With the dust now settled from the 2010 election, the time for balancing the budget and cutting spending is now. Thankfully, there are a lot of smart people out there with some good ideas — even those that can be agreed upon by the left and right — that can go a long way toward closing the federal budget deficit.

National Taxpayers Union and the lefties over at PIRG have come up with $600 million in specific spending cuts;

Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation has put together his own list of $343 billion in spending cuts;

Ben Friedman and Christopher Preble over at Cato have put a list together of $1.2 trillion in defense-related spending cuts (over the next ten years).

These are just a few of the specific spending cut proposals I’ve seen. If the new Republican majority in the House is serious about cutting spending, they need to start with a few items on these lists and add their own touches.

President Obama is traveling through India and the far east and while we at the Rio Grande Foundation have had many differences with the President and his economic policies, Obama rightly noted that India’s economic development helps rather than hurts America’s economy and creates rather than destroys jobs. The broader point here is that free trade is economically beneficial.

The question I have is why Obama has not supported free trade agreements like the pending one with Columbia and South Korea.

These initiatives would help open new markets to American goods and services. Obama should work with Republicans to expand free trade as a means of helping to turn the US economy around.

I talked to Mike Jaxson of KSVP Radio in Artesia about the 2010 election, Susana Martinez’s victory, Steve Pearce’s return to Congress, and the Environmental Improvement Board’s carbon cap power grab.

Take a listen here.

Mayor Berry has wisely announced that Albuquerque cannot afford to waste taxpayer money on an expanded convention center complex. While the Mayor left the prospect of this project open for the future, he did take a firm stand against those like Councilor Ken Sanchez who see no problem with raising taxes in a down economy for a project that will benefit only a small sliver of the business community while adding to the City’s debt burden (which includes $78 million in outstanding debt on the current facility).

The Mayor’s decision shows that he is serious about fiscal restraint and turning around Albuquerque’s economy by making it attractive to businesses and entrepreneurs rather than using taxpayer dollars to target specific industries and groups for largess. Thank you Mr. Mayor!

I admit it: I am a fan of late-night comedian/political host Jon Stewart and his Daily Show. So, it was with great interest that I followed his “Rally to Restore Sanity” last weekend in Washington, DC.

While Stewart is definitely to the left of center, he has an anti-establishment streak that I enjoy. He gave an interesting speech at the end of last weekend’s rally that I think sums up Stewart’s frustrations — and those of many on both sides of the political spectrum in this country — over the lack of civility in the political discourse.

While I agree with most of what Stewart says, he (and most on the left) fail to understand that one of the big reasons for the lack of civility is that the use of government force to take over health care or control the economy (through cap and trade), and the generally-expanding role of the federal government is bound to generate increased hostility. After all, no person or group of persons can make decisions for 300 million other people that makes everyone happy. That doesn’t even take into account the reality that frustration increases when some are forced to pay the bills for others.

That is why the Founders emphasized both voluntary interaction and federalism. The reality is (as Stewart notes in his speech) that Americans get along extremely well when we interact voluntarily (the double-thank you moment, for example). It is when a distant and isolated federal government must make one-size-fits-all decisions on education, health care, and the economy in general that people start to get frustrated.

Hopefully, the folks in Washington get the message from the voters that Washington is simply incapable of solving our problems and that average people working voluntarily together have always done a better job at this. We’ll see whether they got the message.

Last night’s election results certainly represented a shift towards conservatism and the GOP here in New Mexico and nationally. With the election of Susana Martinez as the nation’s first Hispanic female Governor, fiscal restraint and limited government will hopefully be the dominant paradigm for the next four years.

While it was not as prominently reported — and it would seem they announced their decision on Election Day to keep it that way — New Mexico’s Environmental Improvement Board approved a New Mexico-only carbon cap.

So, Governor-Elect Susana Martinez faces an important early decision as far as what she should do with regard to the EIB’s carbon cap (which she has said she strongly opposes). An executive order rescinding the would be one way to repeal the new regulation which will, if it is not stopped, harm New Mexico’s economy by forcing 63 large industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions – including power plants as well as oil and gas companies – to reduce emissions by 2% per year until 2020.

I hope Martinez takes action upon her inauguration to rescind the carbon cap. It will undoubtedly be an important early decision for the Governor-elect.

Amongst all of the election coverage I totally missed reports like this one which states that the recently completed runway at the taxpayer-financed “Spaceport America” in southern New Mexico was named after Governor Richardson.

