The politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and interest groups in Washington are hyperventilating that the federal gravy train may get sidetracked for a day or two by a shutdown fight between Republicans and Democrats.

I’m not sure why they’re so agitated. After all, the shutdown is really just a slowdown since only non-essential bureaucrats are sent home. And everyone winds up getting paid for those unplanned vacations, which is why the bureaucrats I know are crossing their fingers for a lengthy confrontation.

But that describes what may happen when the new fiscal year begins tomorrow. What’s been happening in recent days, culminating today, is a feeding frenzy of end-of-the-fiscal-year wasteful spending.

Here are some details from a Washington Post expose.

This past week, the Department of Veterans Affairs bought $562,000 worth of artwork. In a single day, the Agriculture Department spent $144,000 on toner cartridges. And, in a single purchase, the Coast Guard spent $178,000 on “Cubicle Furniture Rehab.” …All week, while Congress fought over next year’s budget, federal workers were immersed in a separate frantic drama. They were trying to spend the rest of this year’s budget before it is too late. …If they don’t, the money becomes worthless to them on Oct. 1. And — even worse — if they fail to spend the money now, Congress could dock their funding in future years. The incentive, as always, is to spend. So they spent.

If you’re a taxpayer, you’ll be especially delighted to know that the “use it or lose it” spending orgy is so intense that federal contractors have to cater lunches for their sales staff. Can’t have them away from their desks, after all!

It was the return of one of Washington’s oldest bad habits: a blitz of expensive decisions, made by agencies with little incentive to save. Private contractors — worried that sequestration would result in a smaller spending rush this year — brought in food to keep salespeople at their desks. Federal workers quizzed harried colleagues in the hallways, asking if they had spent it all yet. …“Use it or lose it” season is not marked on any official government calendars. But in Washington, it is as real as Christmas. And as lucrative. …In 2012, for instance, the government spent $45 billion on contracts in the last week of September, according to calculations by the fiscal-conservative group Public Notice. That was more than any other week — 9 percent of the year’s contract spending money, spent in 2 percent of the year.

The IRS may win the prize for the most egregious example of last-minute waste.

In 2010, for instance, the Internal Revenue Service had millions left over in an account to hire new personnel. The money would expire at year’s end. Its solution was not a smart one. The IRS spent the money on a lavish conference. Which included a “Star Trek” parody video starring IRS managers. Which was filmed on a “Star Trek” set that the IRS paid to build. (Sample dialogue: “We’ve received a distress call from the planet NoTax.”)

But it’s not just tax collectors who flush our money down the toilet in creative ways.

One recent study, for instance, found that information technology contracts signed at year’s end often produced noticeably worse results than those signed in calmer times. …they listed dumb things they had seen bought: three years’ worth of staples. Portable generators that never got used. One said the National Guard bought so much ammunition that firing it all became a chore. “When you get BORED from shooting MACHINE GUNS, there is a problem,” an anonymous employee wrote.

Impressive examples of waste, though I confess I’m curious about the part about ammo and the National Guard. Does this mean bullets are like milk and have to be fired before an expiration date?

Beats me, but at least someone in the government acknowledged that (at least up to a point) it’s cool to fire a machine gun. Maybe that person should hook up with the Texas cop who likes tanks.

Oh, and you’ll be happy to know that spendaholic bureaucrats and crafty interest groups keep track of time zones so they can squander money until the very last second.

On Monday, Richer’s people will sell until midnight. Then they will keep selling. “Money rolls across the continent,” the feds say. Cash not spent in Washington might be spent by federal offices in California in the three hours before it is midnight there. When it is midnight in California — 3 a.m. in Washington — they will keep on. There are federal offices in Hawaii, after all. And it will still be three hours until midnight there.

Makes me think that we may need a slogan for the bureaucracy. Perhaps this modification of the Postal Service’s unofficial motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night — nor even different time zones — stays these bureaucrats from spending every possible penny of other people’s money.”

