Earlier this week, the House passed an unusual bill that authorizes advance appropriations for Veterans Affairs (VA) funding.  HR 1016 means that Congress will create two budgets this year, one for the current 2010 appropriations cycle, and a future budget for 2011.  Subsequent years will produce budgets that are at least a year ahead.  For the VA department, which has been plagued in recent years by reports of patient neglect and poor management, this will hopefully be the first step towards better service delivery.

Yesterday, the Obama administration unveiled details of its $3.5 trillion federal budget for FY 2010. The plan includes cutting or scaling back 121 federally funded programs, thereby eliminating $17 billion in government spending. Administration officials recognize that the proposed savings represent less than one half of one percent of all spending, but emphasize that the cuts are an important first step towards President Obama's goal of drastically reducing inefficient budget expenditures.

I'm pretty late getting this up today, but the House of Representatives passed the FY 2010 budget resolution earlier this afternoon by a vote of 233-193. 17 Democrats voted against the resolution and not one Republican supported it. The vote also saw only 6 Blue Dog Democrats oppose the resolution out of the 51 members of that group. The Senate is currently debating the conference report agreement on the budget resolution and is expected to approve it later today.

Over at the Cato Institute blog, Cato @ Liberty, Chris Edwards tells us that a new CBO report shows that the federal tax code is progressive. CBO data indicate that the highest quintile of income earners paid the highest effective federal tax rate (25.8%), and as one moves down the quintiles, effective federal income tax rates decline.