GOP leaders are calling on the House majority to give them and the American people a look at the omnibus spending bill in the works. It’s likely to see votes in the next week or two. The bill will spend somewhere in the range of a half-trillion dollars on the operation of the government for the rest of the fiscal year.

You probably don’t need to read it unless you really want the details, but the Thomas B. Fordham Institute just released a report finding that academic standards vary widely from state to state under the No Child Left Behind Act, creating an “accountability illusion.” I say you probably needn’t peruse the paper not because it doesn’t have solid data or a decent analysis – Fordham has put out a lot of fine studies on the state of state standards – but because it doesn’t really tell us anything new. We’ve known for years that NCLB is essentially a big lie.

Unfortunately, the findings aren’t the only slightly stale bit in this report. The recommendations are also warmed over, and they’re just as logic-defying as they’ve always been. From the press release for the paper:

In their foreword to the study, Finn and Petrilli wrote that the solution to this dilemma is not to scrap NCLB or to federalize tests and standards. Instead, they argue, the Obama Administration and Congress should create incentives for states to voluntarily sign on to rigorous, comprehensive common standards and tests. Washington should then publish the results for every school in the land but allow states to decide what to do with schools that don’t meet those common expectations. This would ensure greater transparency and reinforce state responsibility. “Best of all,” they note, “it would end the gamesmanship that has characterized the federal-state relationship for the past seven years.”

“Finn and Petrilli” are Fordham President Chester Finn and Vice President Michael Petrilli, and I’ve been over this nationalizing-without-federalizing approach with them before.

First off, when “the Obama Administration and Congress…create incentives,” that is federalizing tests and standards. One need look no further than the last forty-plus years of federal involvement in education, or in almost everything else for that matter, to see clearly that Washington has constantly used monetary “incentives” – change your laws or you don’t get your taxpayers’ dollars back! – to control countless things over which it has no constitutional authority. Whether it’s withholding highway funds to alter drinking ages, or threatening to keep money from states that don’t sign on to NCLB, “incentives” have equaled “control.”

And who would decide whether standards and tests were “rigorous” or “comprehensive” in Finn and Petrilli’s scheme? If federal ducats are the adoption bait, it would almost certainly be the feds. But it doesn’t really matter: As I’ve written many times before, all the standards-setting evidence we have screams that standards set by government, whether states or the same feds who brought us NCLB, will almost certainly be low. Indeed, as I reminded readers just a few days ago, Fordham itself has only been able to point to three out of fifty states with laudable standards. In light of that pitiful batting average, why would we ever think that nationalized standards-making is a promising solution? When we consider how standards are made in a government-run system, we definitely wouldn’t: Special interests employed by the system, ranging from teachers, to principals, to state bureaucrats, have the most motivation and clout to influence political control over the system, and it’s in their greatest interest to have low standards that are easy to hit. Hence, the dismal state-level performance.

At this point, frankly, it’s pretty darn clear that NCLB is a failure. It should also be obvious that further centralizing political control would just be dumping more water into the already submerged ship. Unfortunately, the latter seems to keep escaping the notice of far too many people.

While assaults on economic liberty from the Bush-Obama administration continue in Washington, the Institute for Justice is taking on another fight for the right to earn a living, this time in Boston. Erroll Tyler wants to use state-of-the-art amphibious vehicles to pick up and drop off passengers in Kendall Square in Cambridge and tour historical sites along a fixed route in Boston and Cambridge. But the city won’t issue him a sightseeing license, ostensibly because of a moratorium on such licenses instituted because of the disruptive Big Dig project — which finally ended six years ago. Ironically, one of the sights Tyler would like to show to visitors is the USS Constitution.

The Institute for Justice has come to his aid, with a lawsuit in federal court and this video, featuring Cato senior fellow Randy Barnett, author of Restoring the Lost Constitution:

The Boston Globe asks, “What does it say about the climate for small businesses in Boston and Cambridge that a guy with a promising business plan needs to turn to out-of-state libertarians to protect his interests in federal court?”