But let’s close on an upbeat note. Whether you give credit to the Tea Party, to Republicans, to gridlock, or to Obama, the good news is that the federal government in the past two years has been wasting money at a slower rate.

So taxpayers can smile…or at least not frown as much. The bureaucracy and contractors may be throwing a party today, but not with the same reckless abandon they displayed a between 2001 and 2010.

Word on the street is that today House Republicans will pass a bill that would keep non-essential government functions open until mid-December, delay ObamaCare for one year, but not block the illegal ObamaCare exemption President Obama’s Office of Personnel Management granted to members of Congress and their staff. If Republicans fail to include language blocking that exemption, they truly deserve the moniker of The Stupid Party.

ObamaCare blocks members of Congress and their staffs from participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program where most of them now purchase health insurance, and thereby denies them the “contribution” the federal government had been making toward their premiums. Starting in 2014, members and staff must obtain coverage either through an ObamaCare Exchange or whatever other options that can scrape together. The purpose of this provision was to ensure that members and staff would experience ObamaCare the same way the rest of the country does — so that just in case the law is a disaster, Congress will have to suffer just like everybody else. Since ObamaCare is throwing lots of Americans out of their prior health coverage, and causing lots of people to take pay cuts due to job losses and reduced hours, so far, so good.

Naturally, members don’t like the way ObamaCare is treating them and people about whom they care. By all accounts, members are extremely agitated about the impact on their staffs. But because Democrats don’t want to repeal the entire law, and neither Republicans nor Democrats want to get caught giving themselves an ObamaCare exemption that others don’t get, a coalition of Republican and Democratic members begged the president for a special exemption. For his part, President Obama didn’t want Congress to reopen the law, so he obliged. His administration announced that OPM will make the same “contribution” to each member and staffer’s Exchange premiums that it made to their FEHBP premiums, despite having absolutely no statutory authority to do so. And thus the political class set itself above the people it governs. The administration’s defenders, like Uwe Reinhardt, note that ObamaCare says “absolutely nothing” about whether OPM can continue to make those payments. Exactly. If Congress has not authorized those payments, OPM cannot make them. Moreover, no one else who works for a large employer may receive a tax-free “contribution” from their employer toward their Exchange premiums. Why should members and staff enjoy such privilege, when the law doesn’t provide for it and allowing it would fly in the face of this provision’s purpose?

This issue gives ObamaCare opponents tremendous leverage, if they are willing to use it. Senate Democrats are likely to strip a one-year delay of ObamaCare’s major provisions from the House Republicans’ “continuing resolution.” But few Democrats would dare to strike a provision blocking the OPM rule. Heather Higgins and Bill Pascoe write, “92 percent of the public does not think it is right that Congress and their staff are letting the Obama administration exempt them from the costs of Obamacare.” Moreover, “with a minimal push, the issue makes inroads even [against incumbents] most analysts thought beyond reach.” In other words, if the House Republicans’ CR blocks Congress’ ObamaCare exemption, then either vulnerable Senate Democrats will vote to preserve it, or they will be turned out by voters. If the Senate preserves it, which is likely, then even more Senate Democrats will be accept a one-year delay so that Congress can work out some arrangement that eliminates this pay cut for members and staff while providing equivalent relief to average Americans.

Unfortunately, House Republicans appear unwilling to tap their greatest source of leverage. I wish I could say that failure is inexplicable. But the reason is obvious. House Republicans got their ObamaCare fix, and (for now) that is more important to them than saving the rest of the country from this law. President Obama’s “OPM rule” is an attempt to buy their votes, and it appears those votes are for sale. They must not be thinking about what their base will do to them.

It’s great that House Republicans are sending the Senate a bill delaying ObamaCare for a year. Why don’t they want it to pass?

My recent paper on the rising cost of Social Security Disability Insurance is proving to be timely. 

