The Emergency Campaign For America's Priorities (ECAP) has just posted a series of reports on issues related to workers, education, and children. The reports cover how much federal investment in these areas has dropped over the last 2 years, and the impact that these funding cuts have made in 27 states. Take a look and see how your homestate has been doing under this Congress.

The National Journal's Stan Collender ($$) is feeling pessimistic about next year's budget. Key graf:

If Republicans are in the majority, fiscal and social conservatives will have to work with moderates who will fear a lame-duck president and a weakened leadership even less than they did this year. That will make it very hard to get majority support for any of the key budget, tax and spending issues.

If Democrats are in the majority, the traditional split between the Blue Dogs/deficit hardliners and the rest of the party will be just as prevalent as it was before. The major difference, however, will be that, after more than a decade in the wilderness, most Democrats will better understand what it's like to reach the promised land of being in the majority and will be more likely to work together behind the scenes than they were before.

Therefore, regardless of whether one party has a majority in both chambers or whether the House and Senate are split, the FY08 budget debate is likely to be highly contentious and a constant struggle.

Collender doesn't think meaningful budget process reform stands much chance of getting anywhere, either.

Finally, there has been a great deal of talk about Democrats re-establishing the pay-as-you-go budget procedures that used to require entitlement increases and tax cuts to be offset with other mandatory spending cuts or tax increases. This is far more likely to be a House or congressional rule than a change in the budget law. Paygo rules for tax cuts will be unacceptable to the White House and a veto would not be overridden. An internal rule, however, will be more symbolic than substantive.

He may be right, but it's still worth a shot. After all, there's some chance Bush wouldn't veto a perhaps weaker but still fair version of PAYGO...isn't there?

Recent media reports have shown a few of the many ways to use FedSpending.org, our new online database that lets you track how the federal government spends money.

Some articles have used FedSpending to show the local impact of federal spending. An article in the Washington Examiner used FedSpending.org to calculate the total amount of all contracts that are handled by companies in the Washington, DC area. And a report in the Salt Lake City Tribune covered total federal dollars that Utah received.

Federal Times used data from FedSpending.org to showcase the rapid increase in government contracting since 2000.

And Government Executive Magazine included results from FedSpending to help connect the dots in a government corruption case.

Let us know what ways you use FedSpending.org or see it used in your local area, and we'll put them on the blog (you can email me at mlewis at ombwatch.org).

Here's more evidence of the budgetary sleight-of-hand, misguided priorities, and broken promises that we've all come to expect from the Bush Administration.

This time, it's from former Bush staffer David Kuo, whose new book has gotten signficant press attention.

Introducing the book, he writes on BeliefNet of the grand promises Bush made as a presidential candidate in 2000.

That day a conservative Texas governor promised more than $8 billion during his first year in office to help social service organizations better serve "the least, the last, and the lost." More than $6 billion was to go for new tax incentives that would generate billions more in private charitable giving. Another $1.7 billion a year would fund faith-based (and non-faith-based) groups caring for drug addicts, at-risk youth, and teen moms. $200 million more would establish a "Compassion Capital Fund" to assist, expand and replicate successful local programs. Legislation would ensure that reported government discrimination against faith-based social service organizations would end. A new White House Faith-Based Office would lead the charge.

Faith-based charities would see barely any of that money. And some of the money that actually was allocated to faith-based groups may be diverted later on.

Unfortunately, sometimes even the grandly-announced "new" programs aren't what they appear. Nowhere is this clearer than in the recently-announced "gang prevention initiative" totaling $50 million a year for three years. The obvious inference is that the money is new spending on an important initiative. Not quite. The money is being taken out of the already meager $100 million request for the Compassion Capital Fund. If granted, it would actually mean a $5 million reduction in the Fund from last year.

This isn't what was promised.

When it comes to poverty, President Bush has never put his money where his mouth is. Kuo gets it- will the rest of the conservative evangelical community get it, too? Do they really care?

The Washington Post ran a good article on the tax cuts and the deficit yesterday- lots of interesting quotes from credible folks with different opinions. Here's a great quote on the forces driving the lower deficit:

"The simplest way to think about it, I think, is we know we have growing income inequality, especially at the top," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a Brookings Institution economist who worked for the Clinton administration. "The very rich are pulling away from the ordinary rich and the middle class. Those very rich people pay higher tax rates. When the distribution of income shifts upward, as it has in recent years, you get a revenue kicker from that."

Now, compare that article with one Reuters ran on Monday, in which most quotes come from economists housed at businesses or law firms, and the only option for reducing the deficit that's really presented is to cut spending. Further, the assertion that the Bush tax cuts lowered the deficit goes unchallenged, and the title -"U.S. Budget Deficit Could Shrink Further in 2007"- is highly implausible, given that the Congressional Budget Office predicts the deficit will increase in 2007.

