Budget Day!

It's kind of like Christmas on Capitol Hill, if, after Christmas, instead of sending a thank you note, you compile a litany of complaints concerning the contents of said gifts and deliver it to the gift giver. In the case of the budget, it's the President who gets to hand out all the goodies -- funding for infrastructure, green tech investment, military equipment -- but who also get all the grief. There's never enough cash to go around, everyone always wants more, and nobody is particularly grateful. This year all those realities are likely to be amped up even more than usual, thanks to the political posturing going on in Washington over who can be the biggest deficit cutter.

Visions of sugarplums, indeed.

The prelude to the 2012 budget battle is the continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of 2011. That was engaged late Friday evening (curses, GOP freshmen), when the House GOP finally put out there CR proposal. As expected, the foreign policy portion took a big whack, although aid to Egypt did not. Details in my 2/11 CQ article (subscription required).