First, the Washington Post’s Michael Fletcher provides a good overview of SSDI’s “issues.” Fletcher highlights a Maine county where the disability rolls have jumped as the local paper mills have shed jobs. That’s because the program has become a quasi-unemployment program, a problem that’s been exacerbated by the economic downturn. One former mill worker who said that he would rather be working now collects disability and “spends a lot of his free time riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to bike rallies around New England.” 

Second, The Economist points to research that suggests that SSDI is contributing to a reduction in the labor force participation rate: 

These results suggest that if it were not for people receiving disability insurance, reported unemployment would be far higher. Although DI recipients may initially have climbed because the economy was weak, their numbers will almost certainly not decline when it strengthens again; only 4% of beneficiaries return to work within ten years. The proportion of working-age adults on DI has risen from 1.3% in 1970 to 4.6% in 2013. The impact on participation rates may be cyclical at first and then become structural.

Third, a new Government Accountability Office report estimates that the Social Security Administration paid out $1.3 billion in benefits over two years to individuals who probably shouldn’t have received them. I should caution, however, that although fraud is an inherent problem with federal disability programs (and an improper payment doesn’t necessarily mean fraud was involved), it’s abuse of the system that is the bigger problem–i.e., people legally qualifying for benefits who arguably shouldn’t. 

But yes, fraud certainly exists and that leads to the fourth story. In June, a former Democratic state representative in Missouri pled guilty “to illegally taking $58,816 in federal disability payments while he was working as a state legislator earning $30,000 a year.” Ah, there are so many wisecracks to be made here, but I’ll just go with one: A politician stealing taxpayer money is illegal? Who knew! 

Did you know that the song “Happy Birthday” was under copyright? If you read my colleague Walter Olson’s Overlawyered blog, you did. Back in June, he reported on a lawsuit to put an end to the claim of copyright:

Warner/​Chappell Music continues to demand and collect royalties for public performance of the ditty, although its melody was first published more than 120 years ago and the familiar celebratory words have been sung to it for more than a century. A new lawsuit seeks a judicial ruling that the song is in the public domain and asks a return of wrongfully collected royalties.

I used this lawsuit as a hook for a piece in the National Interest that expands on an earlier blog post I wrote on the subject. The basic point is this: The Happy Birthday copyright claim may sound absurd, but given the current length of U.S. copyright terms, it’s actually not implausible for such an old song to be under copyright. For individual authors, life of the author plus 70 years is now the standard. That’s a long time!

And through trade negotiations, the United States is pushing these terms on other countries. In my view, this is bad for copyright and also bad for trade policy:

The appropriate focus of copyright policy right now should not be on using international trade agreements to extend copyright terms abroad. Rather, there needs to be a debate that focuses on how long copyright terms should be. Including provisions on copyright terms in trade agreements without first having that debate, and with ever-longer terms, is pushing intellectual property policy in the wrong direction and at the same time undermining the goal of free trade by bringing in unnecessary controversies.

Trade agreements are much broader than they used to be, and they cover a lot of different issues. Much of the mainstream coverage of trade agreements takes a simple “pro” or “con” view. But it’s more complicated than that; it’s worth picking them apart, seeing what all they do, and having a debate on each particular aspect. Copyright terms would be a great place to start.

The world’s most watched elections occur in America. The world’s most boring election just occurred in Germany. As expected, Chancellor Angela Merkel was effectively reelected.

The Federal Republic of Germany is the world’s most admired nation and possesses Europe’s largest economy. Berlin’s political and economic stability is the envy of the European Union.

Merkel has served as chancellor for eight years. A skilled political infighter, she exudes confidence and competence.

Germans rewarded her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), with 41.5 percent of the vote, well ahead of the more left-wing Social Democratic Party. However, the CDU/CSU fell five seats short of a parliamentary majority. And Merkel current coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, failed to receive the 5 percent of the vote necessary to be represented in the Bundestag.

