How come there’s $200 billion per year of unnecessary spending in the Federal budget? Aren’t the Republicans in charge?
George W. Bush says he plans to pay for his ill-designed smorgasbord of Katrina relief problems by cutting “unnecessary spending”.
Presumably, at some point an intrepid reporter will ask him which $200 billion he plans to cut. But that will leave another question:
Mr. Bush has been President for four and a half years now, and his party has had complete control of Congress for two and a half of them. So why have he, and they, left $200 billion in cuttable waste in the budget?
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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