The Federal Diary column in the Washington Post this week asked each of the presidential candidates a series of questions related to the federal workforce. Both columns are worth a quick read if you want to learn more about the candidates (see McCain and Obama), but I wanted to highlight one question in particular. Joe Davidson asked each candidate, "Federal labor leaders complain that outside contractors perform jobs that should be done by government employees. Do you favor any suspension of contracting out activities?

Taxpayer for Common Sense, the scrappy nonprofit that is fast becoming the go-to resource for all things earmarks, released a new analysis earlier this week showing that earmark levels have dropped slightly in the FY 2009 appropriations bills compared to last year. From the TCS report:

BudgetBlog reader and national debt aficionado Brooke A. fired up Excel (or maybe even OpenOffice.org Calc?) and calculated what a 30-year mortgage would look like on a $9.5 trillion loan -- a loan principle equal to today's national debt.

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it will not enforce new requirements that would have made it more difficult for states to enroll children in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). USA Today reports that the administration will not be taking "compliance action" at this time on regulations that would have forced states to wait until children are uninsured for one year before being covered by SCHIP and also require states to enroll 95 percent of extremely low-income children in the state before expanding health care coverage to only somewhat low-income families: