The Recovery Board, via the Office of Tax Analysis, has a new set of snazzy charts and graphs breaking down Recovery Act tax obligations, from March to December 2009. There isn't anything particularly newsworthy in these charts, since we've known the relative sizes of the expenditures for a while now, but they are very useful in seeing the expenditures over time, which is a new trick. I added part of one of the more interesting charts below; just be aware that more current estimates place the tax expenditure amount obligated closer to $120 billion.

I wanted to highlight one other thing from ProPublica's article on the "two-time loser" list, a nugget which I think was buried in the article. According to earlier OMB guidance, the main recourse agency officials have to punish repeat offenders is the revocation of federal funding, and we haven't heard whether agencies have used this stick yet. But ProPublica quotes OMB spokesman Tom Gavin as saying that, thus far, one, and only one, organization has suffered this fate. Want to guess which greedy, no-good corporation is flaunting the will of Congress, and which is being singled out as a rule-breaker? Maybe Xe? Wal-Mart? ENRON!?!

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) accepted an offer from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to drop his hold on a bill that will allow unemployed workers to see their Unemployment Insurance benefits and health insurance subsidies continue for 30 more days and to return some 2,000 federal highway safety employees to work today. The Senate quickly passed (78-19) the $10.3 billion bill, HR 4691, and cleared it for President Obama's signature

Earlier today, the Recovery Board released the list of Recovery Act recipients who did not file during the second reporting period.   According to the Board, recipients of 1,036 Recovery Act awards failed to file during this quarter, which was from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2009. That number represents a whopping 76 percent decline from the first reporting cycle, which saw 4,359 missing award reports, and is less than one percent of all the award reports. Equally good news is that of the 1,036 missing reports, only 389 were from "repeat offenders," or recipients who failed to file in both quarters.