Government Spending

When Energy Secretary Steven Chu talks about how Americans can break their addiction to oil and coal, he starts with his hi-fi amplifier. It's so old that the on-off light burned out long ago. But inside lies a technology that -- in its day -- was as revolutionary as the changes needed to solve the nation's energy problems. Radios, telephones and other electronics once depended on fragile vacuum tubes the size of small light bulbs.

With Congress moving toward passage of an $800-billion-plus economic stimulus plan, big government is back. Unabashed. With a vengeance. The stimulus is bigger than the Pentagon's entire budget. It's more than the United States has spent on the war in Iraq. And its hundreds of provisions reach into almost every aspect of American life -- including workers' paychecks, local schools, digital television and modernizing medical records.

After eight years of budget practices that often camouflaged federal spending, President Obama is planning a new strategy of putting on the books as many costs as possible to demonstrate the extent of the nation's economic troubles, senior White House officials say. Obama's first budget, scheduled to be released in broad outline Thursday, will include at the outset money for the Iraq war, the military buildup in Afghanistan and other expenditures.

As the increasingly troubled economy emerges as the trump issue of the 2008 political season, senior congressional Republicans said Wednesday they would put aside demands to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent if that was what it took to get quick action on a stimulus package.

The chancellor of the Cal State University system announced Wednesday that he would allow seven campuses to extend by one month an unusually early application deadline that was initially imposed on potential freshmen because of the state's budget crisis. Charles B. Reed, head of the 23-campus system, earlier this month had ordered all the schools to close their freshman application windows on Feb. 1 as a way to reduce enrollment growth that would not be funded under Gov.

Faced with a budget shortfall that has doubled in three months, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Monday for paring city spending by suspending most hiring, asking thousands of workers to take unpaid furloughs and selling vacant fire stations.

The Bush administration wants to spend 19% more on border security and immigration enforcement in the next federal budget year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday. In his annual budget request on Monday, President Bush will ask Congress to allocate $12.1 billion to construct more border fencing, hire more Border Patrol agents and expand the teams that conduct raids on businesses using illegal immigrants.

On Sept. 19, 2000, John McCain rose in the Senate to rail against what he called the "staggering" sums that the federal government planned to spend to help Salt Lake City stage the 2002 Winter Olympics. "The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a billion and a half dollars," McCain said. The Arizona Republican vowed to "do everything in my power" to delay or kill "this pork-barrel spending" and to end the "fiscal abuse" related to the Olympics.

Even though he has come under investigation for his ties to a lobbyist whose clients have benefited from millions of dollars in congressional earmarks, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) was among the top lawmakers securing money for special projects in this year's spending bills, a watchdog group's analysis has found. Lewis, the senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, secured $137 million in earmarks on his own or working with other lawmakers.

The apparent demise of a toll road through San Onofre State Beach could have a domino effect on funding for other Southern California transportation projects, a regional planning authority said this week. A letter sent to Orange County transportation planners by the Southern California Assn. of Governments warns that if the Foothill South tollway is not built, another project must be substituted in SCAG's Regional Transportation Plan.