Commentary on the election has focused on Merkel’s triumph. There is little doubt that she will remain chancellor. The only question is the identity of her coalition partner–and what price she will have to pay for that party’s support.

Ironically, policy isn’t likely to change very much as a result of the election. Merkel has steadily pulled her party leftward. Cem Ozdemir, co-chair of the Green Party, complained that the chancellor “becomes Green when it helps her and becomes a Social Democrat when that’s beneficial too.”

Alas, her policies helped wreck Germany’s liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP). The Free Democrats were created in 1949 and have served in the Bundestag ever since. In 2009 they made their best showing ever, 14.6 percent. Now, with just 4.8 percent of the vote, they are out of the Bundestag.

The Free Democrats are liberals in a classical sense: supporting free markets and social tolerance. However, as their conservative partners embraced the welfare and regulatory state, the FDP has enjoyed less policy impact.

In 2009 the Free Democrats campaigned for tax cuts and a freer economy and supported Merkel as chancellor. Within a year, the FDP’s political support had hemorrhaged, with the party’s poll rating dropping by two-thirds.

As I noted in my Forbes online column:

The Free Democrats failed to deliver policy change. There were no tax cuts, but big Euro bail-outs, nuclear plant closures, and a range of other actions inconsistent with their program. At the same time, Chancellor Merkel claimed credit for economic prosperity and stability. Germans could be forgiven wondering, what was the purpose of the FDP?

The party’s political fortunes collapsed. As the September 22 vote loomed, the FDP was reduced to begging for the second vote (for party, as opposed to for specific candidates) from CDU/CSU supporters. It turned out to be a less than compelling political appeal.

While it is premature to write the FDP’s obituary, its future looks dim. The FDP now faces a principled competitor, the Alternative for Germany (AFD), which is more likely to shake up the existing power structure. The newly created AFD, which campaigned against the euro, the common European currency, matched the FDP’s vote total, falling just short of the magic 5 percent.

The AFD has the field to itself in resisting Berlin’s ever more expensive commitment to the euro, and the party could broaden its appeal–its economist founder appears to hold a classical liberal philosophy. If so, the Alternative could become the most effective challenge to the CDU/CSU’s slide to the left.

The big winner in Sunday’s German election was Angela Merkel. But the German people are losers; their government seems destined to grow more expensive and intrusive. And the one party that traditionally advocated free markets and individual liberty will disappear not only from government, but also from parliament. The consequences could be serious and long-lasting.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today released the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the physical science volume of its Fifth Assessment Report. The SPM is the most widely-read section of the IPCC reports and purports to summarize and highlight the contents of the thousand-odd pages of the full report. The SPM is agreed to word by word by the international attendees of the IPCC’s final editorial meeting which concluded as the SPM was released.

The Humpty Dumpty-esque report once claiming to represent the “consensus of scientists” has fallen from its exalted wall and cracked to pieces under the burdensome weight of its own cumbersome and self-serving processes, which is why all the governments’ scientists and all the governments’ men cannot put the IPCC report together again.

The pace of climate science far surpasses the glacial movements of large, cumbersome international efforts at consensus building, such as the IPCC, which is why the new report has experienced such a disastrous crack-up.

For example, just this past May, a blockbuster finding was published that the climate sensitivity—how much the earth’s average surface temperature increases as a response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations—is some 40% less than the average value characteristic of the collection of climate models that the IPCC used to produce the projections of future climate change—projections which are at the heart of the IPCC reports. But by the time this paper was published (and several others with similar conclusions), it was far too late to go back and try to fix the climate models and then rerun the projections.

The fact is that the IPCC’s climate models need fixing. Prima facie evidence is that they cannot even track the evolution of broadest measure of climate, the earth’s average temperature, for the last 10–20 years. Despite this being widely obvious to everyone, it didn’t find its way into the scientific literature (although not without trying) until earlier this month.

