FUTURE: SNEAKING UP ON US ONE DAY AT A TIME

I figured that McConnell and Boehner are about 5 times smarter than Reid and a hundred times smarter than that other guy, but I wondered how they were going to manifest their little surprise this time in the budget battle.  Wonder no more. I had the radio tuned to the very fair and balanced NPR on the way home from lunch today and listened as they choked on unfamiliar words. It occurred to me that there were two particular words they keep using but I don't think they know what those words mean.

At the moment, the mob is howling for the House to just stop messing around and pass a "clean" continuing resolution. Yep. They are insisting on a clean continuing resolution. They just know that that means the same exact thing as a clean budget. They're wrong, of course. The two things mean totally different things. A budget is a bill passed by Congress after due diligence and consideration of all the factors and takes months and months to arrive at after much consultation with expert witnesses and conferencing between the two chambers of Congress.

A Continuing Resolution, on the other hand, means just that. It funds the programs agreed to in the previous budget, at the same levels, for a specified length of time. The language used to fund all of the previous CRs has specifically included the words, 'not to be used to fund new programs.'

Obamacare was not part of the previous budget or continuing resolutions under which the previous Congresses lurched along in their inability to get the President to submit a budget and their disinclination to sit down and hammer out a budget both parties could agree to.

So yeah, eventually, the House majority will bow to the inevitable and pass a clean CR ................. that also doesn't fund Obamacare since that isn't the nature of a Continuing Resolution..