OMB Watch’s John Irons is on the road to promote a new study that details state-by-state analysis of charitable losses from the estate tax repeal.

Like the Reagan administration, the Bush administration continues to describe the budget deficit as a manageable problem and presents a rosy picture in which deficits will soon diminish. But like the Reagan administration these comments are far from reality.

Analysts and policymakers are losing their most consistent, thorough source of state and local finance data for 2001 and 2003. The US Census Bureau did not publish state-by-state data on local government finance for fiscal year 2001 and will not be publishing it for 2003, a practice begun in 1970. In lieu of this data, the Census Bureau is publishing local finance estimates for the country as a whole. However, the Census Bureau will report the state level data for 2002 through the Census of Governments Report, and this data will be functionally similar to what was available before the Bureau stopped publishing such information, according to the government agency.