The omnibus appropriations bill passed by the House last night contains 3,500 pages and over $516 billion in spending. Yet with all that space (and money), Congress could not find enough room for even their own priorities from earlier this year for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Specifics of the IRS's funding take from the omnibus show the House has included $2.15 billion for taxpayer services, down slightly from the $2.155 proposed earlier this year, $4.78 billion for enforcement (down from $4.93 billion) and $3.68 billion for operations (down from $3.77 billion). What's more, the House has backed away from a requirement for the IRS to develop a strategic plan to address the tax gap. The total IRS budget request ($10.89 billion) is $203 million below even President Bush's request!. What is going on here? So, just to review, despite a year in which congressional hearings revealed that the IRS is underfunded, runs a dangerous and wasteful privatization program, and has no strategic plan for addressing the tax gap, Congress decided to give it less money, allow the privatization program to continue, and let the IRS off the hook for developing a strategic plan. And I wonder why people don't believe in government...

The routine matter of passing a resolution to adjourn Congress for the session is getting caught up in the effort to pay for the AMT patch bill. The adjournment resolution, H Con Res 271, failed by a 184-218 vote yesterday, with members of the Democrats' Blue Dog Coalition using the vote to draw attention to the PAYGO principles, which the Senate violated last week in approving an AMT patch bill without any offset provisions, a move that would add a $50 billion hole to the deficit next year.

President Bush suggested tonight that Congress might want to pass a year-long continuing resolution instead of the compromise bill he forced them to develop. The Hill reports: If the Congress can't get the job done — in other words, those jet fumes'll start to be moving out … pretty soon here, later on this week — if they can't get the job done, then I've got a suggestion for them, and just pass a one-year continuing resolution. Seriously? It seems as though the president has gone off the deep end. Is it 2008 yet?

EPI's Jared Bernstein has an excellent analysis of the most recent CBO income distribution figures on TPM Cafe. Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95% to the top 5%. That is, had the income distribution remained as it was in 2003, the income of each of the 109 million households in the bottom 95% would have been $3,660 higher in 2005. His whole post is well worth a read.