A key vote on the Farm Bill, which includes increases in funding for anti-hunger programs, is set for December 7th (tomorrow). The Food Research and Action Center and the Coalition on Human Needs are asking people to call their Senator in support of the increases. The vote is on whether to filibuster the bill, and it's probably even more important than the vote on whether to actually pass it. We need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. We need only a majority to pass the bill, and previous votes have shown that there's a clear majority in favor of the bill.

In an attempt to have people pay attention to the issue of the national debt, a recent Associated Press article lead with the eye-catching headline of "National Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute." Wow! $1,000,000.00 a minute! That's quite a bit of cash. The article is well worth a read and should make you even more disappointed that the current Congress is considering waiving PAYGO rules for a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Such a move would add $50 billion to the debt immediately and the issue will have to be revisited all over again next year because the legislation being considered is only for one year. If they pass the AMT patch without paying for it this year, I wonder if they will pay for it next year? argh...

Paul Krugman's column today was a little off-base, I think. He basically calls out Sen. Barack Obama for not including a mandate in his universal health care plan, which he thinks will make insurance much cheaper. I think his claims are overblown. The best estimate I've seen puts health care cost overruns at $480 billion. About $100 billion was due to inefficiencies in the insurance system on its own, and administrative expenses and profits make up the bulk of those unnecessary expenses. And I haven't seen anything on how being uninsured significantly raises costs in the delivery system.

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus has a column today on Social Security and fixing it. The column's more or less in response to this Paul Krugman column where he objects to addressing Social Security's projected shortfall now. If Marcus believes Social Security needs fixing, fine. But she should then devote far more columns to projected health care costs, which is an even bigger problem and demands greater effort to solve it, yet policymakers aren't really paying attention to it. This is what CBO basically recommends.