U.S. Weighs Asset Sales, will the Congress offer to sell their blood next?

WASHINGTON — Like Americans trying to raise quick cash by unloading their unwanted goods, the federal government is considering a novel way to reduce the deficit: holding the equivalent of a garage sale. It involves selling an island, courthouses, maybe an airstrip, generally idle or underused vehicles, roads, buildings, land — even the airwaves used to broadcast television.
Among the listings: Plum Island, N.Y., off the North Fork of Long Island, which the government has already begun marketing as 840 acres of “sandy shoreline, beautiful views and a harbor.” As former home to the federal Animal Disease Center, it may need a bit of “biohazard remediation,” making it a real fixer-upper.

Many conservatives — including Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and the budget experts at the Cato Institute — support the broad idea of shrinking the government by selling parts of it. Democrats like the idea of virtually painless revenue-raising. Whether Congress can pass any bill in the current atmosphere, however, is far from certain.

“This is something that we can have bipartisan agreement on,” said Representative Jeff Denham of California who, as one of the most conservative House Republicans, almost never agrees with the president.

Fire sales of unused government property will not come close to closing the deficit, of course, and there are plenty of bureaucratic obstacles in the way even if Congress approves.

The White House figures it could raise up to $22 billion over the next decade, though there are plenty who doubt the government could raise anywhere near that amount. More than 80 percent of that figure might come from the auction of public airwaves now dedicated to broadcast television which the Obama administration believes can be better used for wireless broadband.