Word: congressmen
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...option to cool things off - one that Beijing's major trading partners are privately urging - would be to allow China's currency to rise more swiftly in value. That would reduce the price of imported goods; it would also relieve some pressure Beijing is getting from U.S. Congressmen, who accuse China of manipulating its currency for trade advantage. Allowing the renminbi to rise might slow China's export-driven growth a bit, at least in the near term, but that may be a price worth paying. The question for Beijing is: will the country absorb a little pain...
...Brookings Institution studies have shown that the local projects congressmen and governors like to fund are much more likely to be new and expanded roads and bridges in sparsely developed areas than maintenance and repairs for dilapidated roads and bridges in urban and suburban areas. Politicians love ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and federal and state rules are often skewed to promote new sprawl roads. And it's no coincidence that these roads mean big money for home builders, oil companies, asphalt producers, engineering firms and the rest of the highway-building industry; a powerful coalition of business groups lobbied...
...transportation projects is almost as dysfunctional as our approach to water projects, which I wrote about last week. There's no starker example than Young's $375 billion bonanza, which he bragged he had stuffed "like a turkey." The bill included more than 6,300 earmarks inserted by individual congressmen, including not one but two bridges to nowhere in Alaska - the notorious $223 million crossing to the island of Gravina, population 50, and a $229 million boondoggle near Anchorage known as Don Young's Way. The entire bill was known as "TEA-LU," an acronym for the awkwardly named Transportation...
...example of Japan, which acquiesced to Washington and--many Asians are convinced--paid a terrible economic price. Adding to their suspicions is the fact that even currency experts have an awfully hard time agreeing on a value for the renminbi. "I find it ironic that the Congressmen are talking about 30% to 40% appreciation of the RMB, but the economists say they don't know how overvalued it is," Feng told me. "I think we should not politicize the issue...
...Bush Administration's veto message called the bill "unaffordable,? but there are deeper problems with the bill that reflect deeper problems with the Corps and its enablers in Congress. The Corps is funded almost entirely by "earmarks,? specific projects requested by specific Congressmen, so there's no way to prioritize between national emergencies (such as stronger levees to prevent a Katrina-style catastrophe in Sacramento) and preposterous pork (such as a notorious $459 million flood-control scheme for Dallas, a study of a $3 billion dam on the Susitna River that Representative Don Young wants in Alaska, or the seven...