The House will soon pass the Financial Services/General Government appropriations (HR 2829). Its total funding should comes under the Presidents request, though the President has threatened a veto anyway, conditional on including provisions regarding abortion and Cuba. The media will probably focus on the fact that the bill may defund the OVP's office- in response to the OVP's clumsy claims, which we covered in the Watcher, that it is not a part of the executive branch, and therefore is not subject to disclosure requirements that apply to that branch. But the bill (markup summary) also takes productive steps on eliminating bad IRS programs. It would defund the program to outsource tax collection. It would increase funding for tax preparation services for low-income people, which President Bush proposed to cut. It would make it more difficult to privatize other government work. And the bill should be important to anyone interested in social policy, because it funds the IRS. The funding the IRS gets has a strong influence on how much in taxes it collects. Money actually collected, of course, pays for social programs that advocates may be interested in expanding. This is why we fight to protect things like the estate tax- this is why it is important to get more funding for the IRS. This bill's funding for IRS tax enforcement activities is the same as the President's request- which was a step in the right direction, but not enough. UPDATE: Strike what I wrote about the private debt collection program. Earlier today, Republicans stripped out the language that would have limited the program.