Some good news: key Republican Senators are defying President Bush on SCHIP. From CQ (sorry, subscription only): The chief Republican architects of a deal to expand a children's health insurance program are defending the proposal against criticism by President Bush, who has threatened to "resist" it. This week, members of the Senate Finance Committee tentatively agreed on a renewal and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which covers about 6 million children from families that are low-income but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

The evidence keeps piling up that the budget deficits aren't increasing interest rates and aren't harming the economy. But deficits aren't just an economic problem- they're a moral problem, says economist Andrew Samwick: Suppose for the sake of argument that deficits don't put much upward pressure on interest rates. Even in that case, they still have to be financed at the existing interest rate, and the burden of financing them has to be borne by someone in the future. Taxing someone in 2020 to pay for our spending binge in 2003 violates my notions of fairness, and that is a substantially more salient issue here than any additional concerns about efficiency. Hold on there- that's a bit too simple.

Congress is back from its week-long July 4th vacation and will, among other things, try to get pass some more spending bills. This week in the House: Wednesday

• Transportation-HUD is in full Appropriations Committee
• Labor-HHS is in full Appropriations Committee

Thursday

• Commerce-Justice-Science is in full Appropriations Committee
• Energy-Water pork is divvied up by Appropriations Committee

Possible action sometime during the week

• Defense is in subcommittee
• Agriculture is in subcommittee

There was a time when I thought Louis Menand, an academic who writes for the New Yorker, was the smartest guy around. But I've changed my mind, because his review of Bryan Caplan's really ridiculous book is abysmal and totally misses the point. To recap Caplan's argument: Irrational voters support economic policy that makes people worse off. And government mostly messes everything up (See here for more). Menand's conclusion: