On this Valentine’s Day 2022, Steve Ellis and the whole TCS team rekindle the romance for making government work.  Enjoy the sweet talk and hear the list of policies that the budget nerds love.

For more, read our Weekly Wastebasket – Our Public Policy Valentines

Episode 16 – Transcript

Steve Ellis:

Welcome to all American taxpayers seeking common sense. You’ve made it to the right place. For over 25 years, TCS, that’s Tax Payers for Common Sense, has served as an independent, nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Washington, DC. We believe in fiscal policy for America that is based on facts. We believe in transparency and accountability. Because no matter where you are on the political spectrum, no one wants to see their tax dollars wasted. Well Valentine’s Day 2022 is approaching podcast listeners, and we need to talk. Continued social distancing, upcoming midterm elections, and budgetary pressures have combined to make things in Washington a bit frosty. This just isn’t working. So in an effort to rekindle of the romance from making government work, I’ve assembled the whole TCS team to list some policies for you that we love.

Steve Ellis:

We can’t overlook a few heart breakers like farm subsidies, but there are a number of good reforms and even a few PILFs programs I’d like to fund that we should talk about. These conversations can be uncomfortable. That’s why we’re going to break the ice with some tiny conversation hearts. You know the little candies with short phrases like hug me or cutie pie. So I’ve got my bag of candy hearts here, and I’m going to pass it around to the staff. And we’re going to go through some of these. So I’m going to start, let me reach into the bag. All right, miss you.

Steve Ellis:

Well, that makes me think about we miss fiscal conservatives. Wow. We’ve spent a lot, podcast listeners, responding to the COVID 19 health emergency and the financial fallout for Americans was important. Investing in infrastructure is key to building a solid future together. But we miss the days when trillion dollars spending bills at least made lawmakers think twice about committing. When everything is emergency, nothing is a priority. So it warms our hearts that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are starting to talk about setting priorities and budgeting for them. This is going to be critical going forward. We’ve just hit a 30 trillion dollar debt. I’m going to pass the bag off to TCS vice president, Autumn Hanna. Here you go Autumn. Pick a heart.

Autumn Hanna:

Ooh, thanks Steve. Looks like I just pulled out be mine. Ooh. I think we all know what it’s like to pine after the one that got away. When I think of a good example of the one that got away for us that we really need to get back is the 2016 methane waste rule. And this is really a relationship, I think, we can’t afford to lose because right now we have oil and gas operators on federal land drilling for oil and gas under rules that were written in the late 1970s. And that’s costing us billions of dollars. So royalty free oil and gas because we’re operating under these outdated rules.

Autumn Hanna:

And in 2016, we had updated those rules that got thrown out in the last administration. And ever since we’ve been trying to get that back. And we’re hoping now that the current administration can move forward quickly and get us some new rules so that we can reignite the flame, I should say, and pull back on this and get our relationship going smoothly once again. With how these operations are happening, get tax payers the money that we deserve and that we are owed for this taxpayer owned resource. And it’s really important that we get this right, because not only are taxpayers losing billions of dollars in the natural gas, because it’s royalty free, we’re also carrying the burden for the climate impacts that this wasted gas causes. And so we’re going to get hit later again, and we’re getting hit now already with increased climate liabilities because we aren’t addressing the issue of methane waste.

Steve Ellis:

Rekindle the flame. I love it. That’s awesome. All right. So here let me pass the bag over to senior policy analyst, Michael Maragos. Back to back episodes Michael.

Michael Maragos:

I’m glad to be here. And better yet to have a bag of candy in my hand. Let’s see what I got. I dig you. Well, we certainly have been digging the roadless rule and the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest, up in the Southeast Alaska are back together once again. The 2001 national roadless rule prohibited road building and logging in millions of acres of all of the different national forests throughout the country. Those areas became known as roadless areas. But the Tongass and the roadless rule have had a little bit of a tumultuous relationship. After initial courtship when the rule went into effect in 2001, a 2003 rule tried to drive a wedge between the two and allowed the Tongass to go its own way and not abide by what this rule was saying. But then a judge in 2011, struck down that rule and the two got back together.

Michael Maragos:

Until 2020 when another rule tried to, once again, split the two apart. This time make it a clean split where all 9 million acres of the Tongass were back on the market for timber sales and timber harvest. And you have to understand the context of the relationship. Selling timber in the Tongass National Forest cost taxpayers millions of dollars every year, by our count more than 1.7 billion since 1980. Opening up the Tongass back to road building and timber sales was like watching a mooch of a boy and move back in. Thankfully, the forest service has recently reversed course and proposed repealing 2020 rule, which will pave the way for the couple to reunite so that hopefully taxpayers aren’t paying forever more Tongass timber substitutes.

