The back story here is an obnoxious email that a PR flack at the Small Business Administration sent me.

In, like, 53-point italics, it said I should “call to interview the award winners and discuss the event.” I didn’t know what the event was – the subject line of the email was: “SBA Press Release:” – and the flack obviously didn’t know that I’m not a reporter.

Mission accomplished . . . sorta.

I read the release, and will now tell you why the budgets of the Small Business Administration and the Department of Commerce should be cut.

National Minority Business Development Enterprise Week was last week. It’s a project of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Government Contracting and Business Development. “MED Week” is “an annual celebration in recognition of the contributions made by minority businesses to the Nation’s economy.”

Do minority business contribute to the nation’s economy? They certainly do. Are minority businesspeople worthy of our appreciation and respect? They certainly are. Should they get an annual celebration paid for with Americans’ tax dollars? Absolutely not.

Government programs almost always grow beyond their original purposes. And this is true even of programs with entirely legitimate original purposes. Whatever help is or was appropriate for minority businessespeople, throwing them an annual party is not part of that.

Racial and ethnic issues are sensitive, and it’s easy to be misunderstood, so let’s be clear again: Minority businesspeople are terrific people – just like all businesspeople. Anyone who consciously or unconsciously makes business decisions based on race or ethnicity is wrong to do so – and people who do that deprive themselves of good business relationships.

But I’d rather see businesspeople and consumers of all backgrounds get their tax money back than see their dollars used to support parties and celebrations that reinforce divisions in our society along racial and ethnic lines.

The Department of Commerce and the Small Business Administration are funded annually through the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. (link to the Senate version – a month before the new fiscal year, the House bill still hasn’t been introduced) Here’s the current vote on the bill. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

I came across an interesting article in my Labor Day weekend reading. (Yes, I do know how to have a good time.)

“What’s the Emergency?” [PDF; scroll down a bit] is the name of an article in the Summer 2008 issue of Regulation magazine, and it illustrates yet another dimension of how the federal spending process is out of control.

In addition to falling well behind in the regular spending process, Congress is increasingly passing emergency supplemental spending bills – even for ordinary spending.

In May 2007, for instance, President Bush signed into law the biggest supplemental bill in history, $120 billion [$1,300 per U.S. family - ed.], to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and pay for hurricane recovery and agriculture disaster relief at home. . . . By contrast, the average annual amount of emergency supplemental spending in the 1990s — a decade that saw interventions in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo — was just $13.8 billion.

“Emergency” bills are given special exceptions from budgetary rules designed to restrain spending. But Congress never defined the term “emergency” other than to say that these bills must be necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and temporary. These things are all in the eye of the beholder. As de Rugy points out, “most of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — approximately $900 billion through the end of 2008 — has been funded through supplemental bills — effectively on top of the
Pentagon’s regular budget. While the costs of the wars may be necessary and not permanent, they are by no means sudden or unforeseen.”

Your Congress at work.

(Disclosures: I know and like de Rugy, and Regulation is a publication of my employer, The Cato Institute.)

Last week, I wrote here about how well federal civilian workers are doing compared to the private sector worker. Well, it might soon get a little better.

H.R. 6339 is called the “Federal Employees Deserve to Volunteer on the Elections Act of 2008.” In addition to giving money to states for recruiting and training election workers, it would give federal employees paid leave for time spent working at polling places.

Certainly, service to your community as an election worker is a good thing. My mom was one for many years – and the woman was a saint! But private sector workers don’t get paid to do it.

Federal workers who volunteer to work in polling places should volunteer for it – meaning they don’t get paid.

H.R. 6339 would cost a little under 75 cents per U.S. family to implement, some of which goes to improving the lot of those federal workers yet more. You’re paying for it.

Here’s the current vote on H.R. 6339, the Federal Employees Deserve to Volunteer on the Elections Act of 2008. Click to vote, comment, learn more, and edit the wiki article on the bill.

Federal civilian workers earned an average wage of $77,143 in 2007, 61 percent higher than the $48,035 average in the U.S. private sector. That 61 percent pay advantage has increased from a 34 percent advantage in 2000.

Total compensation (wages plus benefits) was $116,450 for the average federal worker in 2007, compared to $57,615 in the private sector. The federal compensation advantage increased from 68 percent in 2000 to 102 percent today. You’re paying for it.

All this is according to Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute in a recent Cato@Liberty blog post. (Full disclosure: My day job is at Cato and I think Chris is a nice guy.)

Edwards suggests that this disparity and the federal budget deficit of $500 billion demand a freeze in federal pay and privatization of costly activities like air traffic control.

The list of bills dealing with federal employees is long. One of the most often visited these days is H.R. 5781, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act of 2008, which would expand federal worker compensation a little more with paid time off, at a cost of a little over $7.00 per U.S. family.

Here’s what people think of H.R. 5781, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act of 2008. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

If you were to make a donation toward getting health care to people in need, where would you send your money? Toppenish, Washington? Perhaps Swainsboro, Georgia?

Well, you have made a donation toward getting health care to people in need, and it was sent to Toppenish and Swainsboro, as well as a couple dozen other cities, like Anaheim, California; Craig, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Trenton, Florida; and Newton Grove, North Carolina.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced $22 million in grants on Friday. The money will go to health centers in 39 cities around the country.

Now let’s talk about your thank-you note.

I’m sorry to say that your thank-you note is probably not going to reach you. It’s being delivered to a woman named Elizabeth Duke.

Duke is the Administrator of HRSA. She and her agency spend about $7 billion per year on health care through various grants to state and local governments, health centers, and education programs. It’s your money, of course. You’re paying for it.

Now, Elizabeth Duke looks like a nice lady. It’s not like you should be mad at her for being so generous with your money. Maybe you don’t need any thanks – big of you! But maybe you’d rather focus your giving on other issues. Or maybe you’d rather give to an organization that you know and trust, rather than Ms. Duke doing your giving for you. All things to think about.

HRSA is funded in the Labor/HHS appropriations bill. The Senate bill is S. 3230. Its passage would cost the average U.S. family a little over $6,100.

Here’s the current vote on the bill. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

The variety of things your government does is nearly endless. Here’s an announcement by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities that they will be studying the impact of free access to computers and the Internet at public libraries. (Yes, there’s an Institute of Museum and Library Services. You’re paying for it.)

Want me to tell you what the impact of free Internet access in libraries is? Some people who otherwise couldn’t can get online for free. Some people who could pay for Internet access don’t because they can get it for free at the library. And some of the people using the Internet at the library look at porn and stuff, which is pretty creepy. There’s your study!

But maybe there’s more to it. Should your tax dollars go to the Institute of Museum and Library Services in the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities so it can conduct this study?

It’s funded through the Interior Appropriations bill. Alas, neither the House nor the Senate has even introduced an Interior Approps bill. They should have – the new fiscal year starts October 1st, just a few weeks after Congress returns from its August recess.

(Here’s last year’s House and Senate bills – costing about $225 per U.S. family – which were rolled into the big ol’ Consolidated Appropriations Act ($9,400/U.S. family). Congress passed it in late December, 2007 – almost three months into the current fiscal year.)