Federal budget battle is mostly sound and fury
By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers
* Posted on Tuesday, November 20, 2007
WASHINGTON — There's not much to give thanks for this holiday season, say the people moving and shaking Washington.
Elderly and poor people could freeze. Sick children could go untreated. The Pentagon could run out of money. Doom. Gloom. And all because the opposite party is too wrongheaded, too pigheaded and too beholden to its special interests to compromise.
Congress has gone home for two weeks, and President Bush headed to Camp David Tuesday for Thanksgiving. They snarled at each other and fled the nation's capital without agreeing on the final shape of most of 2008's federal budget, even though the 2008 fiscal year began eight weeks ago.
The government will keep humming, though, thanks to legislation that keeps most agencies operating at last year's levels. In the meantime, the politicians make it sound as if hell — or at least the soldiers, children and the poor — is about to freeze over.
"It's important for the American people to know," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "that the (president's opposition to a labor/health and human services funding bill) means a million and a half poor families in America and seniors in our country will not be getting the low-income energy assistance that our bill calls for."
Oh yeah? says the White House.
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/21844.html
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