The Congressional Budget Office just released its analysis of President Obama’s 2011 budget, and its not totally reassuring.

The deficit would be $1.5 trillion this year and $1.3 trillion next year. There is a bit of good news — if one defines that term very, very loosely — buried in there. The deficit would be 10.3 percent of gross domestic product this year, but then tumble to 8.9% next year. The 2009 deficit was 9.9% of GDP.

Here’s the really scary thing: government debt would increase from 53 percent of GDP last year to 90 percent of GDP in 2020. Interest payments would increase dramatically.

The president also piles up some BS about the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, estimating them at $50 billion after next year. CBO instead keeps them at the current $130 billion.

The best news, though, is the president’s health care reform would reduce the deficit by $.2 trillion.

Let’s do it, for reasons related both to ethics and economics.

So how long before she asks for her teaching job back? And could she be denied on the basis of her being a thief?

Residents who do not complain will still be assessed 50% of the cost of replacing the damaged sidewalk if the replacement is done as part of a larger project, such as the sidewalk replacement project in Story Hill last fall.

Aldermen Michael Murphy and Joe Dudzik voted against the measure, sponsored by Ald. Robert Bauman.

Murphy, who represents the Story Hill neighborhood on the Common Council, said the ordinance could cause “huge financial problems for the city.”

The city estimates the measure will cost a maximum of $50,000, but Murphy was skeptical of that figure.

“There’s going to be a lot of unfairness in the system,” Murphy said in an interview. Some residents will be unaware of the ordinance and won’t request that their sidewalks be replaced. Homeowners hit with a special assessment for a sidewalk replacement project probably won’t be particularly happy if their neighbors did not have to pay for similar work simply because they complained.

Residents who notice city sidewalk slabs damaged by the roots of city-owned trees may be able to avoid future special assessments of several hundred dollars (depending on the number of slabs damaged) by contacting the Department of Public Works and requesting a slab replacement.

It’s just all those other trillions that the feds can’t fully explain.

Government bookkeeping is so bad that the Government Accountability Office can’t determine just exactly what our national fiscal condition is.

“Certain material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and other limitations on the scope of our work resulted in conditions that prevented us from expressing an opinion on the fiscal year 2009 and 2008 financial statements other than the Statements of Social Insurance,” Acting Comptroller Gene L. Dodaro reported last week, adding that “Material weaknesses resulted in ineffective internal control over financial reporting (including safeguarding of assets).”

Makes you feel happy about paying those federal income taxes, doesn’t it?

Reading Dodaro’s statement makes you wonder why some of these people have jobs. The GAO, Dodaro said, can’t render an opinion on the government’s financial statements for three big reasons:

(1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that have prevented DOD’s financial statements from being auditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective
process for preparing the consolidated financial statements. In addition, the financial statements of the Department of Homeland Security and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for fiscal years 2009 and 2008 were not auditable or were not subjected to audit by agency auditors.

The federal government could not determine exactly how much in “improper payments” it was making, although the amount is estimated at $98 billion, nor could the government ”reasonably assure” that appropriate action is being taken to stop them.

The government also could not identify and resolve information security control deficencies or — ready for this one? — “effectively manage its tax collection activities.”

The GAO sounds a very loud warning that both parties in Congress have thus far elected to ignore:

Looking ahead, the federal government will need to determine the most expeditious manner in which to bring closure to its financial stabilization initiatives while optimizing its investment returns. In addition to managing these actions, problems in the nation’s financial sector have exposed serious weaknesses in the current U.S. financial regulatory system, which, if not effectively addressed, may cause the system to fail to prevent similar or even worse crises in the future. The current system, which was put into place over the past 150 years, is fragmented and complex and simply has not kept pace with the major financial structures, innovations, and products that emerged during the years leading up to the recent financial crisis. Consequently, meaningful financial regulatory reform is of utmost concern.

All this is really scary stuff, brought to the country by one of the most credible sources there is. Anybody in Washington listening?

This big pile of road salt was dropped in the middle of Story Parkway just east of Mitchell Blvd.

C’mon, guys.

That is not the case, however, when it comes to the state’s early prisoner release program. There’s a non-story there, and the JS was all over it. The state is letting some non-violent offenders out of prison a month or two early.

Some of them — surprise! — re-offend.

Police Chief Edward Flynn complained to the paper that the state is increasing the city’s costs. The JS, journalistic watchdog that it is, does nothing to verify or investigate Flynn’s assertion — does the chief seriously believe that if these folks are held an extra month they won’t re-offend? That the city won’t be spending time and money re-arresting them?

The early release program is pretty much of a non-issue (at least until just one of the released inmates commits some heinous crime two weeks before his original release date — then political hay will be made until the cows come home to Wisconsin Avenue) blown out of proportion to create a faux scandal. If I were in Democratic Gov. Doyle’s administration, I would suspect the paper of having a partisan agenda.

Fortunately, in its totally even-handed manner, the paper carried, on the very same day, a total non-story about two State Department of Justice press releases. Republican J. B. Van Hollen’s shop borrowed wording from other agencies’ press releases about cases they worked together.

Stop the presses! Nothing amiss here!

Gee, think the paper has ever taken a few paragraphs from press releases?

That’s it for now. I must go out and, like the paper, shovel it.

It’s also stinky for the TDA to hold its convention in Florida in the first place. After all, TDA members generally are road builders who make their money at the various Wisconsin local and state public troughs. For a Wisconsin lobbying group to take its Wisconsin-earned money to spend in Orlando is more than a bit tacky. It does suggest a new slogan, though: “Wisconsin road builders: destroying neighborhoods up north so we can afford to party down south.”

The one-hour show will be on at 9 p.m. on the first Sunday of every month.

“Inside the County Board is intended to give listeners a more in-depth analysis of actions taken by County Supervisors,” according to the press release announcing the show.

What a load of crap that is. The County Board has not shown much interest at all in making routine public information available to the public in a timely and easily accessible manner. The Board still does not make resolutions and reports available online with committee agendas. The Board is the worst local unit of government at making public information easily accessible for anyone wanting an “in-depth” understanding of just what it is the County Board is voting on and what impacts those votes will have on the public.

County officials each year, year after year after year, promise that soon, soon, soon all the reports and resolutions that supervisors will consider will be posted in advance. Still, they aren’t. Meeting audio now is streamed, but without the documents being discussed, they can be really hard to follow. Same with the County Board meetings themselves.

It’s hard to believe the County Board show will be anything more than big spin: “We won’t provide you with the data, but we’ll tell you what it means.”

Property owners are now billed for 50% of the cost of all sidewalk slab replacements.

Ald. Joe Dudzik voted agains the measure.

Property owners still would be assessed for replacing city tree-damaged sidewalks if the replacement was part of an area sidewalk maintenance and repair project, as occurred in Story Hill last fall, or if it was part of a paving project, under the recommendation of the Public Works Committee.

Ald. Robert Bauman originally proposed that the city replace any sidewalk slab that was damaged by a city-owned tree — such damage usually occurs when tree roots dislodge or raise a sidewalk slab.

Bauman, though, added language sharply limiting the potential city-paid sidewalk slab replacements after colleagues questioned where the $25,000 to $50,000 estimated annual cost of the measure.

If the full Common Council approves the measure, property owners would best off if they complain to the city as soon as they notice that sidewalk slabs adjoining their properties are affected by city tree roots. Waiting until the city schedules a sidewalk replacement project would only expose property owners to a special assessment.