Here’s a great conversation at Slate​.com about Shane Harris’ new book The Watchers.

We’ll be having the author here at Cato on March 10th for a similar discussion of his book and the growth of the surveillance state.

Register here.

On the heels of exploiting the name of perhaps the world’s all-time greatest free-marketeer, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has decided to cut right to the chase and abuse the term “free market” itself. Writing in the Washington Post as part of his ongoing effort to demonize banks and push the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act over the finish line, Duncan offers the following:

The president’s plan actually creates jobs and draws on free-market principles by selecting private companies through a competitive process to service student loans issued directly by the Education Department. These private companies, including Sallie Mae, compete for our business and are evaluated on the quality of their customer service and their default rates.

Got it? When the federal government decides which companies get to service loans that it completely controls, those are “free-market principles” at work.

Right. And the legislation Duncan is trying to sell us really is fiscally “responsible.”

Rep. Gene Taylor, D‑MS, thinks so. According to CongressDaily, Taylor is about to introduce a two-page bill that would withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Taylor blames the agreement with Canada and Mexico for the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs since it was enacted in 1994. This is a popular but false charge. Manufacturing jobs have declined in the past 15 years for one big reason: soaring productivity.

Overall output at U.S. factories was actually 37 percent higher in 2009 compared to 1993, the year before NAFTA took effect, according to Table B‑51 in the latest Economic Report of the President. We are producing a higher volume of stuff with fewer workers because individual workers are so much more productive than they were in the early 1990s.

As I’ve argued before, NAFTA has spurred more trade and deeper integration among the three partner countries. It has created new opportunities for American companies and their workers to raise their competitiveness in global markets. It has strengthened ties to our two closest neighbors.

The U.S. government would be foolish to withdraw from an agreement that continues to pay huge dividends.

Usually when I hear that a policy proposal has bipartisan support, I instinctively check for my wallet. But I greeted with pleasure the news on Wednesday that two lawmakers — Rep. Scott Garrett (R, NJ) and Rep. Patrick Murphy (D, PA) — had introduced a bill to shut down the USDA’s Market Access Program, which the congressmen rightly paint as “corporate welfare to big business.”

I yield to no one in my abhorrence of trade barriers, here and abroad. But this program is less about addressing market access per se, and more about taxpayer funding of marketing campaigns, trade shows and other promotions, which surely are the responsibility of the firms/​industries concerned.

Incidentally, the Market Access Program is a line item in one of many agricultural programs identified by our Tax and Budget team as being ripe for the chopping block.

A couple weeks ago Orson Swindle, an assistant secretary of commerce for economic development in the Reagan Administration, was kind enough to send me news articles from his days battling policymakers over porky Economic Development Administration projects. In a 1989 Insight article, Orson gave a nice summation of one of the problems with special interest spending:

The minute you fund a program you’ve just created a constituency group. Before long, they will be organized and have a staff here in Washington, which is paid from dues from the members who get their money from the federal government. And those go up and lobby to keep the money going. It’s a classic microcosm of what’s wrong with government.

The National Association of Development Organizations is a perfect example of what Orson was talking about.

NADO says it “is an advocate for federal programs and policies that promote regional strategies and solutions for addressing local community and economic development needs.” It got started in 1967 when federal subsidization of state and local government was taking off. It’s headquartered in Washington and its dues come from members getting money from the federal government. According to USASpend​ing​.gov, NADO itself has received almost $1 million in federal money over the past decade.

Economic Development Administration funding is obviously a core interest for NADO. On January 8^th it applauded a pro-EDA funding letter sent by 20 senators to President Obama. NADO’s concluding remarks are illustrative of the incestuous relationship between the special interests and members of Congress:

NADO thanks those regional development organizations that contacted their Senators to urge them to sign the letter. Regional development organizations are encouraged to formally thank those Senators that showed their support for EDA.

Exactly what does NADO mean by formally thank? Regardless, “thanking” politicians for giving the gift of other people’s money is patently repulsive.

On February 3^rd, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science held a hearing on the EDA to discuss its budget. According to the subcommittee’s website, four of the five witnesses called to testify were NADO representatives. The fifth witness was the president of the Arkansas State University System, whose testimony sang the virtues of EDA grants. Talk about a stacked deck.

For those unaware, this is how appropriations committee dog and pony shows hearings operate. There’s usually nary a word of criticism from testifiers for the simple reason that critics are generally persona non grata.

