Funk writes that Secretary Chu, “made it clear that the White House has another idea for creating jobs: requiring power companies to use clean energy will create jobs. President Obama wants the nation’s utilities by 2035 to generate 80 percent of their power with such advanced technologies. About 40 percent of the nation’s electricity is now generated by such cleaner methods.

In the two-hour work session at the Cleveland State arena with small manufacturers, the scientist secretary several times returned to the administration’s proposed clean energy standard as a way to generate jobs as well as electricity. “He made it clear that he thinks a national renewable portfolio standard should happen,” said Ronn Richard, head of the Cleveland Foundation, and a strong proponent of building wind turbines in Lake Erie.”

Leaving aside the fact that a clean energy standard will destroy many more jobs than it creates, the article never defines what clean energy is. Funk mentions that we generate 40 percent of our electricity from cleaner methods but if the definition of clean energy is carbon-free, that percentage is closer to 30 percent. If you include natural gas, which is not carbon free but could be included in President Obama’s target, you get closer to 55 percent. Ronn Richard’s comment about a national renewable portfolio standard is much different. It excludes natural gas and carbon-free nuclear energy and only includes hydroelectric, wind and solar. Renewable sources only provide 11 percent of our nation’s electricity. The distinction between a clean energy standard and a renewable energy standard is an important one to make because it will determine what the government picks as winners and losers in our electricity market.

Hunter reports that “The price of solar panels has dropped substantially in recent years, said Geoff Greenfield, co-owner of Third Sun Solar, a company based in Athens that installs alternative-energy systems. A 10-kilowatt solar-panel system that cost $80,000 in 2005 now sells for $50,000, he said. With the help of state grants and federal tax credits, the electricity generated would help a home system pay for itself in about eight years.”

Although the cost of manufacturing solar panels has gone down, which is not true with all types of solar technologies, the cost of selling electricity produced from solar is still high. The government’s own Energy Information Administration’s projected levelized costs for the year 2016 (in 2008 dollars) per megawatt hour are $78.10 for conventional coal power $149.30 for onshore wind power, $191.10 for offshore wind power, $396.10 for photo-voltaic solar power, $256.60 for thermal solar power. Solar is by far the most expensive even compared to other renewables like wind.

The article does mention that the state tax credits were financed by a 9-cent monthly fee added to the majority of Ohio residents. Although the fee was not re-authorized, which is why the demand for the tax credits is exceeding the supply of funds, this is another clear example of concentrated benefits given to recipients of the program and dispersed costs borne by Ohio’s ratepayers.

It claims $315 billion saved from eliminating “certain tax expenditures” — but doesn’t list which ones. It claims to finance a $328 billion transportation trust fund without specifying what taxes would be raised. It takes credit for $321 billion in spending cuts to offset the Medicare “doc fix” from 2014 through 2021. What are the cuts? To be determined. It claims more than $150 billion in “program integrity” savings so vague that the Congressional Budget Office could not even score them in past budget estimates. The budget takes credit for $700 billion in “cuts” by comparing the long-planned drawdown of Iraq and Afghanistan spending against a baseline that implausibly assumes those costs would rise forever.”

Many news stories have noted that the president’s budget refuses to touch runaway entitlement spending, but the budget gimmicks and “to be determined” have gotten little traction in the media. Riedl emphasizes what the budget really does: “It raises taxes by $1.5 trillion, keeps spending at its highest level sustained level since World War II, and nearly doubles the national debt.”

One example Wald points to is FloDesign. He writes, “FloDesign, which is working on a more efficient wind turbine based on the design of jet engines and used its $8.3 million grant to eventually raise another $27 million.”

Under the project announcement’s “Why ARPA-E Funding and Not Private Capital?” it says, “ARPA-E permits an accelerated introduction of advanced materials and aerodynamics that would not be possible with private capital alone. In addition, ARPA-E’s commitment, support and technical diligence greatly assisted FloDesign Wind to raise $34.5M in private capital to compliment the award. This partnership between public and private sectors significantly reduces risk and enhances the chance for successful commercial deployment of this critical renewable technology.”

But the reality is FloDesign received private capital before receiving its ARPA-E grant. Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers invested $6 million in FloDesign through FloDesign’s sale of Series A stock. Venture capitalists could have undoubtedly funded FloDesign’s new wind technology without the ARPA-E grant and this was clearly not the purpose of ARPA-E. Several other recipients of ARPA-E awards received money from the government program after receiving funds from venture capitalists.

Obama previously pledged to freeze non-security discretionary spending for the next five years, and under his budget about half of all federal agencies would see their budgets reduced from levels in 2010, the last time agencies operated under an enacted budget, according to administration documents.

Authors Laura Litvan and Roger Runningen go on to note that the President’s budget does increase spending for the IRS and SEC, but there are a lot more spending increases than that. The Department of Education budget would rise 11%, the FDA by 33%, and the Department of Transpiration by 53%. In fact, if you correct for budget gimmicks, like converting Pell grants from discretionary to mandatory spending, President Obama’s budget actually increases, not decreases discretionary spending by $31 billion.