Personally, I find the practice of naming public buildings and other taxpayer-funded things like the spaceport runway after sitting public officials to be rather offensive. Our Capitol Reporter, Rob Nikolewski has reported extensively on this here, here, and here. I happen to agree with the Las Cruces Sun-News editorial that taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick here. After all, if the Spaceport is going to be the international attraction that we all expect (not), why not sell the naming rights much as they do for sports stadiums?

Of course, selling naming rights would have deprived Richardson of his “legacy” and we couldn’t have that. I’m surprised he didn’t name the Rail Runner after himself. Of course, he took credit for “funding” it a long time ago.

Robert Samuelson has a great piece in today’s Washington Post on President Obama’s misguided efforts to create a national high-speed rail network.

Samuelson notes, quite rightly, that high speed rail will be tremendously costly, will not reduce traffic congestion, and will serve a tiny, preferred minority group of passengers. Randal O’Toole said many of the same things during his visit to New Mexico (and in a policy brief), just as we at the Rio Grande Foundation said about the Rail Runner.

How does a government monopoly compete against itself? Good question. Perhaps the author of a recent Albuquerque Journal column, Natalie Medina Coggins, has some idea because she asserts that this is the case throughout her article explaining why New Mexico’s higher education system is not only efficient, but could grow.

The assertions made in the article contradict research by the Legislative Finance Committee and the Rio Grande Foundation (to name just two entities that have studied the issue). Medina Coggins takes Sen. John Arthur-Smith to task for pointing out the obvious fact that “duplicate courses are too expensive and risk diluting the state’s best academic programs.”

Medina Coggins cites her husband’s experiences as a professor of social work as “proof” that New Mexico couldn’t possibly cut spending on higher ed, but makes no specific, substantive arguments. After all, this would be tough to do as it would be quite difficult to “prove” that taxpayers benefit from the millions of dollars annually spent to produce new masters in social work and other areas of interest that may or may not provide a real return to society.

While an educated society is important, taxpayer subsidies for higher education clearly benefit middle and upper-income citizens at the expense of families whose children do not obtain a college degree (more than 75% of the population). Like all expenditures of taxpayer money in tough economic times, higher ed spending needs analysis and transparency. Contrary to Medina Coggins’ assertions, Sen. Smith and Rep. Saavedra should be applauded for taking a closer look at the issue.

Jim announced a while back that he was retiring. With all of the work he’s done for the Foundation in keeping an eye on the politicians and the ruling class here in New Mexico (and nationwide), we decided to have a going away party and honor him with a Lights of Liberty award.

Here is Jim receiving the award:

We also gave Jim a few gag gifts including a framed map of New Mexico’s 40 Congressional districts — as found by Scarantino in his “Phantom Congressional Districts” story.

The map — including some whimsical districts — was created by Albuquerque cartoonist Rex Barron and can be found below (if you are interested in obtaining a similar map, email us at info@riograndefoundation.org:

I knew that my writing (here and here) on the success of tax cuts in driving New Mexico’s economy would eventually get a rise out of some left-wingers. Today, Gerry Bradley of New Mexico Voices for Children rose to the occasion with this article decrying both the Bush and Richardson tax cuts. The gist of Bradley’s article reminds me of Bill Clinton’s quote from some years back “sure, we could cut taxes, but what if you spent your money wrong?”

Bradley seems to assume that anyone who saw their tax burden reduced under the Bush and Richardson tax cuts of the past decade took off for a European vacation and that these cuts had no positive economic impact at home. This is just silly. Richardson’s tax cuts, for example, reduced rates for everyone earning more than $16,000 annually. This hardly qualifies as “rich.” Even those who are earning more money — which includes small business owners — are spending a vast majority of that money here at home in New Mexico, not on vacations overseas.

Lastly, Bradley fails to even address why New Mexico’s personal income level rose above several other states (and has continued to rise even as oil and gas prices have fallen). Yes, we had a housing boom, but so did many other states. He also does not address findings by Arthur Laffer and others that states with no personal income tax are magnets for population and investment. Bradley just doesn’t like tax cuts. He and his cronies at “Voices” would rather have government control all economic output. That is the argument, plain and simple.

With Halloween just around the corner, it seems like every day we find out about another “trick” associated with the ObamaCare health plan. Two days ago, the New Mexico Independent reported that Aetna would no longer be writing small group or individual policies in the state.

With Blue Cross already haggling with the state’s PRC over major rate hikes, it seems that the combination of rapidly-rising costs under ObamaCare and the PRC’s unwillingness to raise rates could make individual health insurance plans nearly impossible to obtain in the state, thus forcing more and more people onto government programs.

