“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
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Getting good estimates is not easy. Anyone who’s hired a contractor knows to make sure the estimates are sound by insisting that bidders stick to their estimates.
This is not what happens in government, though. Projects almost always start out with a whopping figure for an estimate . . . and then as the project gears up the costs shoot higher and higher — it soon becomes clear that the high initial cost estimate was a low-ball figure after all.
My “favorite” recent example of this has been California’s high-speed rail project, which soared by the billions before even breaking ground.
But move over, transit. Here’s medicine — 2008’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare,” has just received an estimate upgrade. When passed, the legislation’s enthusiasts boasted a ten-year cost estimate of “only” $940 billion. Now, the Congressional Budget Office has revised the decade’s cost tally up to $1.76 trillion.
According to Philip Klein in the Washington Examiner, the CBO says that weakness in the economy leads to more people “obtaining insurance through Medicaid than it estimated a year ago at a greater cost to the government . . . fewer people will be getting insurance through their employers or the health care law’s new subsidized insurance exchanges.”
I “daringly” predict that this estimate, too, will turn out to be woefully below the actual figure . . . unless something novel happens, like Americans rallying around a “throw the bums out” campaign to elect a Congress and a President that will surgically remove Obamacare from the body politic. Before it kills us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Gen. Robert E. Lee
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.”
Petroleum-based fuels are going up in price, so naturally people start looking for someone to blame. Call up the Usual Suspects:
- Speculators. These futures market folks never get credit for lowering the prices of gas, but they can always be counted on to serve as easy “bad guy” targets when prices go up. Same this time. You’ve heard the rumors, the rancor. (It’s nuts.)
- President Obama. You know, for not allowing drilling and pipelines and such. Go to a meeting of conservatives and you’ll hear someone yell out “Drill, baby, drill!” Now, I’m all for drilling, and it’s stupid to clamp down on future supplies of oil — indeed, investors in the futures market for oil see these political and bureaucratic restrictions on exploration and mining and refining, etc., and no doubt bid up the price of oil — but really, don’t blame just Obama, blame, also,
- Romney and Santorum and Gingrich. All these presidential candidates have engaged in hysterical, belligerent rhetoric about Iran, threatening warfare in the Persian Gulf region. War is bad for supply lines. Compromising supply lines means compromised supplies. Which means less oil. Which means rising prices.
So of course futures traders will bid up those prices — they would lose money if they didn’t — and in so doing they make the likely future conditions palpable to contemporary decision makers.
That’s their economic function. Don’t blame the messenger.
So, if you think the U.S. should bomb Iran to prevent that country from bombing the U.S. in a few years (after which the U.S. could easily make the populous nation, full of innocents, a sea of irradiated glass), don’t gripe.
One consequence will be (must be) rising prices.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Andrew Johnson Impeachment
On March 13, 1868, for the first time in U.S. history, the impeachment trial of an American president began in the U.S. Senate. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, became the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives when, in February 1868, the Republican-controlled House charged the Democrat Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” including violating the controversial Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over his veto in 1867.
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Abigail Adams
“I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.”
People change.
George W. Bush won the presidency pledging a dose of “humility” in our foreign policy and forswearing the temptation to rebuild failed foreign states. But after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . followed by even more deadly and difficult nation-building efforts.
Presidential powers expanded.
Along came Barack Obama, the peace candidate. His advantage in winning the 2008 Democratic Party nomination was his unequivocal opposition to the Iraq War. Meanwhile, then-Senator, now Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had voted to give Bush congressional approval to launch that war.
During the campaign, Obama recognized constitutional limits on the commander-in-chief: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
But as president, Mr. Obama launched air strikes against Libya without congressional authorization. In fact, he refused to even report to Congress as required by law.
And then last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “Do you think that you can act, without Congress, and initiate a no-fly zone in Syria, without congressional approval?”
“Our goal would be to seek international permission,” Panetta replied, and then added, “and we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this.”
A republic? America goes to war on the order of one man: Emperor Obama.
But empires change. Past empires rarely asked foreign permission for their military adventures.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On March 11, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur abandoned the island fortress of Corregidor in the Philippines under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt. Left behind at Corregidor and on the Bataan Peninsula were 90,000 American and Filipino troops, who, lacking food, supplies, and support, would soon succumb to the Japanese offensive. MacArthur issued a statement to the press in which he promised his men and the people of the Philippines, “I shall return.”
On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was selected by the Communist Party as the new general secretary and leader of the Soviet Union, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko the day before. Gorbachev oversaw a radical transformation of society during the next six years, concluding with the break-up of the Soviet Union.
On March 11, 1990, Lithuania became the first Soviet Republic to proclaim its independence from the USSR. The Soviet government responded with an oil embargo and economic blockade against the Baltic republic and, in January 1991, Soviet paratroopers and tanks invaded Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, beginning a standoff that lasted until September 6, 1991, when the crumbling Soviet Union agreed to grant independence to Lithuania and the other Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia.
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Douglas MacArthur
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”
My Townhall column this weekend is “Another Forced-Innovation Fiasco,” which shows that another congressional cost-cutting measure has gone up in smoke. Here are some relevant links to that article:
- A typical congressional cost-cutting regulation: “Flushing Congress From the Toilet Industry” (Common Sense)
- Katherine Mangu-Ward’s terrific exposé: “Feds Pay $10 Million for $50 Light Bulb” (Reason)
- That innovative, super-efficient diode: “MIT engineers create LED that has 230% efficiency. Thermodynamics laws still in place” (ZME Science)
Oh, and folks: Common Sense publishes every weekday, and, if you sign up for it at right, you can get it in your email box. Why not?