Referring to the federal government’s forfeiture regime as “an important tool” in fighting crime, attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch staunchly defended the concept of civil asset forfeiture during the first day of her confirmation hearings.

After Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) questioned the “fundamental fairness” of Americans having their property taken by the government without any proof (or often even suspicion) of criminal wrongdoing, Lynch asserted that there are “safeguards at every step of the process” to protect innocent people, “certainly implemented by [her] office … as well as an opportunity to be heard.”

Even setting aside the litany of federal civil asset forfeiture abuses that have come to light recently across the country, Lynch’s reference to her own office’s handling of civil forfeiture is particularly concerning.

Lynch is currently the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and her office, despite its safeguards, is responsible for one of the more publicized and questionable uses of the asset forfeiture program.  In May of 2012 the Hirsch brothers, joint owners of Bi-County Distributors in Long Island, had their entire bank account drained by the Internal Revenue Service working in conjunction with Lynch’s office. Many of Bi-County’s customers paid in cash, and when the brothers made several deposits under $10,000, federal agents accused them of “structuring” their deposits in order to avoid the reporting requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act. Without so much as a criminal charge, the federal government emptied the account, totaling $446,651.11.

For more than two years, and in defiance of the 60-day deadline for the initiation of proceedings included in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, Lynch’s office simply sat on the money while the Hirsch brothers survived off the goodwill their business had engendered with its vendors over the decades.

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On Monday, the White House will release President Obama’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2016. The president is expected to reemphasize his previous fiscal approach of higher spending coupled with higher taxes, while completely ignoring the country’s long-term fiscal problems.

A new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides evidence of the best way to solve those problems, should the president decide to tackle the nation’s fiscal mess. The study, by Alberto Alesina, Omar Barbiero, and others, tries to answer one central question: What is the best way for a country to rebalance policy to solve a fiscal crisis?  

The study looked at Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development member countries and their response to the financial crisis from 2009 to 2013. Following the crisis, many of those countries became burdened by large amounts of debt and deficit as a result of rising spending and falling revenues. Government spending grew to an average of 43 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) within the European Union.

With a fiscal crisis on the horizon, many of the countries turned to so-called “austerity” measures in order to promote economic growth. Some countries adopted policies that focused on increasing revenue to close budget gaps, while others focused spending cuts. Researchers distinguished between fiscal plans based on spending cuts and those based upon tax increases.

The researchers found that spending cuts, not tax increases, are the best way to resolve a fiscal crisis. According to the researchers, “Fiscal adjustments based upon cuts in spending appear to have been much less costly, in terms of output losses, than those based upon tax increases.” Tax-based fiscal plans are an inefficient solution to fiscal problems in the long-term. An average tax-based plan with a size of 1 percent of total GDP was shown to shrink the economy by almost twice that amount over the next three years.

The NBER study provides valuable insight regarding the effectiveness of different types of fiscal adjustment plans. Fiscal plans emphasizing cuts in spending are more successful in promoting economic growth in the long term.

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Thanks to Kristina Pepe for her excellent research assistance on this piece.

Today, in a 62-36 vote, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The House passed a similar measure a few weeks ago. These actions come more than 6 years after TransCanada Corp originally submitted its application to the State Department to build a pipeline linking the Alberta oil sands to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Did I say State Department?

Yep, in matters involving the crossing of an international border (in this case the one with Canada) the State Department must make a determination as to whether or not the project is in the “national interest.” Two-thousand, three hundred and twenty-three days later, the ultimate head of the State Department still hasn’t made up his mind.

So Congress has attempted to make the decision for him.

But it probably won’t work.

President Obama has already advertised that he plans on vetoing the measure, because, well, because the State Department already has a procedure in place to handle cross border pipeline projects like this one.

In fact, this procedure has worked flawlessly up until the Keystone XL pipeline.  The previous cross-border pipeline that was proposed—the Alberta Clipper in 2007—was approved in just over two years. At the time, the State Department wrote in glowing terms about the project praising it for advancing “strategic interests,” being a “positive economic signal” and adding that “reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are best addressed through each country’s robust domestic policies.”

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