The Crazy Reason Treasury Department Officials Can’t Get Their Work Done
Treasury Department officials are being driven to distraction these days, but it’s not because of the expiring debt ceiling or other pressing financial controversies.
Instead, loud music from a New Orleans-style street band known as Spread Love has reportedly driven some officials and employees at the Treasury building to wear earphones to block out the noise and even move meetings to other parts of the building to find some peace and quiet.
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“We have to relocate our conference calls,” one Treasury employee told The Washington Post. “We can’t have meetings in that corner of the building anymore. It’s like they’re playing music in the building.”
Members of Spread Love have become fixtures of downtown Washington’s street scene and are collecting generous donations for playing their drums, trombone and other brass instruments. Tourists and other office workers out during their lunch hour appear to love the group, but not so the serious-minded economists and bean counters at the Treasury – especially when the band moves within easy shouting distance at the corner of 15th and G Streets NW.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s staff members aren’t the only ones complaining about the jarring music. Partners and associates at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom find it hard to concentrate on their cases with daily interruptions. It got to the point that the firm dispatched a security guard to offer band members $200 a week if they would play somewhere else. Lonnie Shepard, one of the trombonists, told the newspaper that he laughed at the offer because “We can make that in an hour.”
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Rob Runyan, a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, said that employee complaints have made their way to the office of the assistant secretary for management, Brodi Fontenot, but there really wasn’t much that could be done.
“The band and other street noise are part of the distractions of working in downtown D.C.,” Runyan said in an interview Friday.
Chart of the Day: SALT in the GOP’s Wounds
The stark and growing divide between urban/suburban and rural districts was one big story in this year’s election results, with Democrats gaining seats in the House as a result of their success in suburban areas. The GOP tax law may have helped drive that trend, Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung notes.
The new tax law capped the amount of state and local tax deductions Americans can claim in their federal filings at $10,000. Congressional seats for nine of the top 25 districts where residents claim those SALT deductions were held by Republicans heading into Election Day. Six of the nine flipped to the Democrats in last week’s midterms.
Chart of the Day: Big Pharma's Big Profits
Ten companies, including nine pharmaceutical giants, accounted for half of the health care industry's $50 billion in worldwide profits in the third quarter of 2018, according to an analysis by Axios’s Bob Herman. Drug companies generated 23 percent of the industry’s $636 billion in revenue — and 63 percent of the total profits. “Americans spend a lot more money on hospital and physician care than prescription drugs, but pharmaceutical companies pocket a lot more than other parts of the industry,” Herman writes.
Chart of the Day: Infrastructure Spending Over 60 Years
Federal, state and local governments spent about $441 billion on infrastructure in 2017, with the money going toward highways, mass transit and rail, aviation, water transportation, water resources and water utilities. Measured as a percentage of GDP, total spending is a bit lower than it was 50 years ago. For more details, see this new report from the Congressional Budget Office.
Number of the Day: $3.3 Billion
The GOP tax cuts have provided a significant earnings boost for the big U.S. banks so far this year. Changes in the tax code “saved the nation’s six biggest banks $3.3 billion in the third quarter alone,” according to a Bloomberg report Thursday. The data is drawn from earnings reports from Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.
Clarifying the Drop in Obamacare Premiums
We told you Thursday about the Trump administration’s announcement that average premiums for benchmark Obamacare plans will fall 1.5 percent next year, but analyst Charles Gaba says the story is a bit more complicated. According to Gaba’s calculations, average premiums for all individual health plans will rise next year by 3.1 percent.
The difference between the two figures is produced by two very different datasets. The Trump administration included only the second-lowest-cost Silver plans in 39 states in its analysis, while Gaba examined all individual plans sold in all 50 states.