Although congressional combatants believe they are fighting a worthy budget battle, the collateral damage of not coming to agreement is accumulating. Robert Pear at the New York Times and Andy Sullivan at Reuters have reported two noteworthy pieces suggesting that when Congress finally gets its FY 2011 act together, the savings from whatever budget cuts result will significantly eroded by the waste that their dithering has caused.

With Congress poised to send President Obama another continuing resolution (CR) temporarily keeping the federal government open, Senate Democrats, in conjunction with the administration, have just three weeks to negotiate with House Republicans over a funding bill for the rest of fiscal year (FY) 2011. The negotiations will concentrate on spending cuts made by the Republican House, but they shouldn't.

The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for February is out and it has piqued deficit hawks around Washington. The thing is, though, February's MBR is just like all the rest of CBO's recent monthly budget reports: it reveals that the country spent a lot more money than it took in over the previous thirty-day period.