Up all night

Sorry, I'm late.

I am late in sympathy with the reporters who had stay up all night with the 400-odd middle-aged men and women who are up for re-election in a mere 21 months -- the members of the House of Representatives.

The story ominously tells us that they were working in the "predawn dark". That's not very helpful -- predawn means night and night means dark. Anyway, the phrase is usually predawn light, when an eerie glow appears in the east. I awoke in the predawn light and learned that the House had passed a budget bill and amendments to remove $60 billion from the federal budget.

This slashing is all part of the annual exercise to fund the government. It's a good opportunity to make points, and points are what they made. This vote is far from the final decision because the Senate gets a whack at it. Some years, the posturing hits the jackpot, and Congress deadlocks.

But $60 billion sounds like a lot. What exactly happened? That's what I want to know. And what is really in jeopardy?

The story gives us all sorts of stuff that sounds philosophical and contains numerous quotes. There are warnings about the dangers of life without a government. Three-quarters into the text, we learn that an alternate engine for a fighter jet will be cut -- $450 million. There are no more numbers to be had in this overall story. There were mentions of other items, like the cut to Planned Parenthood. But without amounts. I guess math is decidedly hateful and boring and possibly un-American, but the way I add, we've got $59.5 billion to go.

House Votes to Cut $60 Billion, Setting Up Budget Clash

There's a sleepy sidebar, written earlier than the predawn. It was written in the witching hours on Thursday night. This piece promises the drama, but tells us that Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, described the scene as an "orgy of self-congratulation." Yeah, but is that a whole story? Then, Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, denounced the anti-abortion radicals and spoke of her own experience of having a medically necessary abortion. It's an emotional anecdote and I would think deserves a place in the main story -- which is filled with what Frank called self-congratulation.

This tired account of rhetorical flourishes neither spreads heat nor light. I recommend Youtube if you must, or C-span if you're a masochist.

Long Floor Fight Over Spending Cuts Gets Personal

But what makes the Times great and aggravating at the same time, more. There is still more on the budget. Precisely, a list of key amendments to the bill, out of the 400 offered. But on inspection they don't really clear things up.

This list tells us that the Planned Parenthood won't get $317 million. That's a lot, but for the purpose of seeing where the $60 billion is, another amendment restored $557 million for special education.

Many of the cutbacks were rejected, like a serious one for Amtrak. Maybe someone realizes the consequences of the rising price of petroleum.

Many are tiny. For example, $1.9 million for a study on salmon.

So the amendments listed here actually add spending to the budget.

Key Amendments to H.R.1, Fiscal Year 2011
Appropriations Bill

It won't help much to go outside and look up the actual bill. It addresses 2,000 items, by my estimate, but it's written in bill language, which tells you a new dollar amount without telling you the old. That's fine for lawyers who have the original appropriations at hand.

I still have no idea of what the talk of $60 billion means. According to the bill, more than half of it, $25.9 billion, are simply amounts that various agencies won't have. So, Congress is voting on something that will have a walloping effect on our lives without knowing any more than I do.

And nowhere in any of this was a word about Congress's first priority: Tax cuts. Same reporter wrote two months ago that $801 billion of them had just been passed with no small amount of self-congratulation. That's $740 billion more than the so-called cuts. Gulp! We're further in the hole than ever.