OMB Watch is back from the holiday break! I'm personally happy about that, because I have the sense that the new Congress, like the old Congress, is going to provide us lots and lots of good blogging material. Today, I get to put up tortured claims from incoming House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) that teachers and police officers don't have real jobs and that if your private-sector job was ever cut, it never actually really existed as a real job.

A batch of documents recently obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request exposes "previously undisclosed offenses committed by more than 200 contract employees in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2004 and 2008." Many of these offenses were quite egregious, and yet it was often only the employee disciplined, while the government let the offending company off the hook. A recent New York Times article reveals why: many of these companies are too big to ban.

Last month, OMB management guru Jeff Zients unveiled the Obama administration's five-part internet technology (IT) reform proposal during a talk before the Northern Virginia Tech Council. Highlighting the administration's achievements in IT reform thus far – including the launching of the IT Dashboard and a recently concluded review of federal financial system projects – Zients sketched out the five parts: introducing budget and acquisitions flexibility, strengthening program management, increasing accountability, increasing engagement with industry, and adopting light technologies.

This chart of average tax cuts per income group under several plans to extend various provisions of the Bush tax cuts, via the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, made my jaw drop this afternoon.