President Obama: Universities Need More Money

President Barack, in his first State of the Union Address, has announced that he doesn't think that it costs enough to go to college. Apparently, Harvard College's endowment of $36,556,284,000 (which increased by 5.5% from 2007 to 2008) isn't quite sufficient. Yes, you read that right, Harvard's endowment is in excess of $36.5 billion.

What's that? You didn't hear that in the President's speech last night? OK, he didn't phrase it in quite that way. Here is what he did say.

To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans. Instead, let's take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants.

That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? The government is going to give everybody up to $2,500/year for four years of college and increase the amount of grants available at the same time. In fourteen months, I will have four teenage children. Three years from now, I will have four children in high school. I expect that all four of them will attend college. I should have been on my feet cheering the fact that so much money was going to be made available to help me put my kids through college.

I wasn't.

The more that government tries to help make higher education more affordable by providing assistance in the form of grants (the tax credit is essentially a $2,500/year grant) and loans, the higher college tuition becomes. It's really fairly simple economics - the number of dollars vying for the same number of seats results in inflation in the form of higher tuition.

If I had $5,000 to spend on college tuition prior to this new tax credit, then I would now have $7,500. That would be great news if it weren't for one small fact; nearly everyone else in the country would also have an extra $2,500 to spend on college tuition. Unless there were an increase in the total number of seats available, each college and university would still have the same sized slice of the higher education pie. It's just that the pie would be bigger.

Most of the "elite" colleges, the ones that parents like to brag about their progeny attending, don't need any more money. Of the schools with the ten largest endowments, only one, Columbia, saw the size of their endowment shrink from 2007 to 2008, and that was less than one-tenth of one percent. Of the top 30, there were thirteen schools who were less well endowed in 2008 than they were in 2007 - almost exactly one-third of the schools on the list.

College tuition as not increased just because it costs that much more to give a student a college education, they have increased because of market forces, higher costs merely being one of many factors involved. Giving families more money to spend on higher education may sound good, but when it results in ever higher tuition, the benefit is significantly diminished. Of course, a President that has never had to balance a ledger might not be expected to realize this. Barack Obama may not have said outright that college tuition should be higher, but he might as well have.

Sharpen the Hatchets

Unless I missed it, President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address, boasted of $20 billion in cuts that he was able to make in the past year as he went "line by line" through the budget. Elizabeth MacDonald of the Fox Business Channel has done a bit better, identifying as much as $1.5 trillion in cuts that could be made in the federal budget (article here). Granted, much of this is in the form of assets that the federal government owns, but has no use for, but even without that there is upwards of $300 billion in cuts that could be made nearly immediately. Here are some of the highlights:

--Health and Human Services: $55.1 billion, or 9.4%. Includes overpayment rates of 7.8% and 15.4% in the Medicare fee for service and Advantage programs, respectively.

--Labor: $12.3 billion, or 9.9%. Almost all of the overpayments were in the unemployment insurance program.

--Treasury: $12.3 billion, or 25.5%. All of it was attributed to overpayments in the earned income tax credit.

--Social Security Administration: $8 billion, or 1.2%, in overpayments.

--Agriculture: $4.3 billion in overpayments, or 5.9% of total department spending. Much of it was in the food stamp, federal crop insurance and school meals programs.

--Transportation: $1.5 billion, or 3%. Much of it was in the Federal Highway Administration planning and construction program.

--Veterans Affairs: $1.2 billion, or 2.7%. That included overpayments in the pension and other compensation programs.

--Housing and Urban Development: $1 billion, or 3.5%. All attributed to public housing and rental assistance.

--Defense: $849 million, or 0.5%.

--Homeland Security: $644.5 million, or 3.7%. Much of it was in the Homeland Security grant program as well as Disaster Relief Fund Vendor Payments.

--Education: $599 million, or 2.1%.

It is interesting to note that, of the agencies listed that overpayed, the Department of Defense, long lampooned for things such as the $600 toilet seat, was actually, by this metric, the best stewards of our money, both in terms of total dollars ($849 million - behind only Homeland Security and Education) and percent of overpayments (0.5%). The total for all these overpayments is a whopping $98 billion - nearly 5 times the $20 billion the President seemed so proud of.

Another $123.5 billion could be cut from the budget by merely eliminating programs that don't work.

