The Tax Foundation's blog has an aggravating but typical post up. The basic claim is that spending has risen faster than tax revenues over the last 6 years. Therefore, it's spending that's out of balance, not revenues. So, implicitly, spending should be reduced to eliminate the deficit.

Reports this week of continued shady behavior by the new Administrator of the General Services Administration, Lurita Doan, have recently caught the eye of the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Henry Waxman (D-CA). Waxman launched an investigation into reports that Doan had steered no bid contracts to a company owned by a friend, Edie Fraiser.

The House and Senate Budget Committees have published succinct rejoinders to the CBO reported we blogged on here, providing warnings about the misleading, thought favorable, short-term deficit projection against the backdrop of the long term fiscal condition of the nation. My colleague Craig commends in particular this (Page 5 of the House document (Realistic Estimate Shows Bleak Deficit Outlook), graphic depiction of the distorted long term-picture painted by the Bush Administration.

With release of CBO's latest budget projection comes the latest edition of Tales from the OMB. OMB Director Rob Portman released this statement regarding CBO's projection of coming surpluses (more on that later, but I want to debunk this bit that really sticks in my craw): Two years ago the President laid out an ambitious goal to cut the deficit in half by 2009, and we met that goal three years early. This is, of course, remarkably similar to this week's episode of Presidential Budget Story Time, as encapsulated by this line in the president's SOTU speech: