On Wednesday, the House is likely to finish appropriations for the fiscal year with a vote on the last spending measure, Defense. The lower chamber will also vote to extend the debt limit temporarily, a move that will put the thorny political issue off until 2010.

The Senate Budget Committee’s recently inaugurated Task Force on Government Performance will hold a hearing this morning on the benefits of the use of technology in providing results in government performance. This will be the second hearing for the task force and it should be a good one.

Today, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Daniel Inouye (D-HI) told reporters that appropriators from both sides of the Capitol would meet later today to hammer out the FY 2010 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill (HR 3288). He also blatantly hinted that the appropriations process would then begin to move fast.

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of our current tax code can tell you that it is broken. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which posted an interesting piece this morning on the need for comprehensive tax reform, our tax system "is inefficient, distorts behavior, stifles economic growth, and raises insufficient revenue to fund current or projected levels of government spending." CRFB included several suggestions for the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB), which was due to release a set of publicly generated recommendations on reforming the tax code today, but postponed the release until after the holidays.