UGGGGHHHH! SELF SERVING ARROGANT SOB's! FIRE THEM ALL!!!!! They make time for a comedian, passed this bill so they can all get PAID and passed another bill to start a currency trade war with China who has us by the nuts in DEBT... BUT don't have time to vote on NOT RAISING ANY OF OUR TAXES beginning in 2011?!?! WTF?! Where are your priorities?! Not with the public (YOUR BOSSES) that is for sure!
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Yahoo News
written by Andrew Taylor and Laurie Kellman, AP
Thursday September 30, 2010
WASHINGTON – A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job — approving a budget for the government year that begins on Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until angry and frustrated voters render their verdict in the Nov. 2 elections.
As a last necessary task before leaving, both the Senate and House passed a temporary spending measure needed to keep federal agencies operating when the new budget year starts.
As Congress moved toward a messy end to a session fraught with partisan fire, President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in Iowa and Virginia, accusing Republicans of being dishonest about what needs to be done to revive the economy and restore middle-class dreams.
With their House and Senate majorities on the line, Democratic leaders called off votes and even debates on all controversial matters.
"It would be one thing if you have a chance to pass something, then by all means have a vote," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Wednesday. "But it was pretty clear that it was going to be mutually assured destruction."
One foot out the door, the House and Senate convened just long enough to vote on a "continuing resolution," a stopgap measure to keep the government in operating funds for the next two months and avoid a pre-election federal shutdown.
The Senate late Wednesday approved the temporary spending bill 69-30. The House followed suit several hours later with a 228-194 vote, sending it to Obama early Thursday.
"We may not agree on much, but I think, with rare exception, all 100 senators want to get out of here and get back to their states," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is locked in a tough re-election fight against Republican Sharron Angle in Nevada.
Staying or going might seem an equally unpleasant prospect for some embattled Democrats, who are facing more than four weeks of defending unpopular votes in favor of Obama's economic stimulus measure, health care law and uncompleted legislation for curbing global warming.
They also head home without what was supposed to be their closing argument of the campaign, an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for families making less than $250,000.
Republicans and a few Democrats urged Congress to preserve the tax cuts for all Americans, even the wealthiest. Democratic leaders opted to avoid the risk of being branded tax hikers and punted the matter until after the elections.
Republicans applied the label anyway, scolding Democrats for folding the tent without voting on extending former President George W. Bush's tax cuts beyond their Dec. 31 expiration. A motion to adjourn upon completing routine business passed by a single vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's, after 39 Democrats joined Republicans in protest.
"If Democratic leaders leave town without stopping all of the tax hikes, they are turning their backs on the American people," said House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Pelosi has vowed that the middle class tax cuts will be passed this year.
Republicans also denounced Democrats for delaying the ethics trials of Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., until after the elections. Both lawmakers had said they wanted trials as soon as possible.
House leaders also appeared unlikely to call a vote on a Senate-passed school nutrition bill favored by first lady Michelle Obama. The bill is opposed by liberals because it would cut food stamp benefits to find the money to pay for better school lunches. The Senate passed the $4.5 billion legislation in August, and many of the child nutrition programs it includes are to expire on Thursday, the last day of the fiscal year. They'll be temporarily extended under the stopgap bill.
In the waning hours before adjournment, Democrats moved what smaller legislation they could.
The House advanced to Obama's desk a bill setting NASA policy and legislation aimed at strengthening congressional oversight of sensitive spy operations. But a House measure to provide free health care and additional compensation to World Trade Center workers sickened in the towers' crumbled ruins was sure to stall in the Senate.
The stopgap spending measure was kept clean of a host of add-ons sought by the Obama administration, including money for "Race to the Top" grants to better-performing schools and more than $4 billion to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits by black farmers and American Indians against the government. A single GOP senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was blocking the bill for black farmers and Indians, and negotiations were continuing.
"If Democratic leaders leave town without stopping all of the tax hikes, they are turning their backs on the American people," said House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Pelosi has vowed that the middle class tax cuts will be passed this year.
Republicans also denounced Democrats for delaying the ethics trials of Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., until after the elections. Both lawmakers had said they wanted trials as soon as possible.
House leaders also appeared unlikely to call a vote on a Senate-passed school nutrition bill favored by first lady Michelle Obama. The bill is opposed by liberals because it would cut food stamp benefits to find the money to pay for better school lunches. The Senate passed the $4.5 billion legislation in August, and many of the child nutrition programs it includes are to expire on Thursday, the last day of the fiscal year. They'll be temporarily extended under the stopgap bill.
In the waning hours before adjournment, Democrats moved what smaller legislation they could.
The House advanced to Obama's desk a bill setting NASA policy and legislation aimed at strengthening congressional oversight of sensitive spy operations. But a House measure to provide free health care and additional compensation to World Trade Center workers sickened in the towers' crumbled ruins was sure to stall in the Senate.
The stopgap spending measure was kept clean of a host of add-ons sought by the Obama administration, including money for "Race to the Top" grants to better-performing schools and more than $4 billion to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits by black farmers and American Indians against the government. A single GOP senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was blocking the bill for black farmers and Indians, and negotiations were continuing.
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