I wanted to highlight one other thing from ProPublica's article on the "two-time loser" list, a nugget which I think was buried in the article. According to earlier OMB guidance, the main recourse agency officials have to punish repeat offenders is the revocation of federal funding, and we haven't heard whether agencies have used this stick yet. But ProPublica quotes OMB spokesman Tom Gavin as saying that, thus far, one, and only one, organization has suffered this fate. Want to guess which greedy, no-good corporation is flaunting the will of Congress, and which is being singled out as a rule-breaker? Maybe Xe? Wal-Mart? ENRON!?!

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) accepted an offer from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to drop his hold on a bill that will allow unemployed workers to see their Unemployment Insurance benefits and health insurance subsidies continue for 30 more days and to return some 2,000 federal highway safety employees to work today. The Senate quickly passed (78-19) the $10.3 billion bill, HR 4691, and cleared it for President Obama's signature

Earlier today, the Recovery Board released the list of Recovery Act recipients who did not file during the second reporting period.   According to the Board, recipients of 1,036 Recovery Act awards failed to file during this quarter, which was from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2009. That number represents a whopping 76 percent decline from the first reporting cycle, which saw 4,359 missing award reports, and is less than one percent of all the award reports. Equally good news is that of the 1,036 missing reports, only 389 were from "repeat offenders," or recipients who failed to file in both quarters.

The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released its 24th quarterly report on Saturday. If you haven't been paying attention to what's been going on in Iraq recently, it's worth a read. Besides providing observations on what's happening in the country and detailing the sources and uses of reconstruction funds, the inspector general's report also describes their recent oversight activities and successes in rooting out corruption within government contracting overseas.