SCHIP, a federal health insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women, has been making news lately (CQ ($) has a good article on it). Here's a quick rundown of what's been happening:

SCHIP is facing an urgent budget shortfall. Rep. David Obey (D, WI), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, announced yesterday that he will add about $750 million in SCHIP funding to a supplemental appropriations bill, whose primary purpose is war funding, that Congress will soon take up. Obey said that the temporary funding increase will be enough to stave off immediate cuts. However, the supplemental is expected to pass in early May- by which time some states may have run out of SCHIP funding. Georgia's SCHIP program, for example, is expected to hit a funding shortfall beginning in March.

In the long-term, SCHIP still faces budget imbalances, and does not (and never did) have enough money to offer coverage to all eligible children. The program comes up for reauthorization this year, and lawmakers are working on a redesign that would at least provide enough funding to cover the same number of children who are now in the program for the next five years.

Maintaining current service levels could cost between $12 to $15 billion- a relatively small amount of money in the context of budgets in the neighborhood of $3 trillion. In the FY08 budget proposal, the Bush administration asked for only an additional $5 billion, and has proposed shifting more costs to the states.

Other plans are circulating to expand coverage to all eligible participants- about 6 million more children. A full expansion is estimated to cost about $45 to $60 billion over five years. And since SCHIP is subject to PAYGO, the rule that requires deficit-neutral mandatory spending, all that money would have to be offset with new revenues or spending cuts. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) has called for a higher federal cigarrette tax to pay for an SCHIP expansion- what may be the first time a Republican has sincerely suggested raising taxes in recent memory.

Rep. David Wu and Bruce Ackerman have an interesting proposal on war funding. They want to put a cap on the total amount of funding for the Iraq war.

It is Congress's job to restore fiscal balance first, by placing an overall limit on Iraq war expenditures. Congress should limit this president to spending half a trillion dollars on the Iraq war -- and no more.

An admirable policy- but how would they enforce such a cap? Congress would get a chance in the FY09 budget cycle to pass an appropriations bill that would push total war spending above $500 billion. The President may request a supplemental bill that would go over that cap, too. They do not explain how their proposal would prevent Congress from simply appropriating more money in other bills.

Further, they evade the question that seems to me to be at the heart of the matter: what would the President do?

While he may not like the limit (we don't either, but for the opposite reason), the president would have no choice but to sign this ceiling to get short-term funding for his war.

Why would the President have no choice? He could just veto the bill and force Congress to either override it, pass a different version, or do nothing at all. How would Wu and Ackerman resolve a potential deadlock?

The point is, going down the appropriations road would put Congress and the President in a high-stakes game of chicken. Who would give in? Why?

Send this one back to the factory.

Over the course of the five-week congressional "work period," a major fiscal focus will be the FY 2008 budget resolution. Below is the current congressional timetable for the budget resolution -- a roadmap Congress uses to plan out the budget for the year setting out changes on entitlement programs and taxes.

Congress was unable to approve an FY 2007 budget resolution at all, but with both parties in closer agreement on budget discipline, odds may be better now for successful completion of such a resolution this year. But House and Senate leaders' current schedule projections regarding an FY 2008 budget resolution are as follows:

• Per House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD): House Budget Committee to pass a resolution the week of March 12
• House floor consideration of the resolution the week of March 19
• Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) has set a of goal of producing a draft resolution by the end of March
• The Budget Control Act statutory deadline for adoption of a budget resolution by Congress: April 15 (though subsequent adoption is possible)

(NB: House can begin to consider appropriations bills May 15, even if a budget resolution is not adopted)

We'll keep you posted regarding legislative developments on the budget resolution as they occur.

The updated version of FedSpending.org has garnered a few media hits in papers and blogs around the country. Below is a bit of the coverage:

• GovExec.com story
  
• San Fransico Examiner editorial
  
• Mark Tapscott's Blog
  
• Sunlight Foundation Blog

OMB Watch is pleased to annouce we have just released a new version of FedSpending.org with updated data, new features, and improved navigation. The new site is now live - see it yourself at www.fedspending.org.

