Understandably, the public is a little preoccupied right now with efforts in Washington to “reform” health care by making it much, much worse. Fortunately, people are starting to notice that a congressional bum rush is heading right toward them — maybe they’ll be able stop it in time. Unfortunately, that is giving Washington a chance to sneak some other stuff by us.

In particular, I’m thinking of the just-introduced Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. It’s been largely ignored so far, save a little chatter about the community college stuff it incorporates. In a simpler time, it would have generated a lot more copy. After all, it will:

• end federally backed student loans that come through private companies, and instead make Uncle Sam the universal lender;
• greatly increase Pell Grants and peg their growth to the rate of inflation plus 1 point;
• balloon the federal Perkins loan program;
• authorize $5 billion over two years for elementary and secondary school facility projects, with a focus on “green” efforts;
• authorize $10 billion over ten years for Early Learning Challenge Grants; and
• furnish $12 billion for community colleges.

Not all of this, I should say, is terrible. Getting rid of the Federal Family Education Loan Program — which backs loans coming from ostensibly private companies and guarantees lenders a profit — is a good thing. But replacing it all with loans directly from D.C.? That’s a bad thing.

To be fair, transitioning from guaranteed to direct lending could save some money, especially in the short run, eliminating various fees and guarantees Washington pays to lenders under FFEL. But those savings almost certainly won’t be the $87 billion over ten years supporters claim, a number that is no doubt overstated as a result of budget chicanery and how quickly government grows. And don’t expect taxpayers to benefit from whatever savings are ultimately generated. According to the proud declaration of SAFRA sponsor George Miller (D‑CA), only $10 billion of the projected $87 billion savings is slated for deficit reduction. The rest — breathtaking deficit be damned! — is going to standard, feel-good government spending, including school “modernization” projects and “early learning” grants

Which brings me to the community college components, which have, unlike the rest of the bill, been getting some media play. I wrote about them earlier this week, noting especially that they make little sense in light of Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers showing that positions requiring on-the-job training will grow in much greater numbers than jobs requiring at least an associate’s degree. What I didn’t mention was the dismal performance of community college students, who take remedial courses in droves and complete their programs at very low rates.

Ah, but we’re told that this new legislation, backed wholeheartedly by the Obama administration, is going to reform community colleges. As David Brooks celebrates in his column today:

The Obama initiative is designed to go right at these deeper problems. It sets up a significant innovation fund, which, if administered properly, could set in motion a spiral of change. It has specific provisions for remedial education, outcome tracking and online education. It links public sector training with specific private sector employers.

Now, I thought Brooks was supposed to be a seasoned political observer, but he seems to have swallowed the reform‑y rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. He’s seasoned enough, though, to give himself an out with the qualifier, “if administered properly.”

He’s gonna’ need that out, though the reform failure probably won’t be primarily administrative; the legislation itself offers gaping holes through which schools can escape real reform. To get “innovation” grants, schools would simply have to agree to do such nebulous, input-centric things as provide “student support services” and implement “other innovative programs.” In other words, they’d need do nothing meaningful at all.

Unfortunately, this bill will probably become law. Few politicians or interest groups are standing firmly against it, and with health care storming the public’s front door, few people will notice SAFRA tiptoeing through the back. Combine that with the few people who are writing about the bill giving it little critical thought, and its passage seems assured.

One piece of good news out of Washington yesterday was the decision among supporters of the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act to dump a provision that would have virtually eliminated the secret ballot in union-organizing elections.

The bill is the number-one legislative priority of major U.S. labor unions. It is packed with provisions aimed at making it easier for unions to organize workplaces and halt the relentless 40-year slide in private-sector union membership.

The jettisoned provision would have allowed unions to organize a workplace simply by “persuading” a majority of workers to sign cards saying they want a union. Of course, such a system would leave individual workers wide open to intimidation, as I explained in a recent op-ed. Business-funded ads against the measure struck a cord with voters who are understandably fond of the secret ballot, and the provision became a step too far for moderate Democrats.

What remains of the bill is still bad news. It would reduce the typical union-organizing election from two months to as short as five days. This is a provision that could only be favored by the side that wants workers to be deprived of the information and the time they need to make an informed decision. And it would force employers to accept the decision of a government arbitration panel even if the resulting union contract would threaten the company’s survival.

