Yet another debt ceiling hike planned

In recent days, Congress has received some good news on the budget front. A surge of tax revenues this spring, sparked by economic growth, prompted the Congressional Budget Office last Thursday to revise its 2006 deficit forecast from around $370 billion to as low as $300 billion.

Wow, that's great. So the unprecedented deficit we've run up in the last five years isn't quite as unprecedented as we thought. I wonder what the Republican reaction will be....

A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit.

The provision -- buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint -- serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week. House leaders hope to try once again to pass a budget plan for fiscal 2007, a month after a revolt by House Republican moderates and Appropriations Committee members forced leaders to pull the plan.

Leaders also hope to pass a package of tax-cut extensions that would cost the Treasury $70 billion over the next five years. They would then turn Thursday to a $513 billion defense policy bill that would block President Bush's request to raise health-care fees and co-payments for service members and their families.

That's right. $70 billion we thought was deficit spending hasn't been spent. So they're spending it. And asking for a credit increase.

One final cringe-inducing fact: when Bush took office, the deficit-spending limit was $5.95 trillion. This will make it $10 trillion.