Speaker Boehner is bragging on Twitter: "Republicans are putting an end to business as usual in Washington. No more earmarks."

The Huffington Post provides a useful corrective in a news article headlined "Omnibus Budget Proves That Earmarks Will Never Die in Congress":

Judging by the press releases that flooded Washington on Tuesday, you might think the lawmakers had single-handedly obtained money for pet projects in their home districts.

Bloomberg View has an editorial complaining of "foolish" congressional "stinginess" when it comes to funding the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Under the 2014 spending agreement, the Securities and Exchange Commission will get $1.35 billion, which is $324 million below President Barack Obama's budget request," the editorial says. "With such tight-fisted budgets, the industry will get exactly what it pays for -- regulators who must work nights and weekends to keep up, resulting in morale problems. Even worse, the agencies won't be able to recruit the best and brightest."

Here is some context missing from the Bloomberg View editorial, courtesy of a New York Times news article:

by several measures, the S.E.C. is far from starved for money. Its $1.1 billion budget in 2010 was 15 percent higher than the $960 million it received the year before — and nearly triple its $377 million budget in 2000.

Back in the olden days, you took your kids to a farm on the weekend to teach them about the animals. Nowadays, the lessons are about big government regulations and excessive litigation. At least that's the lesson I took away from a recent trip to the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Drumlin Farm. The photos below are pretty much self-explanatory.

Governor's Christie's best response to the scandal over the politically motivated lane-closures and traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge would be to privatize the bridge and break up the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, I argue in my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here) and Reason (here). The Sun also issued an editorial about the column.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein writes about the labor market following last week's jobs report and in advance of President Obama's expected call for an increase in the federal minimum wage:

only a free market in labor is able to balance changes in both supply and demand, so as to reduce the incidence of unemployment. Government efforts to impose various minimum wages will, happily, have little adverse effect if the market wage is greater than the government mandate. But the same form of increase could have devastating effects on labor markets when the required wage is set too high relative to market wages. The number of workers eager to take jobs at these higher levels will be great, but the number of jobs available at that wage level will shrink. Unemployment levels will increase, and working off the books could increase.

The Tax Foundation points out that one reason it made sense for Beam Inc., the makers of Jim Beam, to be bought by Suntory of Japan is the tax angle:

By putting Beam in Japan, the new company will enjoy a (slightly) lower corporate tax rate, but more importantly exemption of most profits earned abroad. That is, the new company will pay corporate taxes in each country in which it operates, without paying any additional "toll charge" for bringing those profits back home, as is done currently to U.S. multinational corporations.

The New York Times reports that Mayor Bill de Blasio wore "a dark blue Corneliani suit," purchased at Rothmans, to his inauguration.

The Times article makes it sound like this is evidence that Mr. de Blasio is a man of the people:

Mr. de Blasio had no need to visit Paul Stuart, a one-time favorite of Mr. de Blasio's predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, or Martin Greenfield, the East Williamsburg tailor who has made custom suits for Mr. Bloomberg, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and Ray Kelly.

Missing from the article is the suit's price tag. FutureOfCapitalism called Rothmans and was told, "They start at $1,700 to $1,800."

Maybe I'm frugal, but that strikes me as a lot of money for a suit, especially one worn by a politician running on the platform Mr. de Blasio did.

The "Grumpy Economist" John Cochrane has a post about a Wall Street Journal article about non-bank lenders, which are rising to meet the need for business credit in response to banks that, either because of regulations or caution, are reluctant to lend. Professor Cochrane writes: "It is so heartwarming as an economist to see, even if slowly, all the adjustments we expect. Banks not lending (or forced not to lend)? Someone will start a new business model to fill in the void."

From a New York Times account of congressional maneuvering over a farm bill:

A plan to shift catfish inspections to the Agriculture Department from the Food and Drug Administration also appears to be impeding a deal on the bill. The $20 million Agriculture Department program has drawn considerable criticism because it duplicates a much cheaper program at the Food and Drug Administration. Despite the program's costs, the Agriculture Department has yet to inspect a single catfish.

Catfish farmers and Southern lawmakers say the program is needed to protect consumers from catfish imported from countries such as Vietnam. But critics call it a trade barrier designed to protect domestic catfish farmers.

Senator Rand Paul and Daniel J. Mitchell have a USA Today op-ed opposing the extension of unemployment benefits: "Since President Obama was elected, we have spent $560 billion on unemployment benefits. It's likely many more jobs would have been created had the government not diverted that money from the economy's productive sector."

George Will writes:

Americans who exercise consumer sovereignty wherever Barack Obama still tolerates it are constantly disappointing him. ...In 2013, for the 32nd consecutive year, the best-selling vehicle was Ford's F-Series pickups. ...
Today's consumers, who cannot get it through their thick heads that they are supposed to want wee vehicles such as Chevrolet's Volt, bought 763,402 F-Series trucks. That is 740,308 more than the number of Volts General Motors sold.

The American Enterprise Institute's James Pethokoukis has a post usefully summing up and reacting to Senator Rubio's big anti-poverty speech, which is itself worth reading in full if you have the time.

The Pew poll reports, "Americans are relatively unconcerned about the wide income gap between rich and poor." It says, "barely half (47%) of Americans think that the rich-poor gap is a very big problem for the U.S."

Data from other polls bear this out. In four Gallup polls asking Americans, "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today," the gap between rich and poor was named by only one percent (in three of the polls) or two percent (in one of the polls) of respondents. That's less than federal budget deficit/debt, unemployment/jobs, education, or "ethics/moral/religious decline."

Jonathan Cohn, a supporter of ObamaCare, writes at the New Republic:

One valid criticism about the new health care law is that President Obama wasn't forthright about the trade-offs. And one trade-off he failed to highlight was that, in order to keep premiums low, insurers in the exchanges might limit choice of doctor and hospital.

"Wasn't forthright" is about the nicest way to say it. But it's a sign of where we are in the ObamaCare discussion that even Mr. Cohn (a former colleage of mine on the Crimson) writing in the New Republic can concede this point.

The House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, delivered remarks about education reform this week to the Brookings Institution:

For many families, living in poverty spans generations. Parents and grandparents struggled to realize the American dream. School choice is the surest way to break this vicious cycle of poverty and we must act fast before it is too late for too many.

The fact is the government's approach to fixing our schools has been too slow, too sporadic, and too ineffective. And while we wait, we are losing generations of kids.

For far too long the federal government's approach to fixing our education system has been based on two principles: spend more money and give more control to Washington. Since the mid 1960's the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to improve schools in low-income areas with little to no effect.

Americans have a right to ask: why do our student test rates lag behind most of the industrialized world?