2014 ndi 6ws-fitzmier, Lundberg, Abelkop Economy Disads Spending da

Aff Thumper—TI Spending

White house spending on TI should cause the impact-Obama pushing $302 billion TI bill which is obvi more than ocean exploration

The White House pushed lawmakers on Monday to take another look at President Obama’s $302 billion proposal for a new transportation bill as federal infrastructure funding nears a bankruptcy that would stall hundreds of U.S. construction projects. Lawmakers are scrambling to come up with a way to pay for an extension of federal road and transit funding before a bankruptcy in the Department of Transportation’s Highway Trust Fund that has been projected to occur next month. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that lawmakers should reconsider Obama’s proposal to use revenue from closing corporate tax loopholes to replenish the transportation fund as the deadline draws near. “The proposal that I've seen that I like the best is one that was put forward by this administration,” Earnest said when asked about Congressional progress on identifying a way to pay for the transportation funding fix. “It is a common-sense proposal that certainly deserves the kind of bipartisan support that unfortunately is all too rare in Washington these days,” Earnest continued. “The proposal put forward by the administration … involves closing loopholes that only benefit the wealthy and well-connected, and closing those loopholes generates some revenue that could then be used to invest in the kind of infrastructure that benefits everybody, those at the top and — and middle class families around the country, and also would support a lot of jobs that are at risk if the trust fund itself is threatened.” Congress has largely ignored Obama’s proposal, which calls for using approximately $150 billion from closing corporate tax loopholes to help pay for a four-year extension of transportation funding, thus far. The traditional funding source for transportation projects has been revenue that is collected from the federal gas tax, which is currently priced at 18.4 cents per gallon. But the tax has struggled to keep up with infrastructure expenses as cars have become more fuel efficient in recent years, and the fund now runs a shortfall of $16 billion per year. The current transportation bill, which is scheduled to expire in September, includes approximately $50 billion per year in infrastructure spending. The gas tax only brings in about $34 billion per year, however. The expiring transportation bill also includes the federal government’s authorization to collect the gas tax at all. Earnest said Monday of Obama's recommendation that “there are a lot of reasons that what we put forward is a common-sense proposal. “We're certainly open to reviewing other proposals that others may put forward,” he said. “But in terms of how we think this … important piece of business should get done, we've been pretty clear about what we think is the proper path forward.”

TI thumps- renewed investing should have caused the neg’s impact

Lowy 7/2 (Joan, Transportation reporter at The Associated Press Reporter/editor at Scripps Howard News Service Washington correspondent at Rocky Mountain News Reporter at Rocky Mountain News Reporter at The Washington Star, JournalGazette, 7/2/14, “Dead ahead: A pothole in highway construction aid?”, http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140702/NEWS03/140709876/1066)

WASHINGTON – As the summer driving season swings into full gear, states can expect a large pothole in their construction budgets if Congress doesn’t reach an agreement quickly on how to pay for federal highway and transit programs, President Barack Obama and his top officials are warning. States will begin to feel the pain of cutbacks in federal aid as soon as the first week in August if lawmakers don’t act, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a letter to states. That’s because the balance in the federal Highway Trust Fund is dropping and will soon go below $4 billion, the cushion federal officials say is needed for incoming fuel tax revenue to cover outgoing payments to states. The cuts will vary from state to state but will average about 28 percent, transportation officials said. By the end of August, the trust fund’s balance is forecast to fall to zero and the cuts could deepen. A second deadline is coming Sept. 30 when the government’s authority to spend money on transportation programs expires. As many as 700,000 jobs could be at risk over the next year, Obama told a crowd of about 500 gathered Tuesday beneath the Key Bridge, which spans the Potomac River and joins the District of Columbia and Virginia. Revenue from federal gas and diesel taxes continues to flow into the trust fund, but the total is expected to be about $8 billion short of the transportation aid the government has allocated to states this year. Over the next six years, a gap of about $100 billion is forecast if transportation spending is maintained at current levels. At the same time, transportation experts and industries that depend on the nation’s highways to get their products to market are calling for greater spending on transportation to shore up aging roads, bridges and tunnels and to accommodate population growth. “Right now there are more than 100,000 active projects across the country where workers are paving roads and rebuilding bridges and modernizing our transit systems,” Obama said. “And soon states may have to choose which projects to continue and which ones to put the brakes on because they’re running out of money.” Already some states are cutting back on construction projects because of the uncertainty of federal funding, Foxx told reporters earlier. “I think people will see it in the traffic. I think people will see it in the condition of our roads,” he said. The reason for the shortfall is that revenue from the federal 18.4-cent-a-gallon gasoline and 24.4-cent-a-gallon diesel tax hasn’t kept pace with transportation needs. The taxes haven’t been increased in more than 20 years, while construction and other costs have continued to go up. The most obvious solution is to raise fuel taxes, which is what several blue-ribbon commissions have recommended and business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Trucking Associations have urged. But neither political party nor the White House wants to get out front on a proposal to raise taxes in an election year. Foxx didn’t rule out Obama’s signing legislation that raises the gas tax, but he indicated the administration doesn’t believe there is enough support in Congress to pass a gas tax increase. “We have said if Congress acts on something, we’ll keep an open mind,” Foxx said. Instead, Obama is pushing a plan to close tax loopholes and use the revenue to pay for increased transportation spending for the next four years. “We have a proposal we think is politically acceptable,” Foxx said. Nearly a dozen proposals to address the problem have been floated in Congress, including several to raise the gas tax, but none have gained traction. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., offered a similar proposal to Obama’s plan in April. But many Republicans say they’d rather offset increases in transportation spending with cuts in other government programs rather than higher taxes. And many lawmakers say they want to adhere to the trust fund’s “user pays” principle by raising money from people who most use the roads, if not through a gas tax then some other means. Saying his plan would “support millions of jobs” by making “companies that are shipping their profits overseas” pay their fair share of taxes, Obama blamed the impasse on the GOP. “It’s not crazy, it’s not socialism. It’s not the imperial presidency,” he said. “But so far, House Republicans have refused to act on this idea. I haven’t heard a good reason why they haven’t acted – it’s not like they’ve been busy with other stuff. No, seriously. I mean, they’re not doing anything. Why don’t they do this?”