OMB Watch issued a press release that describes the updates and improvments made to the site, and you can learn and see more about FedSpending v2.0 in the About This Site section, or by exploring the site yourself.

We welcome your feedback, comments, and questions about the new website, so please go to the Contact section of FedSpending.org and send us your thoughts.

OMB Watch will be releasing an updated version of our popular website FedSpending.org later today. FedSpending.org allows users to search and download extensive information about government spending going back to FY 2000, from contracts to grants, loans, insurance payments, and direct spending.

Below are some preview screenshots of the new look and features of the website. The new site will go live later this afternoon. Be sure to check it out and explore the new features.

New FedSpending.org Homepage with Features


(click to englarge)

Added Summary Outputs with Trend Chart


(click to englarge)

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities's Robert Greenstein gave testimony to Congress last week. It's a great summary of CBPP's invaluable work on appropriation levels.

Bottom line: overall government spending may have increased under Bush, but, depending on how you measure it, real spending on discretionary social programs has either declined or increased only marginally.

UPDATE: I should qualify what I said a bit. Not everything was that awesome. This made me mad:

It is in the tax code and the health care system, along with Social Security, that tough decisions will have to be made sooner or later.

If these choices are so tough, and we have to do them so soon, then let's hear what they are. Specifics, please...

Four and a half months after the legal deadline, the Senate gave final approval to a 2007 spending plan that funds almost half the federal government and averts any chance of a government shutdown.

By an 81 to 15 vote, the Senate approved a $463.5 billion measure that Republicans had threatened to block out of pique for being denied a chance to offer amendments. In the end, Republicans gave in and overwhelmingly supported the spending bill, which funds a litany of popular domestic programs through Sept. 30.

By a 71-26 vote yesterday, the Senate moved closer to approving the FY 2007 CR passed by the House last week (covered here), with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) and 22 other GOP members joining all but one Democrat to close debate and move to a final vote, which could come later today.

In the end, fear of a government shutdown prompted the action. The rapidly-approaching deadline for the CR -- which expires tomorrow -- quieted many Senators who sought to offer amendments on a range of issues, most notably BRAC funding. To help move the CR along, Majority Leader Harry Reid said BRAC issues will be taken up when President Bush submits his expected $100 billion war supplemental in the coming weeks.

Avoiding a government shutdown by sloughing off BRAC and other items onto the supplemental is not exactly an act of fiscal courage: as an "emergency" measure, the war supplemental will not be subject to the same budgetary constraints as regular appropriations.

The Bush budget plays games with funding for veteran's health care. The Washington Post reports:

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's budget assumes cuts to funding for veterans' health care two years from now _ even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012. But even administration allies say the numbers are not real and are being used to make the overall budget picture look better.

EJ Dionne's column on budget trade-offs and priorities is a good read. This president will defend tax cuts by any means necessary.

It was one of those moments when a public official gives away a larger truth by offering what seems to be a throwaway line.

Testifying this week on President Bush's budget, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. suggested he would not mind a bit if the Democratic Congress added money to prevent cutbacks in coverage under the federal government's children's health insurance program.

"It just may be," Paulson said mildly, "that the Congress believes that that's something that should be funded at a higher level."

Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed a cloture petition and filled the amendment tree, limiting debate on the must-pass FY 2007 CR. GOP Senators, dismayed by the $3 billion cut in BRAC in the House version of the CR, seem unmollified by assurances from Reid and Appropriations chair Robert Byrd (D-WV) that the funding would be restored in the upcoming $100 billion-plus supplemental war spending bill, which is not subject to spending caps.

No go, says Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchision (R-TX), who demands an opportunity to offer an amendment adding back the $3.1 billion, and proposes to offset it with a 0.73 percent across-the-board cut in all other programs, exempting defense, homeland security and veterans.

