Jesse Jackson has a good editorial on the African American children being left behind by federal policy. One passage I thought needed playing up: We need longer school years and far better teachers, and teacher education. We need less discrimination in spending, in discipline, in advanced placement. Some of this costs money. But, Williams says, we're not spending the money we currently have well. For example, our broken health-care system is killing school budgets. Health-care costs are going up 10 to 15 percent a year, far outstripping normal increases in public funding.

Dean Baker makes an interesting point on how the debate over the long-term budget imbalance is very one-sided. There are many experts who think that the problem really is that the health care system is broken and that the solution is to fix it, but they rarely get public attention.

The Senate Budget Committee reported out its FY 2008 Budget Resolution yesterday on a straight 12 - 11 party line vote. All of the funding levels we reported earlier in the week remained the same after the mark-up. Only a few amendmends were adopted, the most significant of which was one offered by committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), which required any new entitlement or tax legislation that would increase the budget deficit to clear a 60-vote point of order until the president puts forward and Congress approves legislation to restore solvency to the Social Security trust funds. The committee rejected a number of amendments, including one from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) to create a 60-vote point of order against any budget resolution that failed to reach balance, excluding Social Security funds, in five years. By excluding Social Security funds, the deficit would be significantly higher than the current level and the budget would be that much more difficult to balance. Funny that Bunning did not advocate for using this larger deficit figure when the Republicans controled the Senate. The panel also rejected an amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to instruct the Finance Committee to find $33.8 billion in savings over five years, with the intent that the reductions come from putting in place a proposal by President Bush to reduce reimbursements to Medicare providers.

Quick comment on Robert Pear's article yesterday on Medicaid- a must-read, by the way- that demonstrated that falling caseloads may be in part due to new "proof of citizenship" requirements. Medicaid costs, too, have been going down. Supposing these two trends are related, and it would seem they are, citizenship documentation seems nothing more than a high-handed way to cut budgets and deny people (the vast majority of whom are citizens) health care. Let's remember this if the President ever decides to boast of the cost-containment his policies have achieved.