Today, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is having a hearing on the disclosure of tax expenditures. Not many people know it, but tax expenditures are a huge part of the federal budget. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the federal government spent $947 billion in tax expenditures just this year. And much of that enormous sum goes to programs that are ineffective, ineffecient, and highly regressive, according to the Congressional Research Service.

According to a provacative new paper by Peter Francia and Renan Levine, Bush's policies have disproportionately benefited red states over blue states.

Although today's Joint Economic Committee press release was intended to bemoan the absolutely crushing burden of income taxes paid by the top 50% of income earners which has stymied all attempts to get this economy moving [/sarcasm], it actually underscores a troubling trend in income distribution. According to the new data, the top half of taxpayers ranked by income paid 96.70 percent of the individual income taxes paid in 2004, compared to 86.05 percent in 1949, 89.35 percent in 1959, and 90.27 percent in 1969.

According to the House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus' Materials for Five-Minute Speeches on the Budget, released Tuesday, federal government spending on publicly held debt is $504 million every single day. What could we do with today's worth of interest expense alone, if we didn't owe it to our creditors? We could:

• hire 8,930 new airport security agents
• increase the solvency of Social Security by half a billion dollars
• give every college freshman $342 in tuition assistance
• provide full health care benefots to 71,479 more veterans