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:

The Concord Coalition is currently engaging in a Fiscal Stewardship Project that takes us to select cities across the country. This project is designed as a follow-up to our Fiscal Wake-Up Tour visits in those cities and as part of that we have created local Fiscal Advisory Councils (F.A.C.'s) -- groups of local citizens interested in doing more to promote and discuss fiscal responsibility.

Over the last week and a half, I've watched the launch and rapid growth of a very promising movement. It is called "80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs" and represents the coalescence of over a dozen leading youth organizations to advocate for a new American economy.

This is the kind of movement, the kind of coordinated effort that America needs to tackle our greatest and most glaring problems.

Today, the Concord Coalition released the first issue in our new Series on Health Care and Medicare entitled: "The Nation’s Health Care Conundrum: Where Do We Go From Here?"

While fielding a question from the audience during his town hall meeting on credit card reform, President Obama took an opportunity to emphasize the need for policymakers to focus on restoring fiscal responsibility within the federal government:

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.

It has been the beginning of a busy week for those closely following developments in the federal budget. On Monday, President Obama released the final installment for his FY 2010 budget. Then yesterday, the annual Social Security and Medicare Trustees' Reports were released.

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.

Ten weeks ago, President Obama released his first budget outline entitled "A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility." That publication provided an overview of what fiscal policy would look like during his first term and started the budget process in Congress (passing their budget resolution last week).

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.