Pork Busters, and Keepers

A telling fight among Republicans

At the eleventh hour, House Republicans failed to pass a budget resolution before leaving for a two-week break. A tenuous deal between fiscal conservatives and the House leadership collapsed when big spending Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee threatened to torpedo the bill on the floor. Most budget fights are over line items, but this one is over a bigger issue: Congress’s power to spend money. When conservatives proposed some reforms to curtail that power, Republican appropriators shut down the negotiations.