Former Yale University professor James Payne wrote an insightful Cato Policy Analysis entitled “Budgeting in Neverland: Irrational Policymaking in the U.S. Congress and What Can Be Done about It.” In it, Payne details how appropriations hearings are pro-government spending echo chambers. Payne recounts one exchange with a member of Congress that is rather ironic:

In an interview with Rep. Allan Mollohan (D‑WV), the congressman unconsciously revealed how extremely one-sided the environment was. I mentioned to him that as part of my research I would be coming to his appropriations subcommittee to testify against funding for the National Science Foundation. “You don’t want to fund the National Science Foundation?” he asked in disbelief. “I’ve never heard anybody say they didn’t think NSF ought to be funded.”

There are many arguments against taxpayer funding of scientific research, including the points that it retards science, corrupts scientists, and hinders economic development, not to mention all the more obvious ones about opportunity cost, tax burdens, tax system overhead costs, waste, and perverse income redistribution. That Representative Mollohan had never heard any of these many arguments, despite his presumed expertise as a member of the NSF appropriations subcommittee, showed how complete the insulation of members of Congress had become.

Congressman Mollohan is the chairman of the aforementioned House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science.

In his study, Payne surveyed 14 committee hearings. His finding speaks for itself:

The comprehensive tabulation showed that in those 14 hearings, 1,014 witnesses appeared to argue in favor of programs and only 7 spoke against them, an imbalance of 145 to 1.

With the release of the president’s bloated $3.8 trillion budget proposal, the appropriations season is under way on Capitol Hill. So while taxpayers will be hard at work for Congress, Congress will be hard at work for the special interests like NADO. A classic microcosm of what’s wrong with Congress indeed.

Today, President Obama began to fulfill the promise that health care legislation would be hashed out on C‑SPAN. His discussion with congressional leaders was broadcast on that cable channel and streamed live on the Internet. The nearly six-and-a-half hour-long meeting began to touch on many of the issues at stake in the health care area. 

I’ll leave observations about the merits to our experts, who live-blogged the morning session. I found a few things interesting from a transparency perspective:

The format was far more conducive to productive discussion than procedures for “debate” in Congress. What generally happens in the House and Senate is display of members’ and senators’ well-settled views. So today interested Americans could get a real sense of the issues and how their representatives think about them.

There seemed to be a division between representatives who knew the technical subject matter and those who—for lack of a better phrase—knew the emotional subject matter. Surprisingly astute commentaries on fiscal realities were met with appeals to the story of one constituent or another—or of members’ own families’ health predicaments.

Though there was much talking past one another, these are all good things to see. It will inform the public, and a better informed public will make better decisions about health care legislation, about individual representatives, and about the proper role of government. 

I know how I feel about these things. (I’m soft-pedaling my views here as hard as I can…) My opinions didn’t change, though I adopted new nuances to my thinking.

It’s doubtful that many people’s opinions will change. But I’m confident that a more open process will lead to better results in many senses: specific policy results; electoral activity; and people’s overall sense of the role of government.

Today’s meeting only scratched the surface, of course. Sessions like this in the days and weeks to come will do more to improve the transparency of the lawmaking process, in this issue and hopefully others. Today’s transparency precedent is something that the president and federal lawmakers should not retreat from.

A follow up on yesterday’s post about my skepticism that we would be able to get out of Iraq by 2011 (and get all “combat” troops out by September 1 of this year):

• Tom Ricks reports that Gen. Odierno has formally requested keeping a combat brigade in Kirkuk beyond the September 1 deadline; but
• Laura Rozen says we should keep our eyes peeled for a Senate resolution whose “group of cosponsors will confirm that, at long last, the war over the war is over.”

One way to square these two seemingly contradictory statements is if the bipartisan consensus Rozen implies exists reflects an agreement between Democrats and Republicans that the United States should use Iraq as a new military base in the Middle East like we used to use Saudi Arabia. Ricks’s report strongly implies that the military is trying to force Obama to stay, although it’s not clear whether Obama has any desire to take up a fight with them over leaving. And that’s assuming he actually wants to leave.

Ricks writes cryptically that “this debate is just beginning. I expect that Obama actually is going to have to break his promises on Iraq and keep a fairly large force in Iraq, but of course that won’t be the first time he’s had to depart from his campaign rhetoric on this war.” Finally, Ricks suggests

Let’s open the betting: How many U.S. military personnel will be in Iraq four years from today–that is, Feb. 25, 2014? The person who guesses closest gets a signed copy of any of my books. My guess: 28,895. Not “combat” troops, of course! Goodness no. Just “advisory” troops who carry M‑16s and call in airstrikes and such.

I have enough humility to duck a precise guess, but I would be very, very surprised if the number is zero. Americans don’t give up military footholds unless we’re chased out, a la Vietnam, Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia. We’re still in Europe, for goodness’ sake.