As a result, the latest science on two key issues: how much the earth will warm as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions, and how well climate models perform in projecting the warming, are largely not incorporated in the new IPCC report.

Which renders the new IPCC report, and its “four years’ work by hundreds of experts” not only obsolete on its release, but completely useless as a basis to form opinions (or policy) related to human energy choices and their influence on the climate.

The IPCC report should be torn up and tossed out, and with it, the entire IPCC process which produced such a misleading (and potentially dangerous) document.

We review the problems with the new IPCC report and the political consequences of relying on it in a couple of recent op-eds, one in the National Review (“The IPCC Political Suicide Pill”) and the other at Fox News (“UN’s new climate change report an embarrassment, self-serving and beyond misleading”), as well as a myriad of blog posts.

Republican Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Mike Lee (UT) and a few others have proposed that all Obamacare funding be cut off by a legislative “rider,” ostensibly forbidding funding of the 2010 law. They argued that public opinion polls trump mere laws enacted by Congress and vetted by the Supreme Court–an idea that sounds more like populism than conservatism.

Even if such “defunding” could have magically attracted the 67 Senate votes needed to override a veto, it would not have undone the mandate to buy insurance, premium subsidies through refundable tax credits, planned cuts in payments to Medicare providers, or any of Obamacare’s numerous new 2013 taxes–including the extra 0.9 percent payroll tax and 3.8 percent surtax on investment income for couples earning more than $250,000. Rhetorical opposition to “funding” did not even include opposing Obamacare taxes.

The Senate Conservative Fund’s “dontfundobamacare” website, which features photos of Cruz and Lee, exhorted: “Tell the Republicans to OPPOSE cloture to stop Harry Reid’s plan to fund Obamacare. Tell them a vote for cloture is a vote to fund Obamacare!” Nine senators who the SCF websites claims opposed cloture nevertheless voted for cloture on September 25. 

“Mr. Cruz’s ‘yes’ vote … confused conservative activists who had mobilized to stand with him against any procedural step forward,” reports the New York Times. Politically innocent people are often easily confused because they fail to notice that “funds” is the key word in all political action funds. As a fundraiser, this theatrical show was great television. And groups that raise funds for political campaigns don’t offer refunds.

With the cloture vote demonstrating the questionable sincerity and unquestionable futility of the mobilization to “defund Obamacare,” efforts were instantly diverted to a Plan B to delay the individual mandate in a continuing resolution that funds the government. Plan B would allow favored groups to enjoy new refundable tax credits and Medicaid entitlements for a year or two before less-favored citizens face fines (starting at 1 percent of marginal income) to help pay for Obamacare’s redistribution of health. 

Ironically, this Republican plan to delay any such unpleasant aspects of Obamacare would be especially helpful to Democrats, who would then face fewer irate voters in the 2014 election. Being fully aware of this, however the Obama administration has largely preempted Republicans by seizing another opportunity to postpone unpopular features of Obamacare through delay or exemptions. As of September 5, “The IRS has delayed compliance with the proposed regulations for one year under Notice 2013–45, 2013–31 I.R.B. 116. The reporting requirements are now effective for tax years beginning in 2015, with the first report due in 2016 for 2015 coverage.”

Subsidies, tax credits, and Medicaid handouts still begin on January 1, 2014. But the individual mandate cannot be enforced until tax returns are filed on April 15, 2016–with or without the Republicans Plan B–because insurers and employers no longer have to provide coverage information for 2014. The effective delay of mandate enforcement tilts the electoral balance toward those receiving taxpayer-subsidized benefits in 2014 as opposed to those who will face the burden of buying costly insurance in 2015 or paying fines in 2016. The de facto delay of the individual mandate, thanks to an IRS decree, will keep voters largely unaware of Obamacare’s full burden in 2014, making subsidies appear temporarily less costly than they are.

Such delay in the individual mandate and fines is great news for Democrats facing reelection in 2014. So why do Republicans imagine this is their clever idea?