Obama's quiet strike against the "socialist" label
Think the government should be run more like a business? Obama has just the plan for you ...
By Jonathan Easley
In the past two weeks, President Obama dramatically freed himself from his enemies' suggestions that he is too "foreign" (with the release of his long-form birth certificate) and too "weak" (with the killing of Osama bin Laden). But you might have missed a subtler move by the president that could further erode his opponents' push to brand him a "socialist."
This past week, the administration asked Congress to form a commission to fast-track the sale of "excess" federal property in an attempt to wipe some zeroes from the tail-end of the deficit figure.
The sale of public real estate to private interests has bipartisan support, but it's more significant than that: It's an indication that under Democratic leadership the U.S. government is beginning to behave as an entity that is concerned with such fiscal trivialities as ledgers and balance sheets. It's the opposite of state socialism and nationalization -- goals that Obama's critics on the right have relentlessly claimed that he's pursuing.The administration has identified a massive asset class worth unloading. The federal government is the largest owner of real estate in the nation, sitting on hundreds of millions of acres of land that takes up about 30 percent of the country's surface. The value of Uncle Sam's nondefense real estate portfolio is estimated at $230 billion, and it carries a maintenance cost of around $20 billion a year.
If Congress moves ahead on the White House's recommendation, 60 percent of sale proceeds from properties the White House has deemed excess will go to paying down the deficit, with 40 percent to cover costs on other government-run facilities. In addition to the one-time cash from the sale, the government can begin generating tax revenues on land that was previously an expense. Just don't get too excited about landing a piece of the Grand Canyon -- the administration describes this first round of sales as "sheds, underutilized office buildings and empty warehouses." (The White House actually put together an interactive map of all of the excess properties.)
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http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/politics/2011/05/08/obama_s_libertarian_turn