Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• Federal infrastructure spending has a long and painful history of pork-barrel politics and bureaucratic bungling, with money often going to wasteful and environmentally damaging projects.
• Chris Edwards responds to critics of his critique of federal infrastructure spending.
• Mark Calabria thinks President Obama’s new mortgage plan should be held under water.
• My thoughts on the spending reforms proposed by Rick Perry.
• The president’s student loan plan: borrowers won’t get much relief, and taxpayers will get saddled with additional costs.
• The State Department spreads democracy—and money.

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