On today’s program for Wednesday May 16, 2012
- A new bill calls for a duplication scorecard. How would it work and how would it impact your job? We talk to Congressman James Lankford.
- Cut your travel by 30% that’s just one of the new requirements from the Office of Management and Budget. We’ll find out what other programs could be on the chopping block with Tom Fox with the Partnership or Public Service.
- Tensions between the public and the government worker are high. But a new op-ed in Roll Call says killing the public relations messenger won’t make the government’s public trust and transparency issues disappear.
Here in Washington, there are still reverberations coming from House Speaker John Boehner’s comments at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2012 Fiscal Summit. Many insider think Speaker Boehner drew a line in the sand over the debt limit. You can assess for yourself in the following clip:
The Washington Post’s Wonkbook columnist Ezra Klein writes this morning that this tactic worked well for the House Speaker last year, where there was a similar line in the sand. Republicans got more than $900 billion in immediate spending cuts, as well as $1.2 trillion in triggered spending cuts — though they don’t much like the $500 billion or so of those cuts scheduled to fall on the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, how has government spending changed in the past 50 years? NPR has pulled numbers from the Office of Management and Budget and made it easily accessible in a chart. Click on the NPR image to the right to enlarge it.
What has happened to defense spending over that 50 year period? Well, it’s gone down significantly. Defense spending has shrunk as a percentage of total government spending. That being said, it is still the largest single category of federal spending.
The numbers how big growth in Medicaid, Medicare and other health services… Of course, 50 years ago, Medicare and Medicaid didn’t exist.
Low interest rates have helped Uncle Sam too… the cost of borrowing remains quite low.
But perhaps the most interesting factoid: Federal spending in 1962 represented 18 percent of the US gross domestic product: $707 billion. Today — 2012 — $3.1 trillion… government spending accounts for 24 percent of GDP, adjusted for inflation.
Don’t miss our 7 Gov’t Stories you need to know about: Including a federal pay debate
A few closing items
- The Navy has finally released the request for proposals for its much anticipated Next Generation Enterprise Network. NGEN, as it is called, is a $10 billion follow-on to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet — NMCI — and it is essentially the contractor that will operate the network for the Navy and Marine Corps. Washington Technology notes the final RFP is just out. Proposals are due July 18 and the Navy says it expects awards by Feb. 12, 2013. The Navy has put a price tag of $4.5 billion on the contract over five years, but Deltek has pegged the value at $10 billion over 10 years. The NMCI contract, which was won by EDS, which was later bought by Hewlett-Packard, was about $10 billion, but has been more than that because of extensions to that contract. And talk about a big contract — NGEN will have 800,000 users at 2,500 locations.
- They say there is an app for that, but do you use apps? How many apps do you use? How many do you have on your smartphone? The average is 41 — yes, 41 applications. New data show the growing ubiquity of smartphones in the US is helping to drive the surge in app downloads. Nielsen reports the average number of apps per device has also increased significantly over the past year. While 50 percent of US mobile subscribers have a smartphone — up from 31 percent just one year ago — the average number of apps per smartphone has risen to 41 from 32 — a 28% rise.