The day after Congress adopted a budget resolution for FY08, the Republican Study Committee sent a letter to the president pledging support for a presidential veto of fiscal 2008 appropriations bills. The letter says that the resolution "greatly exceeds" (by $23 billion out of $956 billion) Bush's budget request for discretionary funding. OMB Director Rob Portman has said twice in two weeks that he would recommend the president veto any appropriations bills that exceed Bush's request. According to the RSC:

American Enterprise Institute's Director of Economic Policy Studies Kevin "Dow 36,000" Hasset believes that democracy poses a threat to the economy(emphasis mine): But being unfree may be an economic advantage. Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state. So the future may look something like the 20th century in reverse. The unfree nations will grow so quickly that they will overwhelm free nations with their economic might. The unfree will see no reason to transition to democracy.

I wanted to revisit a post I did on contracting earlier this week. The point I was trying to make is that it's often assumed that everything government can do, the market can do better. So if it's feasible to outsource something, you should do it, because you'll save the taxpayer money. So why exactly is the market superior? Well, I went digging through one of my favorite books from college- Charles Lindblom's The Market System. Here's what he says:

CBPP has a very good piece on the new budget resolution's appropriations cap (emph. mine). The Congressional budget plan assumes that funding for non-defense appropriations for 2008 will be increased by $13.5 billion, or 3.1 percent, above the CBO baseline level, which equals the 2007 funding level, adjusted only for inflation. (See Table 1.) President Bush's budget, in contrast, calls for non-defense funding to be cut $9.7 billion, or 2.2 percent below the CBO baseline.