In Oklahoma, where the budget gap equals 15 percent of the state budget, Democratic lawmakers are blocking a budget agreement because it doesn't pay for a nutrition program for senior citizens. Republicans warn that the stalemate will result in state trooper and prison guard furloughs, but Democrats say Republicans can find another way to free up the cash.

Apologies: This was supposed to be a regular feature, and I slacked. Now it's back.

Obamanomics suffers from a misunderstanding of what the president is trying to achieve and what he’s up against. Into the breach come Republicans, tea partiers, nay-sayers, deficit vultures, and Raging-Dog Democrats, all viewing Obamanomics as more taxes and more spending. That’s nonsense. To see the big picture, keep your eye on three big things.

1. Government spending needed to offset the continued reluctance of consumers and businesses to spend. You don’t have to be an orthodox Keynesian to understand that as long as the private sector is deleveraging, the public sector has to borrow and spend in order to keep the economy moving forward.

The number the Obama team wants you to hear is $1.25 trillion, as in, there is $1.25 trillion worth of deficit reduction in this budget over the next 10 years. It comes largely from letting the upper-income Bush tax cuts expire ($700 billion in savings), the terribly framed non-security discretionary spending freeze ($250 billion in savings), the new bank tax ($90 billion), and various other tax and spending adjustments.

So the Department of Education is going to get a 6.2 percent increase in funding in the next budget, even though it is within the budget slice that is to be "frozen." As I explained yesterday, though, the budget "freeze" is simply a rhetorical gambit. The administration intends to go about its usual budget processes while attempting to keep the overall level of domestic discretionary spending at the same level. And it's not even likely to happen, since many members of Congress are skeptical of the White House's ideas.

There’s yet another angle on the “Is the public too stupid to realize all that the stimulus has done” debate that Adam weighed into earlier this afternoon. Adam and Matt Yglesias took Joe Klein for task for condescending to the the public when it’s the responsibility of the media and other elites to help them understand what the government is doing.