So how bad has Congress performed when it comes to their most basic responsibility? As USA Today says, ”The last time Congress passed all of its spending bills by the Oct. 1 deadline, Seinfeld was on television and people were dancing the Macarena.”

It’s a bad sign when avoiding a government shutdown is perceived an accomplishment.

USA Today continues:

For the 14th year in a row, Congress missed the deadline for the fiscal year that began Saturday — as it did last year, passing eight stopgap spending measures that often brought the government within days or hours of shutting down.

“It used to be that one of the ways Congress was judged was the number of appropriations they passed by the end of the fiscal year,” said Stan Collender, a budget expert and partner at Qorvis Communications. “Now we say it’s a success when Congress avoids a government shutdown. Talk about decreased expectations.”

So where do we go from here? Besides another shot to its credibility, there is no consequence for Congress not passing a budget on time. The USA Today article outlines some possible changes to the current budget process including biennial budgeting, a joint budget resolution, line-item lite, and fixing the baseline. Click here to read more on these.

While we’re all for fixing broken processes, this shouldn’t be something Congress has so many problems with. It’s simply laying out a blueprint for how much, and where, the federal government should spend in the coming year. Families all across the country are doing it. Lawmakers should do it as well.

As David Walker, founder of the Comeback America Initiative says, “There’s only one thing under the United States Constitution that Congress is supposed to do every year. And that’s pass a budget. There’s no sanction for not doing that, and maybe that needs to change.”BA

The USA Today reported on the redundant job training programs within the federal government. This bureaucratic blunder is exactly what needs to be merged, consolidated and reorganized.

The federal government spends $18 billion a year on 47 separate job training programs run by nine different agencies.

All but three programs overlap with others to provide the same services to the same population, according to a government report to be released today.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that “little is known about the effectiveness” of the programs because half haven’t had a performance review since 2004 and only five have ever had a study to determine whether job seekers in the program do better than those who don’t participate.

“Here’s just one example of how we’re spending $18 billion, and we don’t have any idea of whether it’s working or not,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who requested the report with Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. “This thing is so big and so out of control.”

Managing that patchwork of federal programs is a network of 575 business-led local workforce boards running 1,300 one-stop job centers.

An overhaul of job training isn’t on the horizon, but Obama’s proposed budget last year would have cut five smaller programs, said a spokeswoman for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Congress never acted. [Note: Congress never even passed a budget last year.]

In a statement to USA TODAY, Assistant Secretary of Labor Jane Oates defended the system, saying “diverse elements and multiple suppliers” help local workforce boards tailor assistance to the needs of job seekers and businesses.

[But she conceded that the] report was “a timely reminder that more work can be done” to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

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Below is an excerpt from USA Today’s article on the analysis findings; please click here to read the entire piece.

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years.

[A]ccording to a USA TODAY analysis of Office of Personnel Management data…:

•Government-wide raises. Top-paid staff have increased in every department and agency. The Defense Department had nine civilians earning $170,000 or more in 2005, 214 when Obama took office and 994 in June.

•Long-time workers thrive. The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years. Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate.

•Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500, up from $111,000 in 2005.

Federal workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce, up from 0.4% in 2005.

Since 2000, federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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We don’t want to think about it, let alone read about it, but higher taxes are on the way.

Two tax hikes were passed this year and another is likely. These new taxes are supposedly being levied just on the rich. But over time, they will hit most of our kids. And they are just the beginning of our children’s and grandchildren’s tax trauma, given Congress’s inability to curb spending.

The two increases are for Medicare. They were buried inside the 2,000-page health-care bill and take effect in 2013. Earn more than $250,000 ($200,000 if single) and you’ll face an extra 0.9 percentage-point FICA tax for Social Security. And once your income passes this level, you’ll pay a 3.4 percent tax on your asset income.

These thresholds aren’t indexed for inflation, let alone growth in real incomes. So these taxes on “the rich” will eventually hit everyone as nominal incomes rise with inflation and productivity. Within 20 years most earners will be paying these new Medicare taxes.

The Alternative Minimum Tax also has thresholds that aren’t indexed for inflation. Congress has raised these levels to keep the share of taxpayers affected constant. But there is no guarantee it will continue to do so.

According to the authors, lifetime tax rates for the next generation of earners will have to be twice what they are now in order to pay for our current and projected overspending.

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Yesterday, The Richmond-Times Dispatch highlighted the effect uncertainty is having on the decision-making processes of Richmond-area commercial real estate developers. Summarizing a recent panel discussion, the article noted that “clarity” — about tax rates, energy costs and health care, in particular — was what the developers said they needed most to confidently develop.