Steve Ellis:

Wow. Michael, there’s lots of metaphors in there. Mixed metaphors, even split. You’re talking about timber. I mean, this has got to be one of my favorite episodes of all time. All right, listeners you’re listening to Budget Watchdog All Federal. Next, I’m going to pass the bag to Mia Huang, TCS’s research and data analyst.

Mia Huang:

Thank you, Steve. All right. Let’s see what I get. Love ya. Well, one thing I know that we sure love is higher federal on shore oil and gas royalty. Taxpayers have been weded to the current rate of 12.5% ever since it was set in 1920. Well, in comparison states like Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, and California all charge 18.75% or more for at least some of their leases as to federal leases and offshore waters. So if you do the math, if the federal government has been charging 18.75% on all oil and gas produced on federal lands over the last decade, taxpayers could’ve gotten up to 12.9 billion more in revenue. But at last it seems like our love might be reciprocated. Actually just last week, the Department of the Interior dropped a hint that it is considering increasing the royalty rate for new on shore leases as well as some other reason leasing reforms.

Mia Huang:

In fact, apart from agency actions, both the House and the Senate version of the stall that build that better bill include important leasing reforms like higher on shore royalty, as well as other important reforms like eliminating nonaccredited leasing that will ensure taxpayers receive a fair return for oil and gas resources that we all own. Because as excited as we are for agency actions, we also hope that Congress can continue to push to make these reform permanent, because if higher royalty rate is finally going to be here, we want to make sure that it is here to stay.

Steve Ellis:

Great. Thanks Mia. It’s good to have you back on the podcast. All right. Now I’m going to hand the bag over to Tyler Work for her first appearance on Budget Watchdog AF. We’re really glad to have you here. And Tyler is the development of research associate here at TCS. Here you go, Tyler. Pick a candy.

Tyler Work:

Let’s see. You rock. So that could only refer to our somewhat rocky relationship with hard rock mining royalties. You know what they say, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And that certainly describes our relationship with hard rock mining reform these last couple of months. Because when the house rules committee print of the build back better bill came out in October 28th, we fell hard for the much needed reforms to hard rock mining. The proposed legislation included provisions to finally start collecting revenue for taxpayers from hard rock mineral production on federal lands.

Tyler Work:

So instead of our current 0% royalty. New mining operations would be charged a 4% royalty on gross income, and existing operations a 2% royalty on gross income with nearly 1 billion of these royalties going toward abandoned mine reclamation over the next decade. But only one week later, our hearts were broken when the house rules committee released an updated version of the bill without the hard rock provisions. So we lost our Valentine and tax payers lost billions of dollars in potential revenue. And because the DOI doesn’t even keep track of the quantity or value of hard rock minerals extracted from federal lands, it’s impossible to estimate the total potential revenue taxpayers could have gotten from royalties. However, we are optimistic that maybe by next Valentine’s Day we’ll have a reason to celebrate. Like TCS vice president Autumn Hanna said in her testimony to the Senate energy and natural resource committee, no one thinks simply giving away valuable minerals for nothing makes fiscal sense.

Steve Ellis:

Well, that’s great. And we just heard from Autumn. And here’s a fun fact Budget Watchdog AF listeners, conversation hearts for first made by Necco of Wafer Fame in the 1860s making them only slightly older than the 150 year 1872 mining law, which is what actually governs our hardrock mining. All right. So let me pass the bag to Wendy Jordan senior policy analyst here at TCS. Wendy, grab a candy.

Wendy J. Jordan:

Thanks, Steve. All right. Let me stick my hand here in this bag. And I got, how perfect is this? I got dream boat.

Wendy J. Jordan:

That’s perfect for me. For years at TCS, we’ve been dreaming of some fiscal sanity actually being applied to the ship building budgets. For years our dreams have been dashed. The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, has focused its heart’s desire on the next generation of ballistic missile submarine, which is the Columbia class of submarines. And while we do love that the submarine leg of the triad is the one that foils our adversaries the most. We don’t love it quite as much as appropriations committee members on the hill. The latest continuing resolution, which will take the federal government through March 11th, allows the Navy to accelerate funding for the Columbia class by as much as 1.6 billion dollars. This is unlike every other program in the federal government, which is supposed to maintain its funding at the FY21 level. Columbia class, cause we love you, is getting an acceleration of 1.6 billion dollars in the current fiscal year. Must be great to be the ultimate congressional dream boat.

Steve Ellis:

A submarine is a dream boat. Okay. So let’s see. I’m going to give the bag to Mike Surrusco, director of development and special projects here at TCS. Also making his first appearance on the Budget Watchdog AF podcast. All right, Mike, grab a candy.

