Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Tom Carper (D-DE), and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced new legislation on June 3 as a follow-up to the 2006 Transparency Act. The bill, the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act (S. 3077), would augment the 2006 law but go further, making important new data more easily accessible to the public and making it easier for citizens to hold our government accountable for the fiscal stewardship of our shared resources.

A federal court has sent back (vacated and remanded, in regulatory-speak) to the Bush administration a rule aimed to limit government reimbursement for Medicaid providers. The rule is one of several the administration is attempting to codify in an effort to undermine the entire Medicaid program. The process by which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized the rule was particularly sneaky, even by Bush administration standards. A New York Times editorial explains:

I just wanted to alert readers of a new blog we've been reading: EconomistMom - "where analytical rigor meets a mother's intuition." Authored by economist and mom Diane Lim Rogers of the Concord Coalition, the blog's "particular focus [is] on the economics of fiscal responsibility," but Rogers also writes about broader issues. She's been on a roll lately, explaining the trap of the "largest tax increase in history" rhetoric, expressing frustration about the 'extenders' tax cuts, and righteously high-fiving Steven Pearlstein for his column that connects the dots of the various

The unanticipated hiatus between this week's conference approval of the FY09 budget resolution and its formal adoption by Congress next month gives us some time to examine the assumptions underlying the deficit/surplus projections in both the resolution and the budget submitted by the President in February in depth prior to passage.