Add this to the list of the nation’s current budgetary woes: according to Bloomberg news, the Treasury is losing about $30 million a day, or close to $200 million a week, because Congress has allowed the Federal Aviation Administration’s congressional authorization to lapse and, as a result, Treasury isn’t collecting taxes on airplane tickets. The House of Representatives is trying to ram through a provision that will make it harder for aviation workers to unionize, and the debate is holding up the latest in a long, long line of short-term extensions of the FAA’s authorization. Although it has been extended twenty times since it expired in 2007, Congress failed to re-authorize the FAA by July 22, meaning Treasury no longer has the authority to collect airline taxes. To add insult to injury, airlines have used this as an opportunity to raise their prices and reap more profit from consumers.

Conservative members of Congress are not being very helpful in the debt ceiling debate. The Republican-led House of Representatives earlier this week voted through their "solution" to the problem in the form of the so-called “Cut, Cap, and Balance” bill. But the House likely only voted on the bill because they couldn’t get enough votes for the bill conservatives actually wanted: a balanced budget amendment filled with conservative policy goals. But with the Senate unlikely to pass the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill, Congress might turn to the next worse alternative: a plain balanced budget amendment.

FreedomWorks – the Koch-addicted, Tea Party-associated bastard progeny of conservative wingnut and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey – is cobbling together a budget panel similar to last year's presidential debt commission. Ingeniously, the group has set such ridiculously stringent goals that the policies required to carry them out would have a devastating effect on the economy – wherein lies the comforting prospect of the effort.

Last week, I noted the Washington Post's flawed execution of journalistic "even-handedness" in its editorial on President Obama's draft executive order (EO) on contractor disclosure. It seems the paper is once again leveling partisan disparities with a snazzy new interactive graphic on the drivers of our nation's debt, titled, "Votes that pushed us into the red."