Michael Surrusco:

Thank you, Steve. So I get the peace symbol, which I didn’t know they even made. What’s closest to my heart, when I think of peace, is the nonproliferation programs that the federal government funds. So the defense nuclear nonproliferation programs usually get about 2 billion dollars a year and they promote U.S. security by halting global spread of nuclear weapons, which is something we could all get behind, I think. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s first budget request from last year basically kept funding the same for those programs. And we’d like to see that get a little more love from the Biden administration.

Steve Ellis:

Yeah, it was just two tenths of a percent, right Mike?

Michael Surrusco:

Yeah. 4 million with an M, which for the federal government is very little.

Steve Ellis:

Bag of peanuts. Oh, but we’re talking bag of candy. Passing the bag onto Sheila Karpf, who is a senior policy analyst here Tax Payers for Common Sense. Sheila, grab a candy.

Sheila Karpf:

Thanks Steve. I have text me. That must be a new one. I’ve not seen that one before. But there’s nothing new about reading bills. So speaking of reading bills, we love that Congress has recently made some progress in transparency. President Biden actually signed the budget justification transparency act in September of last year and this gave taxpayers the opportunity to see all the loving details behind the numbers in the budget requests. So I guess as taxpayers we can think about it as a Valentine that will arrive in February of each year, but we’ve heard that this year it might actually be March. But these describe why each line in the budget is the object of desire by all of the requesting agencies. We think that Congress should now follow up on this by living up to its vow of giving taxpayers, and each other, more time to actually read these long, arduous bills.

Sheila Karpf:

We won’t kid you and say that every bill is a love letter, but they still deserve a lot of attention. Republicans and Democrats alike have repeatedly promised to do so, but yet trillion dollar reconciliation, COVID 19, and omnibus spending bills continuously come up before anyone, including us, has time to read them. The House agriculture committee even adopted its reconciliation bill with 27 billion dollars in conservation spending completely site unseen last year. So in case you didn’t hear that right, Congress passed a bill without not only reading it, but even writing it first. We believe that Congress should have plenty of time to read each bill and digest it before they tie the knot. When it comes to the next farm bill, Steve, Congress could win points, at least with Joshua Swell and I, if we don’t have to read thousand page farm bills at 5:00 AM again. But speaking of Josh, Steve, I’ll hand the bag back to you.

Steve Ellis:

Thanks, Sheila. And podcast listeners should know that Taxpayers for Common Sense was a strong proponent of the congressional budget justification transparency act from the very get go. All right, well, here I’m going to hand the bag now to Josh Sewell, who is a senior policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense and a frequent flyer on the podcast. Josh, pick a candy.

Joshua Sewell:

Ah, sweet talk. No Valentine’s Day is complete without some sweet talk, just like no Budget Watchdog All Federal podcast is complete with discussion of the farm bill. For decades, no group of U.S. farmers have had as sweet a deal from the federal farm policy as sugar cane and sugar beet growers. Now that’s because the federal government artificially increases the price of sugar for U.S. consumers. Wholesale prices, in fact, often are double the price paid in the rest of the world. Why?

Joshua Sewell:

Well, the federal government does this in three ways. First we impose quotas that cap foreign imports into the U.S. at very low amounts. Second, the government actually limits the amount of sugar grown in the U.S. that can be sold through a tool called marketing allotments. And finally, if all that fails to jack up prices enough, the government actually buys what they call excess sugar to increase prices. It’s ridiculous. Now this bond between lawmakers and this so-called candy coated cartel is re consummated yearly by tens of millions in campaign donations. However, and thankfully, with the farm bill coming up for reauthorization next year, there is a bipartisan effort to free taxpayers from this toxic relationship. And we’re going to be a part of that.

Steve Ellis:

So we’ve gone around the horn here at TCS. And so as not to end on a sad note, we’ll point out that the conversation hearts are made by competing companies, including Sweethearts, Rocks, and Sweet Tarts. But no matter the brand, they’re sure to bring a smile to the face of taxpayers. And this year, some of the companies tried it out new catch phrases like way to go, crush it, and high five. So we’ll put in the work to ensure that we have a few other positive developments for taxpayers to point to next year.

Steve Ellis:

There you have it listeners. Even the green eye shade team at TCS is still feeling the romance this Valentine’s Day. A short but sweet Budget Watchdog All Federal. The dynamics on Capitol Hill are always changing. And American taxpayers always have a seat at the table with TCS on the Budget Watchdog beat. This is the frequency, mark it on your dial, subscribe and share, and know this Taxpayers for Common Sense has your back, America. We’ll read the bills, monitor the earmarks, and highlight those wasteful programs that poorly spend our money and shift long term risk to taxpayers. We’ll be back with a new episode, and I hope you’ll meet us right here.