Stan "The Man" Collender had another good column yesterday. Comments follow: You've heard the song before, probably on a country station. It sometimes crosses over into the mainstream and seems to get a lot of airtime in Washington just before the Redskins play the Cowboys. With apologies to Willie Nelson, my guess is that the parents of would-be fiscal conservatives are singing their own version of the song these days. Start with George W. Bush, the self-professed fiscal conservative who has done more to damage the notion of fiscal conservatism than any big-spending liberal has ever done. The Bush administration has proposed and agreed to some of the biggest increases in spending since the Great Society. In the process, some of the largest hikes ever in federal borrowing will have occurred while this president is in the White House and the amount spent on interest by the federal government will be much higher than it would otherwise be for decades to come.

CBO has released a cost estimate for an eight-member commission that would be established to "complete three studies and issue recommendations regarding the infrastructure needs of the United States." A day after the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, the Senate approved, by unanimous consent, a measure that would create the National Commission on the Infrastructure of the United States, which CBO projects would cost $4 million over its three-year lifespan.

A report by the National Priorities Project finds that of all people that are income-eligible to receive food stamps, only half actually receive them.

• Half of all low-income people did not receive Food Stamp Program benefits.
• Counties with lower poverty rates and higher median household incomes had lower percentages of low-income people that were Food Stamp recipients.
• A significant number of counties, 13.2 percent, had below-average percentages of Food Stamps, yet had above-average poverty rates.