A bill to strengthen regulation of credit rating agencies (HR 3890) took a step toward passage yesterday as the House Financial Services committee voted 49-14 to approve the Accountability and Transparency in Rating Agencies Act.

Yesterday, the chairmen of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees introduced legislation to crack down on overseas tax havens. Coming on the heels of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) successful amnesty program that rooted out tax cheats hiding assets overseas, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act would help the government root out more cheaters by providing tools to target foreign banks and other entities that provide hiding places for wealthy Americans' riches.

The contracting boondoggle that is the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq came into full focus last week with the State Department's release of an Inspector General's audit of the compound. We already knew that construction of the fortress-like embassy, which is the largest on the planet and ten times bigger than any other US embassy, was riddled with the big WF&B (waste, fraud and abuse), but the sheer scale of corruption and ineptitude detailed in the report brings back into question the State Department's ability to oversee contractors.

Several stories this week from Capitol Hill are painting a bleak picture for the appropriations process this year. Just weeks ago, legislators thought that the process would only take until November, tops. Now it seems they'll be lucky to be done by the end of the year, and hopefully won't have to cram everything into an omnibus bill.