One might also ask what it says about the liberals and conservatives in Massachusetts. Don’t they want to help entrepreneurs?

Congratulations to Jonathan Slemrod and Charles Johnson for winning the January Op-Eds of the Month contest.

Jonathan Slemrod is a junior at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His op-ed in the Michigan Daily, “Cap-and-Trade Fantasies,” cites Patrick J. Michaels (who also spoke at the University of Michigan) to argue that Obama’s plan to impose cap-and-trade regulations to protect the environment will not provide the many benefits its supporters claim and will only further harm the U.S. economy. Jonathan received an autographed copy of Chris Edwards and Daniel J. Mitchell’s book, Global Tax Revolution.

Charles Johnson is a sophomore at Claremont McKenna. His op-ed in the Claremont Independent, “FIRE and Free Speech on Campus: Are the Claremont Colleges Violating the California Constitution?,” takes a look at several historical examples where Claremont Colleges limited student free speech and the role that outside organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education have played in checking the university’s actions. He blogs at The Claremont Conservative. Charles received an autographed copy of The Dirty Dozen by Robert A. Levy and William Mellor.

Both Jonathan and Charles’s op-eds will also be considered for the Cato on Campus Op-Ed of the Year, with a chance of receiving a full scholarship to Cato University.

The New York Times and others are reporting that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will be President Obama’s choice for HHS secretary. Obama’s first choice for secretary of HHS, former Sen. Tom Daschle, was an expert on health care reform; indeed, he had written a book on the topic, which laid out specific ideas, and provided fodder for opponents of Obama’s reform plans. Sebelius represents a very different approach. While she is a former state insurance commissioner and dealt with health programs as governor, she is associated with few specific proposals.

A preliminary look at her record suggests that she is a member of what my colleague Michael Cannon calls the Church of Universal Coverage, and has regularly pushed for the expansion of government programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP. She sought to have Kansas taxpayers cover all children up to the age of five, but her proposal was rejected by the legislature. She also has been sympathetic to the ideas of both an employer mandate (she imposed a mandate for companies receiving state contracts) and an individual mandate. As insurance commissioner she had a reputation for supporting increased regulation. Nothing surprising in this record at all.

An interesting question will be whether Sebelius will also inherit Daschle’s role as White House “health czar,” or whether that position will go to Daschle’s coauthor, Jeanne Lambrew, currently the “deputy czar.” If Sebelius doesn’t get the second post, expect health care reform to be driven out of the White House, while Sebelius, generally given high marks for bipartisanship, tries to corral moderate Republican votes.

Massachusetts is facing shortfalls after an extended binge on tax dollars. The AP reports today that some school districts are cutting grants for full-day kindergarten to save money, but that’s pocket change compared to what they could save with a serious school choice program.

School choice, especially bipartisan and increasingly successful education tax credits, can save states billions of dollars according to a fiscal analysis by the Cato Institute. New York could save more than $6 billion over the first five years alone, while Illinois could save more than $3 billion and South Carolina more than $400 million. And even the small programs already up and running saved taxpayers more than $444 million between 1990 and 2006 even though most of the programs began at the end of the 1990s or later and were small and restricted.

These huge savings should come as no surprise considering that the median full tuition paid at U.S. private schools is just $4,000, compared to an average of about $13,000 per student in public schools. Massachusetts spends more than $13,500 per student every year.

School choice saves money and children. Massachusetts can’t afford not to have education tax credits.

The Wall Street Journal recently looked at the trouble the Department of Energy will have efficiently spending all the extra cash allocated to it under the stimulus bill. The article noted: “The Energy Department has had limited experience pulling off big, transformative energy projects.”

Actually, the department has undertaken big projects many times, but the Journal is correct that it sure as heck hasn’t pulled them off. Indeed, the history of big federal energy projects is one of boondoggle, boondoggle, boondoggle.

Unless President Obama has a magic formula that fundamentally changes the nature of government management, Americans can expect a horribly wasteful energy spending spree in coming years.