A Bloomberg News editorial on the budget deal opines:

Bold measures -- including overhauling entitlements, rethinking the uniquely dysfunctional U.S. tax code and considering a federal value-added tax -- must be on the table. At an estimated 30.5 percent of GDP in 2011, the total tax burden on Americans is the lowest among the Group of Seven industrialized nations...

In addition to stalled economic growth, we have an aging population and growing inequality, with roughly a third of the nation's wealth controlled by 1 percent of our citizens. The deal amounts to complete denial of these facts by our political leaders.

It'd be a bold (if unwise) measure actually to impose a federal value-added tax. Merely considering a federal value-added tax doesn't exactly rise to the level of bold, if you ask me.

From a CNN news article:

Reid's announcement capped a day of sharp partisan voting in the House and extended talks behind closed doors between congressional and administration officials. Concern continued to grow that Congress will fail to raise the nation's debt ceiling in time to avoid a potentially devastating national default next week.

Earlier in the day, the Republican-controlled House rejected Reid's plan -- partisan payback for the Democratic-controlled Senate's rejection of GOP House Speaker John Boehner's plan Friday night.

Why is it partisan — not just partisan but "sharp" partisan when the House votes to reject Reid, but not when the Senate votes to reject Boehner? It's enough to make one think there's a hint of sharp partisanship over at CNN.

Reason.com has published my latest column, a debate between Sunny Sam and Gloomy Gus. Check it out here, please.

"Americans have lost trust with their government...Backroom deals, phantom amendments, and bills that go unread before being forced through Congress have become business as usual. Never before has the need for a new approach to governing been more apparent ...We cannot continue to operate like this....We will ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square by publishing the text online for at least three days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives. ...Legislation should be understood by all interested parties before it is voted on."

The political cartoonist Chip Bok has been on a real roll lately, if you appreciate that sort of thing, which I do.

The New York Times's Catherine Rampell had a dispatch over the weekend making the same point we made here Friday — that growth and the debt/deficit problems are related. She got into the demographic differences between America's postwar growth boom and today, writing, "the structure of America's federal spending is different now than it was in, say, the immediate postwar decades. Back then, growth helped to erase the debt. But remember that in the 1950s, the United States didn't have Medicare. The population was younger, and Americans didn't live as long." She wrote that "whatever Washington does, many economists say the situation will grow only worse, particularly as Americans age and Medicare costs spiral higher." (Emphasis added.)

Mickey Kaus notices that the White House "fact sheet" on the budget deal repeats the phrase "President's Historic Investment in Pell Grants" "twice, verbatim, for the proper Great Leap Forward effect." From the White House summary:

Includes Funding to Protect the President's Historic Investment in Pell Grants: Since taking office, the President has increased the maximum Pell award by $819 to a maximum award $5,550, helping over 9 million students pay for college tuition bills. The deal provides specific protection in the discretionary budget to ensure that the there will be sufficient funding for the President's historic investment in Pell Grants without undermining other critical investments.

A new paper by an economist at Princeton, Mark Aguiar, and two at the University of Chicago, Erik Hurst and Loukas Karabarbounis, is out from the National Bureau of Economic Research under the title "Time Use During Recessions." It looks at "how foregone market work hours are allocated to other activities over the business cycle." It concludes "roughly 30% to 40% of the foregone market work hours are allocated to increased home production. Additionally, 30% of the foregone hours are allocated to increased sleep time and increased television watching." Specifically,

What has the Wall Street Journal got against talk radio? The way the editorials have been reading lately, it sounds like they think their News Corp. colleague Sean Hannity is a bigger problem for America than President Obama is.

The theme began with a July 13, 2011 editorial: "The tea party/talk-radio expectations for what Republicans can accomplish over the debt-limit showdown have always been unrealistic."

Today's editorial also targets talk radio, specifically Sean Hannity, who, like the Journal editorialists, works for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.:

The situation in Washington is fluid heading into the weekend, but here are a few points that should stand:

1. The House Republicans opposed to increasing the debt ceiling are widely depicted as a bunch of nihilistic bitter-enders. It's worth paying some attention to what they actually say. Here's one Republican presidential candidate, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann:

Bachmann said the president had seven months' notice that America's debt was close to reaching its limit, but did nothing...

Bachmann criticized the notion that the country had only racked up – as Obama alluded to Monday – "a little credit card debt" and could continue to pay its debts with more borrowed credit.

"Well, $14.3 trillion – which is where we sit today – is not 'a little credit card debt.' Adding $2.7 trillion to get the president through the next election for a grand total of $17 trillion in debt is not … 'a little credit card debt,'" she stated.

Two recent columns from Thomas Sowell are worth a look. The first decodes President Obama's language of "fair," "balanced," and "clean":

President Obama's big pitch in his Monday night televised talk was that what is needed to deal with the national debt crisis is a "balanced" approach -- not just spending cuts but revenue increases as well.

What could sound more reasonable -- especially to those who have not been following what Obama has actually been doing and not doing? This is the same Barack Obama who, earlier this year, called for a "clean" increase in the national debt ceiling.

In this context, the soothing word "clean" referred to an increase in the national debt ceiling without any provisos. That is, no spending cuts at all. In other words, a blank check to keep spending. How balanced is that?

Bloomberg News has an architecture review of New York City's $66 million, seven-story new intake center for both the genuinely homeless and "homeless" families who have figured out they want the priority for subsidized housing that the city grants to "homeless" families. A photo caption reports that "richly colored panels in terra cotta, terra cotta louvers, and zinc enliven the surface." The article reports that "murmuring televisions form the primary diversion for the long waits" and that the building was designed by Ennead Architects, the new name of what used to be the Polshek Partnership, which is known for its museum work.

Jonah Goldberg's latest column: "My own view is that Reagan would look at the doubling of the size of the federal government in the last ten years and become awfully 'stubborn' about reducing spending."

The Boston Globe has a pretty interesting dispatch about what it calls "a technology labor shortage" in Massachusetts, which has an overall unemployement rate of 7.6%:

Local recruiters say they are seeing three to five job openings for every candidate in the software development field. Workers with the right skills are being snatched up in as little as 24 hours, said Sean Dowling, technology contracting recruiting manager at Winter, Wyman Cos., a Waltham staffing firm.

"I've had people turn down $130-an-hour offers," he said.

More:

Midlevel technology skills are in high demand at GeoMed Analytical LLC, a life sciences start-up based at the Venture Development Center. The company is looking to hire technicians with laboratory and project management skills, not necessarily college degrees.

The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore has a piece under the headline "Warren Buffett Is Wrong On Taxes." Great piece, but even Mr. Moore overstates the taxes that Mr. Buffett will pay. Mr. Moore writes:

Mr. Buffett owns about one-quarter of his investment company Berkshire Hathaway, and his shares are worth about $38 billion. This wealth is mostly stored in what are technically called "unrealized capital gains." Eventually when those gains are converted into income, he will pay a capital gains tax.