University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein explained cogently in a recent cover story for Cato’s Regulation magazine why the the bill is fundamentally at odds with our basic constitutional rights.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates isn’t known for his stirring oratory, and his speech to the Economic Club of Chicago is representative of his understated style. But when it comes to the F‑22, the SecDef’s ire shows through.

The overarching theme of the speech was the future of the U.S. military, a rather obvious topic. I don’t agree with all that Gates has done, and is preparing to do. I question his fixation on population-centric counterinsurgency and post-conflict reconstruction. I think he could have done more to cut unnecessary weapons systems, although he deserves credit for tackling the low-hanging fruit.

By the same token, much of the criticism leveled against Gates is unfair, and some of it is absurd. Gates demolishes the charge that he has slashed defense spending, by pointing out that the FY2010 budget is $534 billion, $19 billion more than in FY09. “Only in the parallel universe that is Washington, D.C.,” Gates noted, “would that be considered ‘gutting’ defense.”

But he hasn’t shied from making some cuts, and he has taken on some politically popular programs. And the F‑22 is at the top of this list. Gates devoted nearly a third of the speech to the F‑22, and the bottom line is this:

[I]f we can’t bring ourselves to make this tough but straightforward decision [to terminate the program at 187 aircraft] — reflecting the judgment of two very different presidents, two different secretaries of defense, two chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, and the current Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff, where do we draw the line? And if not now, when? If we can’t get this right — what on earth can we get right? It is time to draw the line on doing Defense business as usual. The President has drawn that line. And that red line is a veto. And it is real.

No one reading this speech should have any doubts that Gates and President Obama are serious. We’ll know perhaps as soon as Monday — the Senate is supposed to vote on the McCain-Levin amendment to strip funding for the F‑22 from the Defense Authorization bill — whether Congress is paying attention.

Appearing on the “Glenn Beck Program” with ABC’s John Stossel, Cato H.L. Mencken research fellow Penn Jillete discusses his views on health care reform, the nanny state, Canada and more.

The Washington Post has a “feel-good” story about how the huge expansion in the federal government has created a relatively strong job market in the D.C. area.

The story mentions that the federal workforce will expand by another 200,000 during the Obama years. Yet at no point does the author bother to mention (or perhaps even understand) that all these new bureaucrats are financed by draining resources from the productive sector of the economy.

A sample:

They came in droves wearing dark suits and carrying résumés yesterday — some lined up for a block in the hot sun waiting for the doors to open — to the only employer in this dismal economy hiring by the thousands: the federal government.
More than 6,000 people jammed into the National Building Museum in Washington to apply for openings at 75 agencies, including the departments of Treasury, Homeland Security, Justice, Veterans Affairs and Energy. 

[I]n the government, added [an applicant from] Silver Spring, “you get stability, you get great benefits and [an opportunity] to move up and progress in your job.” The federal government represents about one-third of the Washington region’s $401 billion economy. Some analysts said they think the ramp-up in federal hiring and spending will help the area emerge from the recession before most other metropolitan regions. From May 2008 to May 2009, the region lost 55,000 jobs. But during that same period, nearly 20,000 jobs were created, mainly in the federal government and federal contracting sector. 

…The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that sponsored the job fair and is surveying federal agencies to determine their staffing needs, estimates that the government will hire about 600,000 people over the next four years, as many as 120,000 of whom would work in the Washington region. The federal workforce, currently at 1.9 million, is expected to grow to about 2.1 million during the Obama administration, according to the Partnership for Public Service. That is comparable to the staffing level during the Johnson administration’s Great Society programs of the 1960s.

That’s the implicit message of an advocacy campaign the American Cancer Society’s “Cancer Action Network” is running in the Washington, D.C. Metro’s Capitol South station.

Large placards showing pictures of people people who are “NOW” healthy but will “LATER” be stricken with cancer give Capitol Hill staffers commuting in to work a clear message: Do something — anything. It’s part of the otherworldly bubble that lobbyists and advocacy groups press around staff and members of Congress.

The message they need — perhaps a little too complex for the subway — is that Congress has Münchausen syndrome by proxy with respect to the health care system.

The Democrats’ determination to drive us all into a single, government-run health plan reminded me of this classic ad from the 1980s: