Budgets Pass

The House and Senate passed two $3 trillion+ versions of Obama’s budget late yesterday, handing the president a victory. Not a single Republican voted for the measures – not surprising since budgets are essentially ideological documents — but Dems declared victory that they held most moderates. Only two Dem senators – Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Evan Bayh of Indiana – voted against it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi only lost 20 of her flock in the House, or, as Politico’s Glenn Thrush points out, 8% of her caucus compared to the 38 House Republicans, or 20% of Minority Leader John Boehner’s conference, voted against the GOP alternative. Now comes the hard part as House and Senate negotiators meet to hammer out the differences between the two versions – though by late yesterday a consensus was emerging on most of the main issues. And then the real fun begins: appropriations, universal health care and climate change.