Aff Thumper—IT Spending

IT spending should have triggered impacts-mass spending on useless IT endeavors broke the budget

Tobak 6/23 (Steve, Steve Tobak is a management consultant, executive coach, columnist, and former senior executive. He runs Silicon Valley-based Invisor Consulting where he advises executives and business leaders on anything and everything, Fox Business, Government IT Spending is Out of Control, http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2014/06/23/government-it-spending-is-out-control/)

The federal government has an $82 billion – that’s billion, with a ‘b’ – information technology budget this year. And much of that will be wasted, according to David Powner, director of IT management issues for the U.S. Government Accountability Office: “IT projects too frequently incur cost overruns and schedule slippages, and result in duplicate systems while contributing little to mission-related outcomes. Additionally, projects sometimes fail or operate inefficiently, at the cost of billions of dollars.” Let’s put that in perspective. If you add up all the IT spending from Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle, it still doesn’t come close to what the federal government spends. Washington actually accounts for about 10% of total U.S. IT consumption, according to data from Forrester Research. Think about that for a second. The government is big, I grant you that. But it’s not that big. It’s nowhere near that big. And its IT spending is out of control because the bureaucrats running the show have no idea what they’re doing. If you listen to Powner’s testimony before a senate subcommittee – and yes, that is as masochistic and mind-numbingly boring as it sounds – you get the distinct impression that, if the people running our government agencies were competent executives that worked together as a leadership team, they could easily cut that spending in half. There appear to be loads of costly issues, but these are the biggest: Decentralized IT operations. There are 27 different government agencies all operating independently. The amount of duplicative spending is enormous. For example, the government has thousands of data centers that operate at 10-15% capacity – far below the industry average of 60%. Powner says billions could be saved by consolidation. Could you imagine if corporate America had never learned to centralize IT, human resources, sales, communications, and other functions? Didn’t we do that like in the '80s and '90s? Granted, the downsizing was painful, but had we not done it, no American company would be competitive in the global marketplace. Enormous open loop projects. Apparently, nobody in Washington knows that you don’t just come up with a huge project, hire a zillion people and a bunch of contractors, turn them loose with a blank check and say, “Let us know when you’re done.” Now imagine 750 major projects that are probably being run just like that. You can see them all at itdashboard.gov. According to Powner, there are “too many big bang projects that don’t deliver anything for years and therefore run a high risk of failure.” For example, he says the reason why the Healthcare.gov launch was such a disaster is that there was more or less no incremental or beta testing, project management, or executive oversight. I guess that’s just how the feds like to role. Administrative bureaucrats running the show. In a New York Times interview, Powner gave a scathing assessment of how government agencies run IT: “We don’t define well what we want up front, we don’t have good executive-level management. We don’t identify risks well, or escalate them up the chain in a timely way when things start to go wrong. We don’t have a good skills mix of engineers and architects to have a technical discussion with vendors.” In the senate panel Q&A, Powner said that agency CIOs are generally not empowered with the authority they need to effectively manage IT projects that are supposed to be their responsibility. So who exactly makes all the critical budget and project management decisions? Clueless bureaucrats. That’s yet another critical management lesson we learned decades ago in the corporate world: to put decision-making responsibility in the hands of the right people – those with the expertise and information to effectively manage projects and budgets and make the right call as quickly as possible. All this wasteful spending is great for investors and employees of IT vendors, but for taxpayers, not so much. But you want to know what gets me the most? With thousands of data centers and who knows how many servers, they still managed to lose all Lois Lerner’s emails for the investigation of IRS targeting conservative groups. You buying that? I didn’t think so.

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