Word: congressed
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...seem like yet another example of Washington hypocrisy, but the Obama Administration insists there is no contradiction between its words and actions. The $410 billion budget in question was passed to keep the government running for the rest of fiscal 2009, since Congress agreed on only three of the 15 appropriations bills last year and the stopgap measure it passed expires on March 6. Despite the fact that congressional Democrats crafted much of the bill after Obama was elected, the White House argues that the pork-laden bill - which increases federal spending across a range of Cabinet departments...
...wealthiest Americans to lapse and include a road map for health-care reform, will look all the more severe when compared with the bloated 2009 numbers. And while the Obama Administration is turning a blind eye to the 2009 earmarks, White House officials say they fully expect Congress to live up to Obama's campaign pledge of reducing earmarks to below 1994 levels - when the GOP took control of the House - or less than $7.8 billion a year. "They have got to draw a line in the sand, and they didn't do it here," says Steve Ellis, vice president...
...number of earmarks in recent years, such pet projects do play a vital role in the budget. Who better knows the needs of each district and state, he argued, than the members representing those populations? "Since we've been a country, we have had an obligation as a Congress to help direct spending," Reid told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We cannot let spending be done by a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats buried in this town someplace...
...last eight years, spending got way out of control. The White House couldn't put a check on Congress and the Congress wouldn't put a check on the White House, so everyone spent what they wanted and we ended up with trillion-dollar deficits," says Representative Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who nevertheless voted for the package. "We have a responsibility as Democrats to make sure that we don't do that sort of thing - that when the White House is willing to make tough budgetary choices, that Congress plays a constructive role." Apparently, that new responsible role doesn...
...next week - but they may be looking toward the wrong end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Unlike the failed 1994 Clinton health-care-reform effort, this isn't going to be a bill that the Executive Branch drafts in isolation and then tries to ram down the throats of Congress. Instead, Congress - particularly a working group convened by longtime health-care-reform advocate Senator Edward M. Kennedy - is working on a consensus solution following the road map laid out by Obama. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...