Connor Kenny, an editor at OpenCongress, put a great piece up on the Huffington Post yesterday. It was an analysis of the nonprofit's recent scorecard on how each senator has voted on extending unemployment benefits over the past two years. Along with discovering "a few head scratchers," the report finds "at least one irrefutable truth": "[Sen.] Ben Nelson [D-NE] has a whacked-out definition of 'fiscal responsibility.'"

Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, the Senate should finally pass an extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to more than 2.5 million unemployed workers who have gone without a check for over six weeks. Central to this delay were Republican and a moderate Democrat's demands that Congress pay for the emergency extension. Many of those same members of Congress, however, change their tune when it comes to extending the Bush Tax Cuts.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for the month of June, providing a review of the federal budget through the first nine months of fiscal year 2010. It seems that revenues were about the same as they were last year at this time, but spending was down about 3 percent. These factors have combined to provide the country with a roughly $1.0 trillion deficit so far this year, which is "about $80 billion less than the shortfall last year at this time."