At a hearing before the House Budget Committee last week, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and current President of the Center for American Progress John Podesta advocated for a long-term approach to reducing deficits and bringing back a balanced budget. For all the hyperventilating over the debt and deficits currently going on in Washington and around the country, Podesta's approach is the closest thing I've seen to a sane plan.

A proposed rule published in the most recent edition of the Federal Register takes aim at Department of Defense (DOD) contractors with deficient business systems. The rule, which seeks to reduce "the risk of unallowable and unreasonable costs on Government contracts," would allow contracting officers to withhold a percentage of payments from contractors with deficiencies in specific business systems.

With the estate tax down and out for the time being, groups that for decades have sought to repeal the tax are gathering to make a push in Congress to keep the estate tax from coming back. In a recent online piece, John McKinnon of the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper whose editorial board never saw a tax repeal proposal that it didn’t like, wrote a short profile on the "small business group" the American Family Business Institute (AFBI), which McKinnon describes as currently waging an “all-out campaign for a permanent repeal.”