Internal Revenue Service is requesting $7.2 billion for enforcement activities in its FY 2008 budget request. Money to pay for initiatives to close the tax gap sounds like a great idea, but how well will the initiatives accomplish this goal? IRS isn't exactly clear on this point in its budget request.

From a GAO report released Wednesday:

[T]he justifications for initiatives varied in the information they provided, with some lacking basic descriptive, cost, and expected performance information suitable for assessing them. For example, an initiative to determine the impact of taxpayer service on compliance lacked information such as a problem statement and an explanation of estimated costs.

...

[T]he initiative for improving compliance estimates provided no explanation of how the 258 FTEs were determined or basic information on the work such as the number of examinations to be conducted. Without such information, at the end of the fiscal year, Congress would be unable to tell whether IRS spent the money as intended.

Yesterday we mentioned that acting IRS Commissioner Kevin Brown doesn't know how cost effective private tax collection would be, and yet he he thinks its something IRS should do. Today, we find out IRS wants to spend big bucks on enforcement initiatives without having a good idea of how effective they will be. What's going on over there?

Just so there's no confusion, here are details and status for H.R. 2206 and 2207, the two post-veto Supplemental bills emerging from the House, both facing likely votes this week and potential presidential vetoes thereafter:

• H.R. 2206, "The U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007." Introduced by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), expected to be voted on as early as tomorrow; the president promised today to veto this bill.
  • the bill provides $42.8 billion in fiscal 2007 war funding upon enactment, but it would require another vote in late July to release the remaining $52.8 billion for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Among the president's objections to H.R. 2206, WH spokesperson Tony Snow cited "restrictions on funding, and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still on the bill," referring to small business tax package and an accompanying minimum wage increase. The Senate has not scheduled a vote on the bill.
• H.R. 2207, "The Agricultural Disaster Assistance and Western States Emergency Unfinished Business Appropriations Act, 2007. Also introduced by Rep. David Obey. President Bush has also issued a threat to veto H.R. 2207, on the grounds that there are no offsets for mandatory agriculture disaster assistance provisions.
  • the bill provides $3.5 billion for agricultural relief, $500 million for fighting wildfires, $425 million for a county payments program and $60 million for California salmon. Word is that H.R. 2207 is likely to come up for a House floor vote on Friday. Moving these domestic spending items in separate post-veto bill was an attempt to ease passage of the military portion of the supplemental.

Within a few short hours today, our blog this morning, Mixed Signals on Short-Term War Funding Idea was overtaken by events. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) until very recently publicly opposed a short-term approach to Iraq war funding. The Murtha/Obey plan calls for providing $43 billion, or half of the president's funding request, without the soldier withdrawal timetables or domestic funding in Supp. 1.0 -- but only through July. Today, both Pelosi and Hoyer endorsed it. Moreover, a Pelosi aide announced today that a vote on this version of the supplemental would be held on the House floor this Thursday or Friday.

Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) has voiced strong opposition. A spokesperson for Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) said, "It's not anything that will fly in the Senate." But that was last week. On Monday, this same aide told the NYT, "It is something that Senator Reid intends to take a look at."

The Administration, via spokesperson Tony Snow, came out in opposition to the proposal as "a kind of a start-and-stop measure." The bill includes political benchmarks for the Iraquis. A Bush veto of the bill might be difficult to explain to the American public.

As we said in our blog this morning: "Watch this space. [T]he short-term war funding idea, which seems to have more legs than we expected," may now have enough to make it.

Last month, we reported in Supplemental 2.0 -- Short-Term War Funding? on a legislative strategy proposed by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), seconded by House Appropriations chair David Obey (D-WI), to approve funding for soldiers only through July, but without any deployment timetables or restrictions in Supp. 1.0.

We noted the White House would likely take a dim view of the idea. Indeed it now has; the NYT has WH spokesman Tony Snow saying yesterday that a short-term bill "provides a kind of uncertainty that really is not helpful to commanders."

Last week, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that the House notion of funding the war only through July, "It's not anything that will fly in the Senate." But yesterday, this same aide told the NYT, "It is something that Senator Reid intends to take a look at."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has broken her silence on the idea, with the Times reporting today that she is "leaning toward the approach." As recently as last week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), per CQ, said "he does not favor passing a short-term measure to fund the troops for 60 days."

Watch this space for a short-term developments on the short-term war funding idea, which seems to have more legs than we expected, but still probably not enough to "fly".

FedTimes on appropriations...

Capitol Hill watchers caution agency leaders to expect more hearings, more scrutiny, less predictability and longer wait times for their 2008 budgets.