Perhaps killing the last remnants of private health care was the strategy from the outset?

The Albuquerque Journal’s letters section is often good for a few laughs. Of course it would be even funnier if the letters did not so often display extreme ignorance both about the role of government and economic reality. One recent letter that struck me as particularly funny was “If Tea Party Wins, the People Lose.”

While I certainly disagree with the premise, the letter makes an assertion that I found particularly egregious, that being: “The Bush-Cheney era was the closest the Libertarians have gotten to real power since Hoover.” This is just ignorant.

According to the book, which is written from a libertarian perspective “Recarving Rushmore,” which was written by Ivan Eland (who will be speaking at an upcoming Rio Grande Foundation-sponsored event in Albuquerque), George W. Bush was the 36th best of 40 presidents (not exactly close to the libertarian ideal).

Herbert Hoover was 18th out of 40th which is much better, but still not “great.” So, who is the libertarian ideal when it comes to the presidency? John Tyler and Grover Cleveland top the list, but among modern presidents Clinton and Carter do rather well. To find out who the best “libertarian” presidents really are, come listen to Ivan Eland’s presentation on November 10 and pick up a copy of his book.

Liberals love to claim that Social Security did not cause our current federal deficit situation. While technically-correct in the past, that situation is about to change quickly and for the worse.

According to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

Social Security will pay out more than it takes in this year, sending out $41 billion more in benefits than it will collect. This is the first time since 1983 that benefit payouts have outstripped collections, and according to CBO data, the finances of the Social Security system are deteriorating more rapidly than even the CBO expected.

Using CBO’s last three long-term projections for Social Security, the above chart graphs the decline. CBO uses the percentage of taxable payroll left to Social Security at year’s end as the bases for its projections. The percentage of taxable payroll is an estimate of earnings subject to the payroll tax. When the percentage becomes negative, Social Security is paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes in a given year.

So, Social Security is now causing the federal deficit to increase. It is time for reform. Preferably along the lines of this idea.

Carter Bundy of AFSCME recently wrote an article attacking the Rio Grande Foundation and its data on government employment that appeared over at www.nmpolitics.net. Wrote Bundy, in part:

In what is becoming an annual ritual, I have to point out the incredibly obvious statistical and analytical errors in the Rio Grande Foundation’s analysis.

Well, we certainly couldn’t let such a direct attack go without a response, so economists Scott Moody and Wendy Warcholik penned a response that appeared at NMPolitics today. While responding to several of Bundy’s points, Moody and Warcholik conclude that:

Despite Mr. Bundy’s wishful thinking, New Mexico is poorer thanks to its bloated government workforce. Not only would the average household save $3,732 in taxes per year with a right-sized government payroll, but over the long-run they would also have another $10,857 in personal income to spend on goods and services such as homes, cars, education and health care.

The Rio Grande Foundation’s Watchdog, Jim Scarantino and others have expressed concerns about the conflicts of interest on the Environmental Improvement Board which is expected to rule shortly after the election (coincidence, I think not), on a New Mexico-only carbon cap.

It was nice to see this opinion piece from local hydrologist Michael Wallace which largely echoed and expounded upon Scarantino’s findings, particularly relating to Gay Dillingham.

In case you haven’t heard, there has been a huge hullabaloo over some remarks made by (and subsequent firing from NPR) of Juan Williams. In case you have been living under a rock, Williams said on Fox News that he “worries when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.”

NPR, which receives a relatively small (but significant) portion of its revenue from federal taxes, is now under attack by Republicans. While I agree in principle that taxpayers should not fund media outlets (whether those be newspapers or radio stations) I wonder where these conservatives were during the Bush Administration when they had total control of the government and failed to eliminate NPR funding?

According to Wikipedia, the best source I could find, “In 2009, member stations derived 6% of their revenue from local funding and 10% of their revenue from the federal funding in the form of CPB grants.”

It would seem that eliminating the small amount of funding it receives from the federal government would benefit NPR rather than harming it by insulating it from criticisms that it is a mouthpiece for big-government, left-wing causes. Freed of its federal sponsors, perhaps NPR could become the left’s version of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh?

With the term “tejana” being thrown around this election as a pejorative and Diane Denish saying that “Texas policy is bad for New Mexico,” it would seem that some analysis of Texas’s economic policies relative to New Mexico’s (and the rest of the nation for that matter) might be in order.

