Today, the White House issued a formal veto threat ($) against the AMT patch/tax extenders bill with carried interest and other payfors, which comes up for a House vote tomorrow. The veto-mad president, gunning down the FY 2008 bills that are, in the aggregate, two percent more than his spending requests -- on the grounds that the bills' spending levels are "excessive" -- points to the fact that the AMT patch is wholly offset with pay-for provisions and calls them "inappropriate." Dizzying, isn't it? He's hard to please, I guess.

That's 65% of GDP (and a good argument for PAYGO) A dubious milestone was passed on Tuesday, November 6, as the U.S. national debt crossed the $9 trillion mark. Don't look now (no one likes a clock watcher), but it's billions more already. At 65 percent of GDP, it could be paid off if every good and service produced in the U.S. from January 1 until September 30, 2008 were given free of charge to the nation's creditors. You can spare that nine months' worth of salary, can't you?

Businesses are moving on ideas to incentize better quality and cost-efficient health care. Why is it taking so long for government to do the same?

AMT: Mother of All Tax Bills and Progeny On Oct. 25, after a gestation period of nearly nine months, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) finally unveiled the Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007 (H.R. 3970), his self-described "mother of all tax bills." The Rangel bill is a $930 billion, multi-faceted tax reform package that seeks to abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) on a revenue-neutral basis. The measure redistributes the tax burden away from lower- and middle-class taxpayers and toward the wealthy beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.