As reported on Wednesday by USA Today, the federal government will spend $773 million to cleanup GM sites in 14 states that were closed as part of the “government-supervised bankruptcy that created New GM. ”

On Tuesday, Philly.com noted that though the recession if officially over, employment is on the decline in 296 of the nation’s 320 largest counties, including all of the counties in the Pittsburgh area.

The Philadelphia Inquirer detailed a proposed bill that would place a 2% cap on annual increases for the salaries and benefits of New Jersey public employees. Unions representing public employees opposed the bill, but proponents say the bill reduces spending without cutting essential services.

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Here are some of the things Americans have to say about their government:

Rhonda Bryner, 44, small business owner, Newark, OH: “They’ve [the government] overstepped their authority … For sure they’ve forgotten about the Constitution and what our forefathers set up.”

Trace Oliver, 53, salesman, Eagle, ID: “This spending like a madman was just incredible to me … We’re Americans. We like the great country we live in but, damn it, you’re giving it away.”

Robert Durden, 68, retired school teacher, San Antonio, TX: “It’s expanding too fast, and it’s too large – the health care bill for one … We are quickly moving into becoming a socialist state, and that’s something I definitely do not want to see happen.”

To be sure there are Americans who still want the government to do more. (USA Today and Gallup divide Americans into five categories on the question of government involvement.) According to the poll 22% of want government completely out of their lives, but approximately the same number – 20%, according to the poll – want government to protect “citizens from life’s travails.” Yvette Chappell, 47 of California said the government is not “doing enough for the right people, for the poor.”

But the study does indicate, as William Galston of the Brookings Institution concluded, that the debate over government spending is at the heart of Americans’ distrust in government. According to Galston, “Trust in government is at a very low ebb … and the perception that spending is out of control and is not achieving its intended purposes is the central feature of the political landscape right now. It absolutely trumps everything else.”

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According to USA Today, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, who has advised both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the $180 billion package of tax cuts and infrastructure spending will not “add up to a lot of new jobs.”

Ken Camp, CEO of Hillenbrand, Inc., told The Wall Street Journal a tax break included in the plan to spur business investment “wouldn’t persuade him to increase investment at the company…” The problem, it seems, is the temporary nature of most of the proposals. Terex Corp. Ron DeFeo, said the tax incentives won’t “change fundamental demand” and actually could lead to more instability in the economy.

One manufacturer said the tax portion of the bill may help a little, but he’s much more concerned with the looming tax increases he’ll face when the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire. Brad Benson, president of Squires-Belt Material Co., told the Los Angeles Times while he welcomes the proposal “as a manufacturer, [he’s] more concerned with the tax-cut issue.”

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As the economic recovery falters, pressure is mounting on policymakers to do something —anything — to boost growth, preferably before Election Day.

In response to this clamor for another short-term stimulus, here’s one piece of advice: Don’t just stand there — do nothing. More government borrowing and spending would accomplish little but provide lawmakers yet another rationale for delaying the day of reckoning.

But for now, with depression off the table and about 30% of the $814 billion stimulus still in the pipeline, it’s time for government to start following the lead of its people and businesses. Instead of passing a minor stimulus that would be almost meaningless in the context of global economic trends, Washington should focus on the big picture. The national debt stands at $13.4 trillion, or $104,000 for every U.S. household. And even that is just a prelude to the horrific numbers projected over the next two decades as the result of surging expenditures on health care and retirement.

Acting to slow the growth in benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare would not only forestall economic Armageddon down the road, it also might actually be the best thing for the economy now. It would restore confidence among investors that the nation is not heading for a major credit crisis or a period of hyperinflation.

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The unemployment rate rose in nearly half of the nation’s 372 largest metro areas in July, as the pace of hiring slowed from earlier this year.

Hiring has slowed nationwide, as businesses are increasingly unwilling to add workers, even as their profits and cash piles grow. Many economists say business executives are holding back until there is more clarity about the economic outlook.

The economy is barely growing and economists worry it won’t expand fast enough to bring down the 9.5% national unemployment rate. On Friday, the government is expected to say that private employers added only 41,000 jobs in August, down from 71,000 the previous month.

Note: Be sure to check back tomorrow morning for our quick breakdown of the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s monthly jobs report.

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At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.

What the data show:

•Benefits. Federal workers received average benefits worth $41,791 in 2009. Most of this was the government’s contribution to pensions. Employees contributed an additional $10,569.

•Pay. The average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000. USA TODAY reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20% more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.

•Total compensation. Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.

Click here to read the entire article.

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