First and foremost, it is worth noting that the two main traits of the Texas economy that differ from New Mexico are 1) lack of an income tax; 2) less onerous labor union laws in Texas.

I’ve previously blogged about Texas’s economic success here and here, but the positive data from Texas just keeps coming.

Recently, Investors Business Daily compared the Texas economy (very favorably) with California. According to the article:

By August, the job count in Texas had rebounded to where it was when the recession officially began in December 2007. California’s payroll was still 1.46 million below the pre-recession level. The nation as a whole was down by 6.42 million jobs. In other words, California, with one-eighth the nation’s population, accounts for more than a fifth of its job deficit left over from the downturn.

This chart is particularly interesting:

Another article extolling Texas as an economic model comes from Rich Lowry over at National Review.

Simply put, the BEST thing the Richardson/Denish Administration has done is to move New Mexico slightly closer to the Texas model by reducing our top income tax rate from 8.2 to 4.9 percent. It seems hard to believe that Denish really believes that what has worked in Texas won’t work here. While time is tight, perhaps Martinez should campaign on the possibility that she can bring some of Texas’s economic prosperity to the “Land of Enchantment?”

There was an interesting AP article recently in the Albuquerque Journal that explained how politicians and taxpayers are leery of signing off on and paying for major infrastructure projects. The economy and a lack of money are cited as the major reasons, but some wonder if America has lost its “mojo” if you will, in terms of building big things.

I don’t know about that. My view is that such projects should be built on a “user-pays” basis and that labor for such projects should be paid at market wages, not inflated “Davis-Bacon” rates. So, the railroad tunnel that Chris Christie has abandoned — which would never pay for itself — should probably not be built.

The local “bike-bridge to nowhere” is another project that would have never gotten off the ground if local bike riders had to pay for it.

Another project that shouldn’t be built is the silly $26 million project that will turn Lead and Coal, roads that were meant to be major throughways, into bike-friendly parkways with slower traffic. Paying good money to decrease mobility is just silly.

There are plenty of big projects begging be built around Albuquerque like major interchanges at Paseo and I-25 and Paseo and Coors, but our infrastructure funding system is broken. Alas, that is the real issue. Until government is competent in funding projects that make sense, I think Americans will rightly question government’s competence to prioritize and build these projects.

The future if our politicians don’t cut spending and do it now:

Find out more about CAGW here.

A while back, the Legislative Finance Committee published what can only be described as a report that is biased against charter schools (the original study link was broken at the time of this writing). Criticisms included performance, expense, and a supposed lack of accountability. We at the Rio Grande Foundation believe that charters, while not a panacea, can be a valuable alternative to traditional public schools. In fact, my own cousin is a charter success story.

So it was with great interest and pleasure that I read liberal lion of the New Mexico SenateJerry Ortiz y Pino’s opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal in which he spells out the specific flaws in the LFC study and explains why charters actually operate at a significant disadvantage relative to their traditional public school brethren.

Ortiz y Pino’s column not only effectively defends charters against the repeated attacks by those who oppose education reform, but shows that left and right can agree that reform is indeed needed.

Ever wonder why most historians think FDR is one of America’s greatest presidents even though he utterly ignored the US Constitution (which is supposedly the law of the land)? Ever wish that presidents were considered “great” if they adhered to the principles of limited government this nation was founded on? I know I have!

Well, for an overview of the presidents — and an effort at putting the first two years of Obama’s presidency in perspective — attend the Rio Grande Foundation’s upcoming luncheon with keynote speaker Ivan Eland, author of “Recarving Rushmore.”

Eland judges presidents not by how much they expand the power of the executive, but by how they preserve your life, liberty, and property. Reservations are $35 and can be made online here.

Tune in to 1550 KIVA between now and the election and you’ll likely hear a minute-long commentary from me about the bond measures on the ballot this fall.

So far I’ve done three commentaries which should be in heavy rotation. Take a listen by clicking here, here, and here.

Funny how things catch up with you. Back in 2005, as Director of Government Affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, I (along with several other conservative leaders including Grover Norquist) signed an open letter outlining our groups’ collective opposition to expanded federal subsidies for local law enforcement.

Well, as the Santa Fe Reporter has found, this federal program has been expanded dramatically (nearly tripled) under President Obama’s so-called “stimulus” program. Funds from the program, as The Reporter notes in a detailed article, were used in part for a mistaken drug raid in Española.

Law enforcement — like nearly all other government programs — are better left to local government. President Obama certainly does not understand this fact and his “stimulus” is a great example.