From the good folks over at Angry Bear and Econospeak, a little common sense about the deficit: it's not really going down. The general fund deficit, that is. You see, Social Security revenues are in surplus, and a whole lot of money is being taken out of the flush Social Security trust fund to pay for current government services. This surplus has tremendously contributed to the declining unified deficit, the figure that gets most media attention. See this graph for a good representation.

Per BNA, Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) indicated today that the Committee may move to a mark-up of a one-year AMT patch as early as next week. Baucus estimates the cost of the patch at $55 billion but added "It's difficult to come up with offsets that will pass." Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA) has long said that he prefers forgoing offsets even for an AMT patch, but Baucus says that "my preference is not to waive" PAYGO. Such a waiver would require 60 votes in the Senate.

This afternoon, the House passed H.R. 3678, a four-year extension of the moratorium on state and local internet access taxation. The vote was 405-2. Such opposition to the bill as was voiced came from those who sought a permanent moratorium. From our perspective, the debate on this issue has been oddly one-sided.

Good New York Times op-ed on SCHIP: To hear the Bush administration tell it, expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program would entice hordes of families to drop their private coverage and put their children on the public dole. As the Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt, argued in a recent television appearance, states that cover middle-income children as well as the poor are essentially telling people to "cancel your private insurance and we'll have the government pay for it." There are several things wrong with that claim.