The Center on Budget's Statement on the Senate Budget Committee Plan today scolds commentators for scolding Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) for failing to specify the offsets for program expansions and tax-cut extensions assumed in his budget resolution mark. This reflects the press'

Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) provided reporters with some details yesterday about the budget resolution draft that his committee will mark up today and tomorrow. Some features are good news:

• priorities -- Conrad's draft provides a $16-18 billion increase in domestic appropriations over Bush's proposal for FY 2008, with substantial increases in education, veterans, and community policing programs, and, on the mandatory spending side, $50 billion for SCHIP over the next five years

FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach is opposed to bipartisan legislation that would allow FDA to regulate tobacco products. Sensible bills in both the House and the Senate would dramatically improve public health as it relates to tobacco products. The bill would do so by placing the tobacco industry — which currently goes unregulated — under the purview of FDA. In a Mar. 6 interview with the Associated Press, von Eschenbach manipulates the facts in his opposition to the bill. His specious arguments are a poorly veiled attempt to side with the tobacco industry. He also claimed tobacco products are too complex for the FDA to handle. How can an FDA commissioner hold such little regard for his own agency? One of the bills sponsors, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), wrote a letter to von Eschenbach asking him to correct his various misstatements. Your statements suggest a serious misunderstanding of the bill and appear to ignore overwhelming evidence that such regulation is necessary to address the continuing epidemic of tobacco-related death and disease. Waxman then discredits von Eschenbach's argument point by point. Waxman's letter is a pleasure to read (as his Bush administration proddings usually are). Check this one out here.

Quick comment on Robert Pear's article yesterday on Medicaid- a must-read, by the way- that demonstrated that falling caseloads may be in part due to new "proof of citizenship" requirements. Medicaid costs, too, have been going down. Supposing these two trends are related, and it would seem they are, citizenship documentation seems nothing more than a high-handed way to cut budgets and deny people (the vast majority of whom are citizens) health care. Let's remember this if the President ever decides to boast of the cost-containment his policies have achieved.