We'll know soon. BNA's Daily Tax RealTime (no link, sorry): President Bush formally received Congress's second attempt to pass an extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (H.R. 3963) Nov. 30, requiring him to again decide whether to veto the bill over its inclusion of tobacco tax increases and program expansions. The bill would pay for $35 billion in new spending in the bill by raising the federal tobacco excise tax for cigarettes to $1 per pack, from 39 cents per pack, and by sharply increasing the tax rates on cigars and other forms of tobacco.

It looks as though Congress will send the SCHIP revision to the President after all. He will veto it and Congress probably won't have enough votes to override the veto. So I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Paul Krugman's column today was a little off-base, I think. He basically calls out Sen. Barack Obama for not including a mandate in his universal health care plan, which he thinks will make insurance much cheaper. I think his claims are overblown. The best estimate I've seen puts health care cost overruns at $480 billion. About $100 billion was due to inefficiencies in the insurance system on its own, and administrative expenses and profits make up the bulk of those unnecessary expenses. And I haven't seen anything on how being uninsured significantly raises costs in the delivery system.

New, improved version of website to be released On its first anniversary when new features of OMB Watch's FedSpending.org site are to be unveiled, a story on big contractors receiving small earmarks appeared in Gov Exec. "Defense Bill Proves Lucrative for Biggest Firms demonstrates precisely the kind of databse search that helps citizens learn how the government is spending their money -- searches facilitated by FedSpending.org's upgrade.