Budget in Flames

Well, we finally got a win in the Senate. Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon built a coalition with a few Republicans and the Democrats and got the Senate to strip out Medicaid cuts from the Bush 2006 budget. This throws the entire budget into turmoil, as the House wants to get those lazy poor people out of our "freedom hospitals":

The Senate action came as the House of Representatives was debating its own version of the budget. House Republican leaders, who have been arguing that the explosive growth of Medicaid must be reined in, had warned that passage of the Smith amendment would create a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the chambers. House members were deliberating up to $20 billion in Medicaid cuts this afternoon.

If the House and Senate can't come together on a compromise budget, what will probably happen is that Congress will agree to work with last year's budget. Which means that the most odious parts, like drilling in ANWR, would never come into law.

In addition to that happy possibility, it shows the fundamental rift in the Republican Party, between those moderates that still understand the importance of kitchen-table issues and the hardline conservatives that have lumps of coal for hearts. All of them are for unrestrained spending (as shown by yesterday's striking down of PAYGO restrictions); it's just that some of them want the money to go to their constituents to fulfill campaign promises, while others would rather give it to defense contractors to build bunker-buster bombs. Now that the public is reacting negatively to the deep cuts in entitlements (like Social Security), big increases in defense kind of budget favored by Bush and DeLay, more and more moderate conservatives are going to have to distance themselves if they want to keep their jobs. This Smith amendment on Medicaid could be the first step.