Echoes Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), in today's Congress Daily PM:

If you want to be considered the party of fiscal responsibility and transparency, this is not the way to do it. If they want to increase spending by that much, be honest about it.

OMB Watch has released a preliminary analysis of the President's FY 08 Budget request.

President's Budget Full of Cheap Rhetoric; Wrong Priorities
President Favors Tax Cuts for the Wealthy over Domestic Needs

Check back here for additional analyses and commentary on the budget as the week progresses.

President Bush's 2008 budget, to be released this morning, proposes to eliminate the deficit by 2012 with many spending cuts in various national health and well-being programs.

• $101.5 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over five years
• $223 million reduction in spending on the Children's Health Insurance Program, with cuts deep enough over five years to eliminate coverage for half of the children enrolled today
• $99 million savings by eliminating a childhood obesity prevention program
• $40 million cut in the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a program which helps people pay for their heating bills
• $9 million less for fighting cancer by reducing the National Cancer Institute's budget

Stay tuned for more of Bush's Big Budget Blow-out of '08

Based on the president's recent announcement of his plan to deploy an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq, CBO has released a report detailing the projected costs of such an escalation. CBO Director, Peter Orszag, predicts that the president's plan to increase troop levels could cost as much as $27 billion.

So far, the president has funded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through emergency, or supplemental, spending reqeusts to congress. Those requests have so far amounted to $503 billion. Since 2001, more than half of a trillion dollars has been allocated for war funding - the vast, vast majority of which has not been subject to normal budgetary procedures. Given that it is certain American forces will be deployed abroad for the next year (and probably the year after that), and given that military operations expenditures now have a five-history, budgeters can now make reasonable estimates of impending war expenditures.

There absolutely is no reason that when the president submits his budget to congress on Monday that it should not include costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His refusal to to subject war funding to the normal budget process will not only surely stymie his efforts to balance the budget by 2012, but it will also hinder congress's ability to construct a meaningful budget that will help guide them in preparing for the long term fiscal challenges that begin in a few short years when the Baby Boomers begin retiring en masse. The president owes it to the nation to fully account for all fiscal events that he believes will come to pass.

For a breakout of the funding levels in H. J. Res. 20 -- the $463.5 "CRomnibus" spending package passed by the House yesterday -- by Appropriations subcommittee, click here ($, unfortunately).

And for a program-by-program accounting of the funding increases/decreases from FY06, enacted, click here ($).

President Bush on Congressional war powers, in an interview with an incredulous Wall Street Journal editorial board (emphasis mine):

WSJ: There's a lot of discussion in Congress about putting caps on troop levels or defunding or saying you can't deploy, as commander in chief, troops in Baghdad. Do you think Congress has the constitutional authority . . .

GWB: I think they have the authority to defund, use their funding power . . .

WSJ: You do?

GWB: Oh yeah, they can say 'We won't fund.' That is a constitutional authority of Congress. I find it interesting, however, that on the one hand the Senate listens to the testimony of David Petraeus, who said, send me over with some additional reinforcements and this is the best chance to succeed. And they vote for him 81 to nothing. In other words, they listened to his testimony, appreciated what he had to say, and then they forgot the part about how he said I need the help. There's a contradiction there. . . .

WSJ: Can they put caps on total deployments in Iraq?

GWB: They can . . . through the purse. In others, I don't know if they're going to. And I don't want to predict. But they have the right to try to use the power of the purse to determine policy.

WSJ: But can they put conditions on those funds? Can they say we're only gonna give you the money if you don't send troops to Anbar province?

GWB: They put conditions on funds all the time. Some of those are called earmarks.

WSJ: Would you veto . . .

GWB: Well, . . . I have put forth a plan that will succeed and it needs to be given a chance. So I'll wait and see what they try to do. But I have said [to] the American people I've analyzed every plan and I think this one has the best chance of success. If you think failure is a disaster, then you have an obligation to come up with a plan for success and this is the one that I think will work.