We interrupt today's Budget Theatre to bring you a message: While the press and dithers and flurries over stupid gang proposals that haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of becoming law, more quiet and equally significant things are happening, too.

Like, for example, President Obama's endorsement of a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

A day before the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to hold hearing on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration has endorsed Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) legislation to repeal it. Responding to a question from Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner, White House Press Briefing, Jay Carney said Obama was “proud to support the Respect for Marriage Act” to “take DOMA off the books once and for all.” “This legislation would uphold the principle that the federal government should not deny gay and lesbian couples the same rights and legal protections as straight couples,” he added.

Steve Benen:

What’s more, it’s a heartening piece that fits into a larger mosaic. After two-and-a-half years, President Obama has successfully repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law; expanded federal benefits for the same-sex partners of executive-branch employees; signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law; cleared the way for hospital-visitation rights for same-sex couples; lifted the travel/immigration ban on those with HIV/AIDS; ordered the Federal Housing Authority to no longer consider the sexual orientation of applicants on loans; expanded the Census to include the number of people who report being in a same-sex relationship; and hired more openly gay officials than any administration in history.

Along those lines, it went virtually unnoticed yesterday that the Senate confirmed an openly gay judge for district court for the first time in history.

Then there's this quiet little release about birth control pills and health insurance. This is a particularly sensitive issue for me, because it aggravates me that Viagra is covered and birth control pills aren't. Add to that the Republican War on Women and their reproductive systems, and it adds up to a victory to see this:

Virtually all health insurance plans could soon be required to offer female patients free coverage of prescription birth control, breast-pump rentals, counseling for domestic violence, and annual wellness exams and HIV tests as a result of recommendations released Tuesday by an independent advisory panel of health experts.

The health-care law adopted last year directed the Obama administration to draw up a list of preventive services for women that all new health plans must cover without deductibles or co-payments. While the guidelines suggested Tuesday by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine are not binding, the panel conducted its year-long review at the request of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

In a statement, Sebelius praised the committee’s work as “historic” and “based on science and existing literature.”

“We are reviewing the report closely and will release the department’s recommendations . . . very soon,” she added.

It may not be some spectacular Congressional win, but wait for that. That win will ride forward in the form of a clean debt ceiling raise, dragging Eric Cantor, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell in the dust behind it. In the meantime, other steps in the right direction, even if they don't make the front page.

Dick Armey makes me want to punch myself in the face every time I have to be subjected to his "Why can't I opt out of Medicare and Social Security?" lament. In his latest appearance on CNN's Parker/Spitzer yesterday, he did it again:

ARMEY: I think they will do that. If it's going to happen, if will come out of the energy of the newly elected Republicans. But quite frankly there is so much work that has to be done, start with rolling back the new commitments that can't be fulfilled, which we did with the vote on Obamacare. But the fact of the matter is, on social security, just let it be voluntary on Medicare. I'll give you one, Eliot.

SPITZER: All right. OK.

ARMEY: A simple little thing.

SPITZER: It's not going to work, but that's --

ARMEY: Why can't the United States government allow Dick Armey, a 71-year-old fellow --

SPITZER: Right.

ARMEY: -- who makes a darn good living --

SPITZER: Right. ARMEY: -- opt out of Medicare without being punished? Just let Medicare be voluntary. I promise you there are a lot of wealthy old geezers and their wives in America --

PARKER: I don't think there are enough.

ARMEY: -- that would say to the federal government don't let us be a burden to you, we'll take care of our own health care. But this government is so devoted to the requirement that we be submitted to their dictatorship of our health care that they can't even let rich people out of Medicare. It's goofy.

Why can't Eliot Spitzer just pick up the ball and run with it, instead of giving an anemic response about how Mitt Romney understands mandates? It would have been simple enough to answer him with the truth, which is that Medicare and Social Security work because they are NOT optional?

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Ezra Klein's post on CBO chief Doug Elmendorf's testimony today before the Senate Finance Committee frames it in a positive light, based upon this chart which clearly indicates that extended tax cuts will actually reduce income in 2020 if the Bush tax cuts are extended.

