At the end of last week, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and the Senate Republican caucus decided to take a stand on government spending by demanding that Congress offset an important tax extenders bill. The bill, which, among other things, sought to extend eligibility for unemployment benefits, COBRA premium assistance, a Medicare doctors' fix, and highway funding, failed to pass because of the GOP's intransigence. While offsetting spending is a sensible policy, this was hardly the appropriate moment to make a point on the issue, as blockage of the extension bill will likely have serious consequences for both jobless Americans and our weak, recovering economy.

That these two headlines appear on the Wall Street Journal's homepage on the same day has me scratching my head.

In the midst of the media's recent myopic focus on the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the fourth estate has largely overlooked the fact that Oregon voters approved measures at the ballot box in January to increase taxes on wealthy citizens and corporations to help bring the state back into fiscal balance. Earlier this week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released a short paper on the implications those votes could have in Congress on the debate over the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts.

If you missed Paul Krugman’s op-ed in the New York Times this past Thursday, I strongly recommend reading it. The Nobel Prize-winning economist and Princeton scholar adroitly explains why “the sudden ubiquity of deficit scare stories,” which “isn’t being driven by any actual news,” is leading Washington to focus on the wrong fiscal priorities.