Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that the Senate will vote on the nomination of Jim Nussle to be the new Director of the Office of Management and Budget on Monday, September 4 - the first day back from the August recess. Reid announced there will be three hours of debate on the nomination beginning at 2:30 pm. One hour each for the chairman and ranking member of the budget committee, and one hour controlled by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sanders has announced a hold on Nussle's nomination because he has serious concerns about the nominee and his philosophical differences with the administration's fiscal policies. Sanders said: President Bush is completely out of touch with the economic realities facing working families in America. Bush needs to hear the truth, not an echo. He needs a budget director who will make him face the facts, not fan his fantasies.

I thought I'd point up an interesting article I read over the weekend in Reason, a libertarian magazine.

For all you fellow privatization nerds out there, if you're out there, here's an interesting paper on what's called "contracting-in," or when government decides to do in-house something that it once contracted out. Apparently this has been happening quite frequently on the local level, as public managers decide that sometimes contracting out is wasteful and doesn't achieve the goals of reducing costs and encouraging innovation like it was supposed to.

After some delay, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is now marking up the SCHIP reauthorization and expansion. Some resources on the bill:

• A summary of the chairman's mark
• A section-by-section analysis
• CBO's preliminary score
• Families USA's chart that compares the House bill with the Senate version.