"The one thing that is clear is that departments and agencies are going to be held much more accountable and forced to disclose a lot of information that they haven't previously disclosed, and they are going to be punished if they don't disclose," said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress.

That punishment will come in the form of reduced funding — a flexing of the Democratic majority's newfound muscle, said Lilly, who previously served as staff director of the House Appropriations Committee Democratic minority office.

A May 3 Page One article about negotiations between President Bush and congressional Democrats over a war spending bill said the Democrats offered the first major concession by dropping their demand that the bill it include a deadline to bring troops home from Iraq. While Democrats are no longer pushing a firm date for troop withdrawals, party leaders did not specifically make that concession during a Wednesday meeting with Bush at the White House.

An AP story this morning, Democrats not backing down on Iraq, not only flatly contradicts yesterday's Washington Post front-page headline, which drew a blog swat from us. It also details the short-term, "a la carte" approaches now under consideration by various House leaders.

Under another a la catre plan, military functions would get funds identified as money for "troops," through Sept. 30. But it would guarantee other funding, generally described as "combat" functions, for only two months and create a mechanism for fencing off funding for those operations beyond mid-July.

The AP said that another "short-term" funding idea was discussed in a closed door leadership meeting Thursday. But under this idea, offered by House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey (D-WI), members would vote separately on whether to fund some of the domestic spending in the Iraq bill that Bush opposed, such as agricultural assistance. According to a senior Democratic leadership aide, neither plan has been endorsed by Speaker Pelosi (D-CA), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), or by anyone in the Senate.

Yet another option on the "Supp 2.0" table involves rolling certain items over into the next (FY 2008) war funding supplemental or, perhaps, a domestic supplemental spending bill -- which would allow additional funding for the Katrina zone and agriculture and wildfire disaster relief, for example, to remain 'off-budget' and not count against any budgetary domestic discretionary caps.

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Rick Perlstein over at the Campaign for America's Future is keeping a watchful eye on a growing epidemic of sinkholes opening up all over the country. Decaying water and sewer pipes are to blame.

Yes, sinkholes. Yes, in America. Yes, it's weird and gross.

Perlstein also makes the connection to the anti-tax movement, in the sense that a smaller tax base has diminished the capacity of government to respond to public needs, like having level ground that doesn't cave in.

There's something absurd about the sinkhole epidemic, though I can't quite put my finger on it. It just seems a little over the top that the ground must open up beneath us to demonstrate that public investments in infrastructure matter and that taxes make it all possible.

The Washington Post led today's edition with a large-font, top-of-the-front-page article entitled "Democrats Back Down On Iraq Timetable" that opened as follows:

President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq.

That would be a major news story (though many have expected such a move, eventually). Unfortunately, the article utterly fails to substantiate it. The article has no quotations from Democrats, or even Republicans, even referring to timetables at all.

"Democrats remain deeply divided over how far to give in to the White House," the article goes on to say. This is "why have you been beating your wife?" logic. Nowhere does the article point to evidence of a Democratic division over a presumed decision to "give in to the White House."

This is editorial malpractice unworthy of Washington Post front-page coverage of an important story. By contrast, the New York Times covers this same non-development in a story that makes no reference to "concessions" or "backing" down but quotes at least five Senate Democrats by name about the difficulties of finding a consensus withing their caucus on withdrawl timetables and war funding.

As expected, the House bid to override President Bush's veto of the war spending supplemental bill failed in a 222-203 vote this afternoon, well short of the short of the two-thirds needed to override the veto.

Speaking for six minutes to the nation last night -- on cable, that is; the networks did not grant Bush's request for airtime -- the president reiterated his objections to the "unconstitutionality" of the bill's timetable for withdrawal of Americans in combat. He added that "American commanders in the middle of a combat zone would have to take fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C." but is wasn't clear what directions and from whom, other than the administration offcicals who have been issuing them since the war started.

What's next? Congressional GOP leaders are hinting that they might be able to back some sort of performance benchmarks for the Iraqi government, perhaps linked to elements of funding, but not invoking soldier withdrawal deadlines. Would that be acceptible to enough of the Democratic caucus, which might split over a "Supp 2.0" that signals retreat from the (non-binding) Supp 1.0 standard of a goal of total U.S. soldier withdrawal from Iraq by March 31, 2008?

A compromise is expected soon. One deadline likely to be observed: House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) said he wants the House to take up a new version of the supplemental in the next two weeks so there is enough time for it to clear Congress and get to the president before Memorial Day.