According to the report, $24 billion in Recovery Act contract and grant spending went to about 3,700 recipients who owed some $750 million in taxes to the US government. Clearly, this isn’t good. Government contracts shouldn’t be benefiting organizations that don’t play by the rules. But the important point is that we only know this because of the recipient reporting feature built into the Recovery Act.

On May 16, the United States Treasury auctioned off $72 billion in bonds, and as it did so, it reached the limit of its $14.294 trillion limit on how much it can legally borrow. But the world didn't end. Or at least the bond market -- the collective pool of investors that buy us debt -- went about its businesses as if nothing happened. A full on freak out by the bond market would drive up the cost U.S. borrowing and, according to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, "destabilize" the financial system and "have extremely dire consequences for the U.S. economy."

Yesterday, after a speech on his preferred course of action on raising the debt ceiling, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that "We do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem." Actually, the Speaker has a math problem.