While all of that is true, the idea of permanently extending the upper-end tax cuts is really not on the table. What is on the table, and what has been on the table since Peter Orszag wrote his New York Times column is to extend the Bush rates on the upper tier for 2 more years. Elmendorf's chart gives exactly the political cover necessary for Congress to do that.

Elmendorf doesn't deny that tax cuts stimulate the economy. But they don't stimulate it that much, he says, and over the long run, the net economic growth from the tax cuts will be quite small. The net deficit impact won't be. "Lower tax revenues increase budget deficits and thereby government borrowing," Elmendorf said, "which crowds out investment, while lower tax rates increase people’s saving and work effort; the net effect on economic activity depends on the balance of those forces."

The first two bars compare permanent versus partial extension of the cuts. The second two compare a full extension and partial extension through 2012. They point to a negligible effect on the economy if a 2-year extension is granted, whether full or partial.

This is a terrible idea. Terrible. I don't really care what the economic argument is for it at all. From a political standpoint, there could be nothing worse than extending those upper-tier cuts until 2012. Here's why:

1. It pushes the entire debate into the next Presidential election, giving Republicans the ability to promise making them permanent, just like they are now.
2. It ignores the very real deficit issues. We already know the upper tier does not spend or invest tax savings, but simply sits on those funds, which is neither stimulative nor helpful.
3. It's time to face the fact that fighting two wars cost this nation something, and start paying it down. What Bush did with the tax cuts is exactly what some folks did with these subprime loans. They borrowed money they shouldn't have for stuff they shouldn't have spent money on, and in the end, it hurt the entire global economy.

In early 2008 I wrote a post saying what no one wanted to: tax increases were inevitable, no matter which party was in power. Nothing has changed since then. There should not even be a debate about this. It is as simple as this: As a nation, we owe a whole lot of money for trashing Iraq and Afghanistan. It's time to start making payments.

Deferring the debate to 2012 is cowardly and stupid. There's not enough political payoff in it for anyone to make it worthwhile. Yet, I guarantee you this chart will give Democrats exactly what they need to push for a 2-year extension. Someone needs to tell them gently or harshly that the answer is no. Let them all expire if necessary, but an extension is political suicide.

Somebody had to make this obvious joke video; it might as well be me.

Open Thread below....

Can someone track down all the times that President Bush and others have said that the Iraqi military has made just awesome progress in their training during the last years now and list them please?

Such An Awesome War:

Iraq's new army is "developing steadily," with "strong Iraqi leaders out front," the chief U.S. trainer said.

That was three-plus years ago, and the trainer was David H. Petraeus, now the top American commander in Iraq. Some of those Iraqi officials at the time were busy embezzling more than $1 billion allotted for the new army's weapons, according to investigators.

Nationwide security: In the latest shift, the Pentagon's new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when local units will take over security responsibility for Iraq. Last year's reports had forecast a transition in 2008.

Bush's prediction: In January 2007, President Bush said Iraqi forces would take charge in all 18 Iraqi provinces by November. Four months past that deadline, they control nine provinces and none of the most volatile ones.

Cost: At least $22 billion has been spent to train an Iraqi military with narrow capabilities, critics and outside experts say.

Pentagon's view: Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the current trainer, said his team has made "huge progress in many areas, quality and quantity." Still, "we're not free of difficulties," he said, citing as an example a critical shortage of midlevel Iraqi officers that will take years to close.

Iraqi view: Dubik says Iraqi defense officials don't expect to take over internal security until as late as 2012 and won't be able to defend Iraq's borders until 2018.

Apparently, health warnings must be applied to watching this video.

Guardian UK: (h/t Gregory)

Yesterday they were mocking it. Today, the Sun and Mail triumphantly report that the juddering fluorescent London 2012 Olympics logo is not only bizarrely inadequate to the task of promoting the capital - it can trigger epileptic fits. "Within hours of it being launched we received 12 reports of people suffering seizures," a spokeswoman for Epilepsy Action tells the Sun.

The accompanying Talking Heads-meets-cover of-Smash Hits video has been hastily re-edited. Yesterday the multicoloured shapes were seen fizzling through swimmers' diving bodies, down motorways and up Tate Modern. Now we have footage of a cyclist being overtaken by a woman in an electronic wheelchair and elderly Britons practising their karate chops.