Obama's proposed budget suggests the possibility of selling the Tennessee Valley Authority

President Obama's new budget proposal suggests his administration would consider selling the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is the nation's largest public power provider and provides electricity to 9 million people in parts of seven states. TVA was established in 1933 as a regional development agency for the Tennessee River watershed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and now distributes power well beyond that area (but not in some parts of the watershed, primarily western North Carolina).

TVA map: service region and electric distributors (click on image for larger version)

Republicans and Democrats in the region have always shot down suggestions that it be sold, and Obama is the most liberal president since Roosevelt. However, "The budget document cited concerns that TVA may need to exceed its borrowing limit as it works to modernize its power generation system. The authority's debt is capped at $30 billion under current law," Ryan Tracy reports for The Wall Street Journal. "TVA reported a $60 million net income in 2012 on $11.2 billion in revenues. Its income is reinvested and doesn't go back to taxpayers. To be profitable to taxpayers in the long run, the sale price for TVA may have to exceed its outstanding debt. That debt was more than $24 billion in 2012, according to the administration's budget." (Read more)