Burned Out?

On Feb. 7 the U.S. government will bump into the federal debt ceiling - again.

Unless congress raises the ceiling, the federal government will be unable to pay all its bills.

"Without borrowing authority, at some point very soon, it would not be possible to meet all of the obligations of the federal government,” (Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew) said...

So where's all the drama? The fireworks? Why doesn't anyone seem concerned?

Is it because, after all the sturm und drang of the sequester and the government shutdown, we're all burned out over faux fiscal crises?

Or is it because most people think that the debt ceiling will be raised without the brinksmanship and theatrics of last year?

I suspect it's the latter. The republicans feel burned by the way they were portrayed as obstructionists and extremists. That's what happens when the media is firmly on one side, and the other side is woefully inept at getting its message out to boot.

What we have here is a system that is broken in many ways. One of the more systemic is the current process in which congress continuously passes spending bills far in excess of tax revenue, separate and apart from legislation authorizing the debt ceiling. Not only does that encourage fiscal irresponsibility -- how long can any entity exist by spending more than it brings in? -- but it also decouples any limit on borrowing funds from the process that creates the necessity to borrow those selfsame funds.

Unifying the spending, revenue, and debt actions into a single process and bill would help clarify and highlight the nation's financial situation.

Maybe that's why they don't want to do it...

Of course, any serious discussion of the country's finances simply must begin with a hard look at how, and how much, $$$ is spent on things that never should see the light of day. Here's just one example.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management is taking heat for spending $98,670 to install a single outhouse at a trailhead in Alaska, the most recent example of federal agencies making questionable purchases in September.

That last bit - the part about "questionable purchases in September" - is related to the 'spend it or lose it' aspect of the federal budgeting process, whereby an agency's budget for the next fiscal year (which ends Sep. 30) is based on how much of their budget was spent in the previous year. If the agency doesn't spend all its allocated funds (or more), next year's budget is slashed. That results in a powerful negative incentive to spend, spend, spend.

Back to our example:

The prefabricated Aspen Single, produced by outhouse manufacturer Romtec Inc., has a single toilet, operates without water and can hold 750 to 1,000 gallons of waste. But the company website puts the estimated starting price of the unit at $10,000, a little more than one-tenth of what the government paid.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. Why on earth did the government pay almost ten times what a private citizen would have paid? We'll get to that in a moment. But first, think about this a little deeper. Basically, we're talking about a shed over a hole in the ground that holds somewhere around 1000 gallons.

The taxpayer-funded $98,000 outhouse.

Granted, it's a nice looking shed. But still, I can dig a big hole, line it with sealant so the contents don't leach out, and build a shed over it for one helluva lot less than $10K, much less $100K. So why the inflated cost?

After five companies competed for the contract, BLM hired Alaska-based Big Street Construction, a small company run by a married couple that is listed in federal databases as both owned by a woman and minority-owned.

"...owned by a woman and minority-owned."

Oh.

Now I get it.

But wait. It gets worse. Instead of constructing the outhouse themselves, the "woman and minority-owned" firm turned around and purchased it from a company that actually builds the damn things.

The actual manufacturer, Romtec, is based in Oregon, and government paperwork lists it as the manufacturing location. That suggests that the unit itself is being transported to Alaska all the way from Oregon. The trip from Romtec’s headquarters to the trailhead is almost 2,500 miles.

That means we taxpayers are being billed for the cost of the outhouse, including the manufacturing firm's overhead and profit, along with transportation costs from Oregon to Alaska, installation cost, and the "woman and minority-owned" firm's overhead and profit.

And here's the cherry on top of the outhouse sundae. The outhouse doesn't have internal plumbing. It's basically a fancy port-a-potty sitting on top of a small septic tank. At some point the tank will get full, which means the BLM will have to hire a private company to empty it. That means another grossly (hah!) inflated federal contract to some loophole-savvy firm.

Of course, BLM personnel could empty the tank themselves.

Let's see a show of hands from everyone who thinks that will happen...

Since the federal government knows only one way to deal with crap - dump it on the taxpayers - there's little doubt what their solution will be.