In an unprecedented move to increase congressional transparency, as of 1 pm this afternoon, the House of Representatives Statement of Disbursements is available online. 

Ugh oh, a recent article in National Journal (subscription required) quotes several members of Congress, including Senate Budget Chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), expressing strong interest in the creation of a bi-partisan debt-reduction commission with binding recommendation powers to Congress. It seems Conrad, Wolf, and other budget hawks see the administration's need to raise the debt ceiling as the perfect opportunity to press for the creation of such a body. While there's nothing wrong with a debt commission per se, I find the timing and details of this scheme troubling for a number of reasons.

On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for October. It's a look back at the good old days of Fiscal Year 2009, with all the spending, and borrowing and loss of revenue...wait, did I say "good old days?" Let's examine CBO's goodbye to the not-so-great fiscal year that was.

Congress yesterday passed a FY 2010 appropriations measure for environmental agencies that exempts factory farms from having to track and report their greenhouse gas emissions. The exemption applies to a rule issued in September by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requiring thousands of large facilities economy-wide to monitor and report their emissions.