But the article fails to differentiate between warmest years in the United States and warmest years in the world. As climatologist Anthony Watts points out with regards to the NOAA press release, “There’s no mention of the 2010 ranking for the USA temperature at all, nor any mention of the fact that 2010 was not nearly as warm as 1998, or 1934. I find that more than a little odd for an agency whose mission is to serve the American people with accurate and representative climate data.”

The AP report then goes on to mention more United States-specific data like the fact that “January’s national temperature was the coolest for the United States since 1994. The unusually cool conditions dominated the country east of the Rockies, while there were warmer than normal readings in Washington, Oregon and California.” It would have been better to mention that populated areas such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia have not experienced such warming. The reports of NOAA’s press release should have been more on the lack of evidence we have that manmade emissions are connected to global climate change.

Common cause has long been something of a nerd among the jocks. While other activists staged loud demonstrations and nervy stunts, the 40-year-old good-government group was more likely to hold a forum on filibuster reform or the vagaries of redistricting.

Amazingly, after specifically mentioning the filibuster in his lead, Eggen fails to report that Common Cause recently flip-flopped their position on the filibuster for purely transparent politically partisan reasons. A 2005 Common Cause press release reads:

Common Cause strongly opposes any effort by Senate leaders to outlaw filibusters of judicial nominees to silence a vigorous debate about the qualifications of these nominees, short-circuiting the Senate’s historic role in the nomination approval process.

“The filibuster shouldn’t be jettisoned simply because it’s inconvenient to the majority party’s goals,” said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree. “That’s abuse of power.”

Today, however, now that a different political party is on control of the Senate, Common Cause has a polar opposite position:

A filibuster is the use of unlimited debate not to inform or persuade, but to obstruct the proceedings of a legislative body and prevent the majority from taking action opposed by the minority.

Today, majority rule has been replaced in the Senate by minority rule. The Senate filibuster rule (Rule XXII) gives a minority of 41 Senators — who may be elected from states that contain as little at 11% of the nation’s population — the power to prevent the Senate from debating or voting on a bill, resolution or presidential appointment.

The filibuster was clearly not an original part of the Founding Fathers’ vision of our government. If they had intended a 60-vote supermajority requirement to pass bills, they would have included it in the Constitution, just like they explicitly required a supermajority to override a presidential veto.

So will federal taxes remain low when the economy improves? Ohlemacher does not tell us. But the Congressional Budget Office does. Thanks to our already very progressive tax code, as the economy recovers tax receipts are set to sky rocket and will reach post-WWII highs by the mid 2020s.

Beginning in 1992, Fannie and Freddie were directed to foster more lending to minorities by purchasing and securitizing these loans — when the loans met guidelines.

At the high-water mark, Fannie and Freddie did securitize 52 percent of the loans made to low and moderate income borrowers. But during the boom from 2001 to 2007, bank lending standards weakened dramatically and in 2006, the height of the housing boom, Fannie and Freddie purchased just 24 percent of the loans made to low-income borrowers.

Moreover, subprime was traditionally always a small portion of total lending. As home prices soared, borrowers looking to flip homes quickly became the majority of subprime borrowers, caring not what the interest rate was because they never intended to own the home for very long.

But Hall forgets that money is completely fungible and that Fannie and Freddie were essential in allowing bank lending standards to weaken dramatically for all loans. Take Countrywide for example. For decades Countrywide Financial was a largely unsuccessful firm that was only re-listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1985. But between 1985 and 2003 Countrywide delivered investors a 23,000% return, exceeding the returns of Washington Mutual, Wal-Mart, and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. How did they do it? By partnering with Fannie and Freddie. A 2000 Fannie Mae Foundation report lauds Countrywide for following “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted under GSE and FHA guidelines.” As a result, Fannie Mae was Countrywide’s biggest customer and Countrywide became the largest mortgage lender in the country. In 2006, at the height of the housing bubble, Countrywide financed 20% of all mortgages in the United States — 45% of which were subprime. Countrywide never could have accomplished that without government help from Fannie and Freddie.

And Fannie and Freddie’s subprime business was not isolated to Countrywide.  Fannie and Freddie both bought subprime securities since 1995, and by 2004 they were purchasing $175 billion worth of such securities a year, or 44% of the entire market. From 2003 through 2006 Fannie and Freddie bought more than a half trillion dollars in subprime securities. Can Hall identify any other purchaser in the entire world that bought more subprime securities than Fannie and Freddie?

The Obama administration is particularly concerned with maintaining state Medicaid programs because under the new healthcare law, these government insurance plans are expected to provide a foundation for guaranteeing coverage to all Americans beginning in 2014.

First of all, Obamacare does not gurantee coverage to all Americans. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 18 million Americans will pay $33 billion in penalties for failing to comply with Obamacare’s individual mandate and yet still have no health insurance. Also, Medicaid not only provides “a foundation” for Obamacare, over half of all health insurance gained through Obamacare will be accomplished through an expansion of Medicaid. Finally, the Obamacare Medicaid expansion is a huge administrative burden on the states: The Heritage Foundation’s Ed Haislmaier and Brian Blase found that just the administrative costs of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion will cost almost $12 billion by 2020.