The Reuters article is irresponsible; take a look at the Washington Post article for a serious discussion of the relationship between the Bush tax cuts and the deficit.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a paper out on the lame-duck budget cuts that are nearly a foregone conclusion.

In September, Congress shifted $5.3 billion that Senate appropriators planned to devote to domestic programs to the defense and homeland security appropriations bills. As a result, $5.3 billion will have to be cut from other appropriations bills the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved — bills that largely fund domestic programs — when Congress reconvenes after the election.

In a brilliant analysis of the FY 2007 DoD appropriations bill, Winslow T. Wheeler, Director at the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information based in Washington, D.C., exposes the bill's budget gimmicks, misleading program labeling, and meaningless dollar figures.

The lead-in for Wheeler's article:

Congress has so complex-ified the defense budget and stuffed it with spending gimmicks, it is difficult to understand just how much is being spent on national defense and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has become such a jumble that some journalists seem to rely upon press releases from the Senate and House Appropriations Committees and the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to report on the budget. Doing so is a serious mistake; the committees' numbers are highly misleading, and sometimes have absolutely nothing to do with what is actually spent on defense.

Another sign that the Bush Administration may push for "entitlement reform" (read: massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) after the election. From CongressDaily ($$):

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke today called on Congress to overhaul the nation's "unsustainable" entitlement programs sooner rather than later, framing the issue as one of fundamental fairness between today's population and future generations that could be stuck with paying the bills. Bernanke told the Washington Economic Club the country will be saddled with an aging population, both because of the impending retirement of the baby boomers and increases in longevity that will cause the nation to age even after the baby boomers are gone. Entitlement reform should occur soon, not only because "the longer the delay, the heavier the burden," but because making changes earlier will give future retirees the chance to plan. Reform should also "minimize reliance on deficit spending" in order to enhance saving and reduce the burden on future generations. And the changes generally should also "preserve and enhance" incentives to work and save, he added.

Will 2007 be 2005 all over again?

The launch of OMB Watch's powerful new Web-based tool for tracking government spending and congressional accountability will be held at 9:30 a.m.next Wednesday Oct. 10, in the Lisagor Room of the National Press Club.

Update:
The press conference in Washington on Tuesday, October 10 will also be webcast - so you can join in on the excitment from anywhere. Sign up for a reminder from OMB Watch by email on Tuesday morning about the event.

Now that only a lame-duck portion of it remains, we are now in a position to begin to assess the 109th Congress.

Per the Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein article that my colleague Matt points out below: “with few accomplishments and an overloaded agenda, [the 109th Congress] is set to finish its tenure with the fewest number of days in session in our lifetimes, falling well below 100 days this year.”

At the same time, as the Washington Post reports today, the House passed 165 bills… in the last week alone. That’s more than one for every threatened incumbent, and then some.

I’d argue that the efficacy of a Congress is better measured not by days or bills but, at a bare minimum, by how it disposed of issues that it is constitutionally bound to address, such as the budget.

Thus far, this Congress’ performance on the fiscal front stands somewhere between “negligent” and “reckless.” Before adjourning on September 29th — two days before the new fiscal year — to let members go campaigning, Congress neglected even to vote on 10 of the 12 appropriations bills it needs to in order to adhere to its own rules governing annual budget-making. And congressional leaders recklessly paired a set of tax credit extensions that millions of Americans depend on -- the R&D, state sales tax, work opportunity tax credit and welfare-to-work credit, college tuition, teachers out-of-pocket expense tax credits — with the estate tax, a sure-fire loser in the Senate, where the extensions remain stuck in limbo.

Going into the final turn, on the real fiscal lay-ups before it, the 109th Congress’ shots are closer to nothing than nothing but net.

Shorter Sebastian Mallaby: Democrats have no principles because they won't cut Social Security for married low-income people.

Snark aside, I bring this up because Mallaby and many of the entitlement-reform-obsessives around Washington are missing the point about fast-growing government spending. The fastest growing part of the budget are interest payments on the national debt. For more, Daniel Gross has a great article in Sunday's NYT explaining why interest payments have taken off.

Additionally, unlike entitlement spending, high interest payments (and the deficits that help drive them up) serve no social or economic purpose five years into an economic recovery. In fact, it's even more likely that they are an impediment to growth and crowd out spending for other public priorities.

Mallaby's perspective is particularly ironic considering that the Bush administration's adamant refusal to increase taxes or lift the payroll tax cap for high-income earners forces any proposed solutions to either cut benefits (hurting more than just Mallaby's self-professed Democratic strongholds of "poor women and minorities") or add even more debt to the country's books - further imperiling other social spending through even higher interest payments.

Now that would be fiscally irresponsible.