EJ Dionne's column today, as usual, is good, but one thing kinda bugged me: No. 1: Extending President Bush's tax cuts to eternity will make the long-term problem much worse. Hint No. 2: The hardest part will be how -- simultaneously -- to meet the fiscal need to rein in health costs and the social need to get health insurance to everyone. Hint No. 3: Most Democrats don't like to talk about it, but somebody's taxes are going to have to go up. He sets up the "social need" for universal health insurance in tension to the "fiscal need" to rein in health costs, but I'm not so sure that's the right relationship. As I tried to write yesterday, there's some evidence that a greater role for the government would help bring down health care costs across all sectors in the long term. Anyway, I confess my ignorance of the mechanisms involved here. But doesn't this seem like the perfect silo-crossing issue? It'd be nice if health care wonks helped us ignorant budget wonks understand this aspect of universal coverage better. The best I can do is put Jacob Hacker's summary of the argument for cost-containment after the jump.

S. 1 (text), the Senate ethics and lobbying bill (now in its second week on the floor), lies in a state of legislative limbo following the failure of a cloture vote, 51-46, late last night. Because S. 1 contains Senate rules changes, a two-thirds vote is required for cloture, rather than the usual 60 votes.

David Cay Johnston, ace tax reporter, has an excellent story in today's NYT on the norms at IRS concerning audits. To sum up, IRS auditors are more or less discouraged to do thorough audits, letting billions of dollars get away when it's right in front of them. Top officials at the Internal Revenue Service are pushing agents to prematurely close audits of big companies with agreements to have them pay only a fraction of the additional taxes that could be collected, according to dozens of I.R.S. employees who say that the policy is costing the government billions of dollars a year.

Senate consideration of >S. 1, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007 (discussed >here), veered off course of plans carefully plotted by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) yesterday, when Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced an amendment that would greatly expand the scope of earmarks covered under S. 1. DeMint says that S. 1 would not require the disclosure of about 95 percent of all actual earmarks. Yesterday, the Senate rejected a motion to table (i.e., to kill) the DeMint amendment by a 51-46 vote.