The opening salvo in the Senate budget resolution amendment process will be fired in the next hour or two, when Finance Committee Chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) offers the first amendment in this year's round. The Baucus amendment creates room in the budget numbers to extend some of the temporary 2001 and 2003 tax cuts dealing with

• the marriage penalty
• the child tax credit
• the 10 percent tax bracket
• the estate tax (understood to mean extending the 2009 levels, with indexation)

The Boston Globe: In letters to the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration, and the Labor Department, [House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry] Waxman, Democrat of California, questioned Blackwater's classification of its workers as independent contractors instead of employees. That designation, which the government has questioned in the past, allowed the company to obtain $144 million in contracts set aside for small businesses and avoid paying as much as $50 million in withholding taxes under State Department contracts, he said.

During the House Budget panel's mark-up of the budget resolution last week, presidential politics were the backdrop for some frivolity and hijinks. Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-IA) displayed a surprsing degree of pessimism regarding his party's prospects for the presidential elections in the fall, offering amendments to include in the resolution's deficits projections the costs of the health care plans of candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

Budget -- Front and Center: Floor debates, amendments, vote-a-rama, and final votes on the FY09 budget resolution will occupy most of the House and Senate agenda this week. A central issue: taxes, especially the AMT and whether a patch for next year should be paid for. An amendment to watch for, mostly in the Senate: Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC) proposal to ban earmark projects for one year. (For House and Senate budget resolutions, see here.)