Steven Pearlstein has a column in Wednesday, May 20's Washington Post called “Budget Scolds Shouldn’t Drown Out the Chorus Calling for Health Reform.” We assume that The Concord Coalition is among his targets given his definition:

"In the political menagerie that is Washington, there exists a species known as the budget scold — analysts, advocates, editorial writers and politicians who possess a fierce determination to bring the federal budget into better balance.

Budget scolds have a wonkish demeanor and a skeptical outlook. They possess an undue fascination with rules and processes, and speak in the arcane language of baselines, sunsets and pay-fors."

Although we don't define ourselves by the fact that we occasionally "scold," the rest of his characterization isn't that far off -- just ask those who run into us at parties. But the point of his article is that Pearlstein is concerned that worries about the budget deficit are going to scuttle health care reform. He writes:

"There have been times when the budget scolds have saved the country from short-...

You might look at the title of this post and ask, "Why is The Concord Coalition upset about a small deficit -- shouldn't that be a good thing?"

Most of the time, the answer would be "yes," but when a deficit, even a small one, is reported for the month of April, that is unusually bad news.

The federal government typically sees a surge in revenue during the month of April because of the large amount of tax payments filed close to the April 15th deadline. Yet, in the Treasury Department's April monthly statement the federal government posted a $20.9 billion deficit -- the first April deficit since 1983.

This reflects abnormally high spending, and unusually low revenues. Spending was 17.5% higher than last April and tax receipts were 34% lower. Even more shocking is that individual income tax collections are down 24% for the fiscal year and corporate income tax receipts have dropped from $171 billion last year to $71 billion this year -- a 59% decrease!

All of that is happening against the backdrop of huge increases in government spending primarily due to the stimulus bill, TARP, and automatic counter-cyclical spending such as unemployment compensation. 

The month of April brings the federal deficit to $802...

The Obama Administration released the "final installment" of their FY2010 budget this week. The summary tables can be found here. On his blog, OMB director Peter Orszag explains what's changed from the February release.

Although the Administration has not revised the economic assumptions that go into the budget projections since their February release, they've still had to adjust downward their revenue forecast. This mostly stems from so-called "technical revisions" which reflect new thinking by the Administration about how much revenue the government will receive under the same macroeconomic forecast used in their initial budget document.

They now estimate that overall federal revenue will be less than was projected in February -- between $30 billion and $50 billion in each of this year and next, and $124 billion lower over ten years. The interest costs associated with the combined technical revisions (on net more than entirely accounted for by the revenue revisions) alter the 10-year outlook by $193 billion. Thus, the estimated deficits under the President’s proposals are now about $90 billion higher in each of...

Now that the Congressional Budget Resolution has passed, there has been a lot of talk about how the reconciliation instructions included in the resolution will make it easier for a health care reform effort to pass.  Particularly since the mechanics of reconciliation provide for a simple majority vote for approval -- instead of the 60 votes that might be needed to overcome a filibusterer in the Senate.

Ironically, considering political motivations, it might be easier to round up 60 votes for a fiscally irresponsible health care reform bill, than to attain the 51 votes for a fiscally responsible bill -- which would be needed to utilize the reconciliation fast track procedure. 

Let me explain. When the modern budget process was established, the idea behind including a lower procedural bar under reconciliation was to facilitate legislation that contained difficult choices resulting in deficit reduction. Only in recent years have legislators deviated from this intention, most notably by the usage of reconciliation to pass large, deficit-increasing tax cuts.

The guidelines put in place by the budget resolution for reconciliation -- in a sense -- navigate this budget procedure closer to its original purpose. Specifically, for Congress to consider any health care reform bill, it must contain...