It's that most wonderful time of the year: budget roll-out day. This year's massive budget is the first in which spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $100 billion through September; and then $145 billion through 2008 -- is embedded into the total defense appropriation, as opposed to masking the price through so-called "supplemental" funding later in the year.

But don't expect an end to appropriations-based chicanery. Even though the new Democratic Congress is sure to embed any number of restrictions on the war into the language of the next defense bill, President Bush has an important arrow in his quiver for doing what he wants outside of the budget process: signing statements, his constitutionally-murky declarations of how he intends to implement a law. And if last year's defense bill is any indication, he's set to use them.

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The Still-Hampered Iraq Rebuilding Effort
The Special Inspector General of Iraq Reconstruction reported yesterday that "despite nearly $108 billion that had been budgeted for the reconstruction of Iraq since the 2003 invasion, the country’s electrical output and oil production were still below prewar levels and stocks of gasoline and kerosene had plummeted to their lowest levels in at least two years." Many American contractors are suspected of having wasted funds; others, such as DynCorp, which "[billed] the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and [started] other jobs before they were requested," may have committed outright fraud. (The New York Times)

Continue below for the rest of the day's muck...

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