Democrats may try to pass a bill reinstituting an Iraqi reconstruction oversight office, which Congress recently abolished, as early as this week. From the NYT: Congressional Democrats say they will press new legislation next week to restore the power of a federal agency in charge of ferreting out waste and corruption in Iraq and greatly increase its investigative reach. The bills, the first of what are likely to be dozens of Democratic efforts to resurrect investigations of war profiteering and financial fraud in government contracting, could be introduced as early as Monday morning.

In their latest edition of Tax Justice Digest, Citizens for Tax Justice rundown the various tax propositions which appeared around the country on state ballots. CTJ applauds the defeat of a host of dreadful TABOR proposals, estate tax repeals, and a smattering of other awful tax measures, but they also applaud the defeat of cigarette tax increases. But, wait - don’t we want to discourage people from smoking? Now seems like a good time to discuss balancing competing objectives of a just tax code. In this case, the conflict is between degrading tax code progressivity and using the tax code to discourage harmful behavior (harmful not only to the individual who engages in the behavior, but also to those near him or her, and harmful to the economic prosperity of the jurisdiction).

We noted, prior to the midterm election, Democrats’ moderate and conciliatory tax and budget agenda rhetoric. Today’s New York Times features a piece chock full of post-election quotations from incoming 110th Congress committee chairs echoing that rhetoric. The peace-pipe palaver hints at a “grand bargain”:

The Cato Institute has a thoughtful blog post challenging a National Review article that said a Democratic-majority Congress means we can say goodbye to the Bush tax cuts.