UPDATE: The Senate passed the small business package on Thursday 9/16, and the House is expected to pass the legislation early next week.

Kick-off Time – Football season got underway this weekend, and the final legislative drive before the mid-term elections also commences this week. The elections will loom over the work of lawmakers as they return to work for a short period before adjourning in October, making major breakthroughs unlikely. But stranger things have happened (like the Redskins winning).

Today, former OMB Director Peter Orszag debuted his new column in the New York Times and he sure made a splash. He tries to thread the needle of propping up the economy in the immediate-term and helping right the budget imbalances in the medium-term by suggesting that the tax cuts should be temporarily extended for all income brackets until 2013 and then allowed to expire.

Yesterday, the President announced two new plans for economic growth. Responding to pressure to deliver more job creation in a critical election year, Obama announced a plan to spend $50 billion next year on transportation and infrastructure—from roads to railways to airports. The proposal also includes plans for the creation of a national ‘infrastructure bank’ to attract private funding for further infrastructure improvement projects.

A Lot of Work Ahead – The end of the long Labor Day weekend heralds the effective end of summer: the pools are closed, the kids are back at school, and summer vacations are over. Congress goes back to work in Washington next week. Members of Congress may be hard at work back home campaigning now, but tough tasks wait for them in DC as well.

CRFB board member Laura Tyson makes the argument for additional economic stimulus in a recent New York Times op-ed. At the same time she mirrors CRFB in also proposing that policymakers “should enact a credible multiyear plan now to stabilize the ratio of federal debt to gross domestic product gradually as the economy recovers.” Additionally, she renews her membership in CRFB’s “Announcement Effect Club” by arguing that announcing a credible plan now would ease capital market concerns.

The FDIC has just released its Quarterly Banking Profile (QBP) for the second quarter of 2010, showing improvement in bank balance sheets since last quarter and at the same point last year. 

At the Federal Reserve meetings in Jackson Hole, CRFB President Maya MacGuineas, commented on fiscal policy and the need for a credible debt reduction plan.

Watch a video of the interview below, or click here to go to CNBC.

Yesterday, CBO released an update on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (read our analysis of it here) impact on unemployment and job growth for the second quarter of 2010. It reported that ARRA funded almost 750,000 jobs in the U.S.

The Obama Administration held a conference yesterday discussing how to fix federal housing programs, with the goal of submitting a comprehensive Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform proposal by January.