The OMB has something called the Program Assessment Rating Tool. It found 218
government programs that were either inadequate or ineffective virtually
throughout the entire government--programs run by the Departments of
Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, HHS, Homeland Security, HUD,
Interior, Justice, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, the VA, Army Corps of
Engineers, the EPA, the CFTC, EEOC, and the FCC.

Of course, this is the Fox Business channel - FOX for Pet's sake. Of course FOX is going to be able to find programs to cut. According to MacDonald, though, "these are items that government officials say should be cut." The question, then, is why they haven't been cut yet. When government officials say that government should be cut, it goes without saying that it should be cut.

So, that was more than $200 billion in cuts, but it pales in comparison to the $1.2 trillion in unused federal assets. Now, when I first saw that number, I assumed that this was the amount that could be raised if these assets were sold, but apparently this is not the case.

One alarming example of the government’s wasteful holdings is Chicago’s Old Main Post Office, a 2.5 million-square-foot abandoned structure that has been vacant since 1997 and costs $2 million to maintain annually, (the government recently moved to unload it, after spending more than $26 million to maintain it, government sources note).

So, not only do we, the people, own property that we do nothing with, but we pay for the privilege.

Those on the left often pay lip service to the idea of budget cuts, but like to say that what is needed is "a scalpel, not a hatchet." In this case, however, I think it is time for use to break out the hatchets.

Is Image Everything?

[Obama's] improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.” Mort Zuckerman, US News & World Report

Do we really have a better image in the world if we are: A) not respected; and B) not to be counted on?

With My Eyes Open

Some time ago, I wrote a post about praying with your eyes open. I continue to do this from time to time, and because of it, I saw somethng today that most people missed. I attended the wedding of a young couple today, and during a prayer, the pastor said something about blessing them with children. As he said this, I saw th groom nod his head (actually,his whole upper body) with such earnestness and enthusiasm that you could tell how much it meant to him to be able to start a family with his new bride. If my eyes were closed, I would have missed this. I'm glad I didn't. I will be remembering this in my own prayers tonight.

We Hold These Truths...

It is so simple, yet so eloquent - that most important phrase from the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

We take it as a statement of faith, that we are all created equal, and that we have unalienable Rights. Three of these rights are listed for us - Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness - but these are only some of the rights that we believe that our Creator has endowed us with. The problem is, nowhere, and at no time (to my knowledge) have we attempted to identify any unalienable rights beyond these three.

The United States Constitution guarantees certain rights for American citizens, but today, we have millions of people living within our borders that are not Americans. Some are here legally, some are not. Additionally, we hold individuals as prisoners that have been captured on or near the field of battle. While none of these people may not necessarily enjoy all the rights promised by the Constitution, if the Declaration means anything to us, there remain rights that are unalienable, that every person on the planet has, regardless of gender, race or creed.

So, what are these Rights of Man, and wouldn't it be worth the time to create some sort of document that outlines them, the same way as the Bill of Rights specifically identifies some of the rights protected by the Constitution? It could be a sort of Universal Bill of Rights. We know the first three - Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Beyond that, though, it becomes murky, and so I am asking, what other rights, beyond those mentioned specifically in the Declaration of Independence, should we consider to be unalienable. I would posit that another addition to the list would be a writ of Habeas Corpus, that anyone being held should have the right to petition against illegal imprisonment. Yet another would probably be the right NOT to be tortured, although there are arguments about whether there should be the rare exception to this, as well as what rises to the level of torture. There must be others as well. The question is, what are they.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear...

I remember that, in the aftermath of 9/11, I was angry. I was angry, of course, at the terrorists who perpetrated this, but I was also angry with Major League Baseball.

Now, I may have been one of only a handful of people in the country that was angry with MLB, but I was. Why? Because they cancelled/suspended games. In my opinion, if we started changing our behavior, and cowering in fear, then the terrorists had won.

As soon as games commenced, I promised that not only would I attend the nearest MLB game, but that I would take my two sons (at the time aged 3 and 4) to the game with me. It was a memorable game. Actually, I don't remember anything about the game itself, but the memory of going to the game will be burned into my brain forever.

It was at Dodger Stadium, but instead of Dodger Blue, we wore red, white and blue. My boys were not old enough to really pay attention to the game, so I had brought rolls of patriotic stickers that were soon plastered over my body like patriotic chain mail. I let the boys wander a little around our section on the field level, and they passed out stickers to everyone. I looked up at my older boy, who gave me a look that said to me, "look what I am about to do." With that, he bolted - straight for the field.

