The Obama administration’s “OMB Report Pursuant to the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012,” released last Friday (September 14, 2012), outlines the “devastating” and “deeply destructive” impacts on virtually all aspects of the federal budget that will take place if Congress does not act to prevent about $109 billion in automatic across-the-board budget cuts from occurring at […]
“Fiscal cliff,” a phrase coined by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, is shorthand for the “many major fiscal events” that could happen simultaneously at the end of this year and in January 2013. Congress faces a serious conundrum: it can either let current policy (including automatic cuts in federal spending through sequestration, the expiration of […]
We’ve often said on this blog that you need only look at GSA’s budget as the bellwether for leasing demand. In recent years we’ve noted that budget reductions imposed by Congress have put GSA in a position where its owned inventory suffered and demand for leased space was buttressed. Despite the agency’s stated goal of […]
As discussed in Part 1 of this two-part series on GSA’s budget problems, Congress has screwed down the appropriations spigot, nearly shutting it off completely. That article showed how congressional appropriations for GSA’s Construction & Alterations projects and Repairs & Maintenance programs have declined dramatically over the past several years. The appropriated funds are insufficient […]
With the November election approaching, the topic of federal workforce reduction looms ever larger. The Republicans unveiled their Platform last Tuesday night (August 28th) and in it asserted their desire to reduce the federal payroll by 10%, to be implemented through attrition. The effort is not new, numerous Republican-sponsored bills were proposed in both the […]
At last week’s Republican Convention the GOP platform was unveiled revealing the party’s plan to reduce the federal payroll by 10%, an effort we expect would be largely implemented through workforce reductions. This is nothing new. In fact conservatives in the legislative branch have already initiated a number of bills designed to cut both the […]
The late-19th century German economist, Adolph Wagner, observed that as progressive industrialized economies grow the public sector expands as a percentage of the overall economy. Wagner’s observation, which later became known as Wagner’s Law, or “The Law of Increasing State Activity,” has persisted through the ensuing century to the present. Why does government spending increase? Wagner’s […]
Dr. Stephen S. Fuller at an AIA conference last October presenting an analysis that one million defense industry jobs could be lost as a result of expected defense budget cuts. This was the pre-cursor to the study released this week. As the threat of sequestration looms ever larger, the results of a new study released […]
Through all of the partisan dysfunction our nation has endured in recent years, the federal budgeting process nonetheless managed to stagger along. Until October 1st. Then the U.S. Government experienced its first shutdown since 1995. The event was bracing because we have come to view partisan discord and 11th-hour negotiations as part of the federal […]
Riddle: “What goes up and never comes down?” Answer: “Federal spending” Federal spending – especially if you measure it in constant dollars – hasn’t ALWAYS increased. But, let’s face it, it mostly has. As Washingtonians, we’ve grown comfortable in the warm blanket the federal government provides. Year after year demand, fueled through federal direct spending […]
When faced with thousands of pages of budget submissions and hundreds of megabytes of data, there is nothing so wonderful as a good infographic to make sense of it all. We’ve searched the web to find the best sites and included them here. Continue to check back because as we find others we’ll add them […]
This morning the District of Columbia Building Industry Association (DCBIA) hosted its seminar entitled “GSA Downsizing – A Perfect Storm Looming”, consisting of a panel of government officials and private sector professionals. We were there and here is some of what we learned: Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton reported that Congress is expected to (finally) hold […]
In last week’s election, the Republicans won majority control of the Senate and further solidified their control of the House of Representatives. This means that the Republicans will lead the 114th Congress when it convenes next year. Is this event positive for federal property investors? The answer is a resounding yes, but not necessarily for any ideological reason. It is simply […]
One of the lessons learned from the October shutdown, as recently discussed on this blog, is that GSA rent is subject to congressional appropriations even though the Federal Buildings Fund (FBF) has the needed money. In fact, the FBF is flush with rents collected from GSA customer agencies that expect the nation’s landlord to professionally maintain […]