As I finished assembling the WashingtonWatch.com Digest for the week (see it here), I realized that the featured laws represent an interesting cross-section of things the federal government does - though not nearly all of it, of course.

Take Public Law 110-315, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. This is mostly about redistributing wealth. The $1,200 in spending per U.S. family is mostly intended to go toward getting young people through college.

Does it actually get there? Not so sure. And does it go from, say, people who have plenty of money to people in need? Doubtful. This looks like classic middle-class entitlement legislation. Feel free to blast me in the comments if you think it’s not.

Then there’s Public Law 110-314, the Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act. It’s a classic example of public health and safety regulation.

Does it do the job and cost-effectively make us safer? There’s often more to the story, as regulatory agencies can be captured by the companies they regulate. But at thirty cents or so per U.S. family (and whatever costs might be imposed by the regulations - which are very hard to determine), it’s hard to complain about this one compared to one costing $1,200.

Finally, Public Law 110-316, the Animal Drug User Fee Amendments of 2008. This is also health and safety regulation. But . . . it’s about the health and safety of animals.

A buck-fifty per family isn’t a lot, but how many buck-fifty programs at the outer edge or beyond the federal government’s real responsibility are you willing to support? It’s stuff like animal drug regulation that we created the Jack of All Trades - Master of None category for.

WashingtonWatch.com isn’t going to make you an expert on every bill in Congress, but perhaps you’ll be in a better position to make a few judgments about what you like and don’t like. Keep watching.

Well, this isn’t hot off the presses, but it’s a fascinating paper that I just had the chance to read.

Mark Stewart, a civil engineer at the University of Newcastle and John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University, have done an analysis of the dollars spent per life saved by a couple of airline security measures.

The conclusion? Hardening cockpit doors has the highest risk reduction (16.67%) at the lowest cost: $40 million. The Federal Air Marshal Service costs $900 million but reduces risk by only 1.67% - an annual cost of $180 million per statistical life saved.

The government’s target price per life saved is between $1 and $10 million. That means $180 million is a pretty high number. It’s money that could be used on more efficient security alternatives.

In case you’re freaked out about putting a dollar value on human life, don’t be. We weigh the value of our own lives against other things all the time. To articulate this balancing for policymaking purposes, what economists are doing is using a dollar value to measure the relative importance of life versus other things. It doesn’t cheapen your life to think that people are trying to be smart about protecting it.

This study was written up a lot of places: Bruce Schneier’s blog, the Freakonomics blog, and the Wall Street Journal, just to link a few. But you know why it’s special to see it here? Because you can do something about it!

S. 3181, The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2009 is the bill that spends money to run the Federal Air Marshal Service. If you think this waste is wasteful, this would be something you want to tell your Member of Congress. Mention that this is the bill on which to do something about it.

Here’s the current vote on the overall bill (the Senate version - the House doesn’t have one yet). Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.