuals have spent time looking back at trends over the past ten years, identifying the decade's "bests" and "worsts," or simply pondering how the world has changed since 2000. In the same spirit of looking backward, here is an excellent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that examines technology and economic growth in four of the world's major economies: France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors take a slightly longer view than the previous decade, instead looking back over the Twentieth century.

The report specifically deals with productivity of labor and total input. Productivity gains are a good measure of technological progress: economically, technology helps to increase output generated from a given level of input.

The authors find:

The past 120 years have been characterized by: (i) rapid economic growth and large productivity gains in all four countries; (ii) a long decline of productivity in the United Kingdom relative to the United States, and to a lesser extent also to France and Japan, a relative decline that was interrupted by the second world war (WW2); (iii) the remarkable catching-up to the United States by France and Japan after WW2, that stopped in the case of Japan during the 1990s.

Much, but not all, of these changes are due to the use of information and communication technology (ICT). The report is an excellent resource for learning about how economies change over time.

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.