Budget Update

The House passed Obama's $410 billion bloated budget that contained roughly 9,000 earmarks in it a week or two ago, passing it along to the Senate.  Interestingly, it appears that Majority Leader Harry Reid is having some difficulty passing it there:

Or, not. After failing to pass the long-overdue spending bills on Thursday because Sen. Harry Reid couldn't get 60 votes, the Congress was forced to pass another continuing resolution while the Senate tries again to get cloture on the bill Tuesday night. Reid hopes allowing Republicans a vote on 10-12 amendments will earn him the votes he needs. He'll be working to defeat all the amendments, so the bill won't have to be reconciled with the House version.

The delay has become an embarrassment to Democrats and Obama, who didn't think they'd see this much resistance from moderate Democrats and the Republican minority. It's been so embarrassing in fact, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is threatening to act in a fiscally responsible way to make Republicans pay for their obstructionism:

Senate Democrats had abruptly pulled back Thursday night after finding themselves one vote short of the 60 needed to cut off debate. The action infuriated Speaker Nancy Pelosi so much that the California Democrat wanted to abandon the $409.6 billion measure and instead push through a stripped-down continuing resolution to keep the government operating through Sept. 30.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) and his deputy, Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.) were called to Pelosi's office late Thursday night and ultimately prevailed in their argument that Democrats should try to salvage the bill, which includes critical spending increases for vital agencies. But the heated, sometimes profane, exchanges were described as "ugly" by Democrats on both sides of the Capitol. Staff, kicked out in the hall, could hear the yelling, and Pelosi herself seemed a little abashed the next day, joking that nothing her leadership could say to her now would match the night before.

Well, to be fair Nancy, nothing makes Democrats madder than the idea of actually making "tough choices" about a spending bill. She should have known better.

Pelosi's idea of a pared-down omnibus is much closer to the one proposed by Republicans, which Democrats defeated, 218-160, Friday.

Where this gets really interesting is with this post at NRO's The Corner:

According to Congressional Quarterly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) insists that the Omnibus bill must pass without changes. She likes the higher levels of spending and the earmarks in the bill so much that she has threatened to push for a freeze in government spending for all of fiscal 2009 if the Senate cannot clear the omnibus in its current form.

While this might be a scary scenario for the big spenders in the Senate, it's a great opportunity for Republicans to kill two birds with one stone since any success in amending the Omnibus bill could trigger the spending freeze.

Several GOP amendments will be considered this afternoon, including a new amendment by Senator McCain to prohibit the funding of omnibus earmarks unless they are in the statutory bill text. A vast majority of earmarks are listed in the bill's statement of managers. If the amendment is adopted, most earmarks in the bill wouldn't be funded.

Other amendments being offered include extending E-verify, funding school vouchers in Washington, DC, and some other things that Republics would generally favor.  Still, it's a bit of a catch-22 for Democrats, wanting to pass yet another bloated spending bill but strangely not having the votes to push it through.  The only conclusion to explain that is that even Democrats are uncomfortable with this dog.

Good news for America, to be sure...but will they -- and the GOP -- hold on to enact that spending freeze?  We'll see soon enough.

There's my two cents.