Unacceptable

The Pentagon, inspections and hearings reveal, cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods and services in Iraq.

Heads should roll after such a thing.

And here I thought the ridiculous amount of subsidy spending in the recent Farm Bill was shameful.

*Here's a bit on the interesting constitutional gripe raised by some Republicans when it was discovered 34 pages of the bill had not been included in the version vetoed by President Bush.

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Fiscal Wake-Up Tour!

It's rockin' and rolling into town this Wednesday evening as part of the Union's Distungished Lecture Series. David Walker, the Comptroller General of the U.S., is going to be speaking at the Memorial Union about the country's financial outlook.

Maybe you heard, but he's going around the country trying to make people aware of the coming financial problems since Washington and the politicians aren't listening. I happened to link to a news segment on him on Friday. Basically in the coming years, healthcare and retirement spending is going to consume the federal budget. Social security is expected to go bankrupt in 2040, when today's college aged people will be in their mid-50's and have paid their whole lives for nothing.

I see on the DLS' schedule, Richard Dawkins is coming in March. I'd like to go to both of these, but I'll have to see depending on the homework situation.

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C-SPAN Simul-Blog

I'm watching C-SPAN2. It's a tape from a Congressional hearing earlier today.

Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag is talking with Rep. John Spratt D-South Carolina, Budget Committee Chairmen. They appear to be almost alone in the hearing room.

It is absolutely surreal.

Billions are being tossed about. Iraq and Afghanistan. Troop level scenarios.

"So it is a pretty dire forecast in that sense?" - Spratt

"Even the medium-term outlook is not good." - Orszag

"The long-term fiscal outlook is quite dismal." - Orszag

Oh - now Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, Ranking Member, jumps in.

"If we have the largest tax increase in the history of earth - the largest tax increase in the history of our country, it's not going to make a difference?" - Ryan

"...just a general program of fiscal relief would not do that." - Orszag

This is edifying; Orszag explains, in response to Ryan's queries, why increasing the amount for food stamps are a better economic shot in the arm than infrastructure.

"We spent $933 billion dollars." - Ryan

"Do you agree with Chairman Bernanke's..." - Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas

"In terms of recession insurance...something of that magnitude would be appropriate." - Orszag

"A quadrupling of the national debt in the course of a decade." - Edwards

"The publicly held debt at the end of 2007..."

"So $1.6 trillion over the course of this administration." - Edwards

Now we're talking trillions of dollars of debt. And they're all so calm about it.

"If Congress made all of those tax cuts permanent..." - Edwards

"A reduction of about $2.2 trillion..." - Orszag

"...very sobering information..." - Rep. Gresham Barrett, R- South Carolina

MORE: Orszag's blog. And the video.

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