I think this is every young parent's worst nightmare. There I was, one parent with two small boys, heading in opposite directions. I barked at my youngest to stay put, and took off after my son, reaching him just as he reached the fence along the right-field foul line. I don't know if he would have tried to make it over the wall, but that scene had played out in my head, and to this day, I don't know if I would have gone over the wall after him or not.

I was reminded of my anger over the missing games from the 2001 Major League Baseball season, by an article I read this weekend in Salon, by Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald, in turn refers to an article by David Brooks, which postulates that we, as a people, have adapted an adolescent view that government can and should keep us safe. In Greenwald's words, this becomes a "most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation."

Ultimately, both Brooks and Greenwald are correct. In the aftermath of 9/11, did any of us believe that it would be some eight years before we would see another terrorist attack on American soil? I think that, when we saw the smoke rising from those towers, and the Pentagon, we viewed it as an act of war, and we expected there to be other attacks to come. Only years of relative safety and security could have bred that kind of expectation. The federal government may have, as one of its primary directives, national security, but it is both unrealistic and naive to expect perfection it its pursuit thereof.

As a nation, we have come to look to our government to protect us, to keep us safe, to keep us from feeling pain. This is not, by any means, confined to national security. In everything from health care reform to global warming, we are asking to be kept safe and pain-free. We expect it from other areas of life, too. Did your doctor misdiagnose you? See you in court, because that shouldn't be allowed.

To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Not only is life full of pain, it is that constant threat of pain, and fear of it, that motivates us. But we have been sold something, indeed, and it comes with a price. Every time we try to buy protection from some of our pain, we pay for it with a bit of our liberty. Greenwald points this out in regard to national security, but it is just as true when it comes to health care and global warming as well.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his First Inaugural Address, said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." While it may not actually be the only thing we should be afraid of, it should, perhaps be our biggest fear. So many of the things that we have been afraid of have turned out to be unfounded, whether it be Alar in apples, or the threat of heterosexual aids, the coming ice-age predicted in the early 1970s, or the dire threat of second-hand smoke, the cure is often worse than the cause, whether real or merely perceived.

Why did I go to that baseball game with my boys in 2001? Because I wasn't going to let fear win out. We need to accept that "life is pain", because with every bit of pain we try to take away, we are taking a little bit of "living." Fort Hood massacre-ist Nadal Hassan wrote, as the final bullet-point of a presentation, said that "we love death more than you love life." We need to take this as a challenge, to love life, and live it, without fear, more than they love death, and more than we fear death. When we can do that, fear will have lost its hold on us, and we will be truly free.

Mission Statements

Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal (article here), describes the 2000's as a decade of missions forgotten. From the federal government, to Wall Street, to Congress, the priesthood and the classroom, too many of our great institutions have forgotten what their purpose, their mission is.

The new year is a time when many of us take the time to make resolutions, to think about the things in your life that you might want to change. Perhaps, though, we should think not just about making resolutions, but instead, refocusing and redefining what our mission in life should be. Perhaps, we should develop New Year's Mission Statements in conjunction with our New Year's Resolutions. What is it that is your purpose in life, and what can you do to help you to fulfill this mission of yours in the next year? Isn't that worth as much as effort as the decision to lose that next 10 pounds?

The Difference of a Decade

After reading the article, Six Sources of Liebermania, where Josh Greenman attempts to categorize the left's contempt for Joe Lieberman, I was brought back, for just a moment, to the Presidential race of 10 years ago. More specifically, I was brought back to the Vice-Presidential debate of that year - a sit-down between Lieberman and Dick Cheney. I was mesmerized by that debate, as it was full of substance and civility, two things not always present in our modern system of political discourse. I remember thinking, after that debate, that I would love to have the chance to vote for a Cheney/Lieberman, or even Lieberman/Cheney ticket, and that either one of them would make a better President than either of the stiffs at the top of the ticket.

That is how I thought of both George W. Bush and Al Gore, a couple of stiffs. Both of them struck me as lightweights, but listening to Cheney and Lieberman... those were men, and they had what the pundits would call, gravitas, a seriousness of purpose, that could only come with the experience that they both had accumulated over the years.

Today, looking back, I stand by my assessment. I still have the utmost respect for both these men. It is interesting, though, that those two men, linked for all time by that race, would today find themselves among the most hated men in America by the political left.

What a difference a decade makes.