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Mack Sennett was the Hollywood director and producer who, during the silent movie era, gave us the Keystone Kops. The Kops always seemed to be endlessly chasing themselves as they tried to get the bad guy.

What happened on the budget last week looked like one of Sennett's movies.

Even though it absolutely was in their interest to compromise, the week began with House and Senate Republicans increasingly unable to come to any agreement on the size of the tax cut that should be included in the fiscal 2004 budget resolution.

So the congressional leadership decided that the only thing they could do was to agree to disagree - in spite of the fact that the purpose of a budget resolution conference agreement is to come up with a single number that both houses agree on.

As a result, they devised unprecedented dual reconciliation instructions in the budget resolution for a $726 billion tax cut in the House and a $350 billion tax cut in Senate. That would prevent a filibuster and mean that only a simple majority - rather than a 60-vote supermajority - would be needed to pass the tax cut in the Senate.

The Senate parliamentarian supposedly agreed that the Senate could consider the conference report with a tax cut larger than $350 billion without violating the reconciliation rules. Less than 24 hours later, however, the parliamentarian said that would not work in a letter requested by Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

This is the Republican-appointed parliamentarian who got his job when the previous Republican-appointed parliamentarian refused to give his blessing to another procedure the leadership wanted to use on the budget.

The parliamentarian's letter caused the House and Senate leadership to scramble for a new deal, which at first seemed impossible. Indeed, some House members started to make public statements at this point that no budget resolution would be better than one that only had a $350 billion tax cut.

Remember, this is the same Republican leadership that last year criticized Senate Democrats for not passing a budget resolution.

The vitriol between House and Senate Republicans seemed to stop when a Rube Goldberg-like procedure was devised to get around the underlying problem that the House and Senate still could not agree on the size of the tax cut.

To sidestep the parliamentarian's ruling, the Senate also created a 60-vote point of order against a tax cut larger than $350 billion. But the point of order only applied to the Senate vote on its original version of the tax cut and not to the conference report. The assumption was that the tax cut would come back from conference at $550 billion and that the Senate would approve it because only a simple majority would be needed and opponents would not be able to stop it.

The two key Republican holdouts on the larger tax cut - Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio - surprisingly indicated that they would support the deal even though it seemed likely to lead to a much higher tax cut than either one said they could support. At that point everything seemed settled.

But this apparently happy ending was neither the end nor happy. After the House voted to adopt the budget resolution conference report with this deal, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, announced that he had made a separate private pledge to Snowe and Voinovich not to come back from the conference on the tax bill with a cut larger than $350 billion.

The House leadership almost immediately denounced the pledge and Grassley. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., even went so far as to indicate that Grassley, who as chairman of the Finance Committee will chair the conference on the tax cut, was irrelevant because the deal had been cut between the House and Senate leadership, and Grassley was not a party to it.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., then in effect apologized to the House leadership for the confusion and vowed to communicate more closely with them on the budget in the future. Meanwhile, Grassley indicated that he had every intention of keeping his pledge and talked about it as a matter of honor.

So at the end of the week, a budget resolution conference report had been agreed to by both houses, but almost nothing had been resolved as far as the tax cut is concerned. Indeed, the budget debate is probably in worse shape because of the Keystone Kops-like activities than it was before the week began.

Thinking about everything that happened last week, if you close your eyes you can almost hear the live piano that silent movie houses used to accompany Sennett's movies.

Question Of The Week

Last Week's Question. Total federal debt first reached the $1 trillion level in 1982. That means Rohit Kumar, who works for Frist, is the winner of the amazingly attractive and highly sought "I Won A 2003 Budget Battle" mouse pad. Rohit was selected at random from all of those who said that 1982 was the year.

This Week's Question. Think about that smile on your face when someone walks by your desk and asks how you got that incredible red and silver "I Won A 2003 Budget Battle" mouse pad. Here's your next chance. The question: According to the budget resolution conference report just agreed to by Congress, what is the deadline for the Senate Finance Committee to report its version of the tax cut?

Send your response to scollender@nationaljournal.com by 5 p.m. PDT on Saturday, April 19, 2003. You must include your mailing address so the "I Won A 2003 Budget Battle" mouse pad can be sent if you win. If there is more than one correct response, the winner will be selected at random from those with similar answers.

(Note to government employees: Because of security procedures at most departments and agencies, a home rather than office address will be the best way to get the mouse pad to you.)

COMMENTS

• The real issue is not whether Bush's tax cut is $726 billion or $350 billion. It is also not the process used to decide between the two figures. Rather, the issue is whether even one penny in tax cuts should go to the super rich in any circumstances, but particularly now when we have to pay billions for war, and the economy is in such bad shape. Federal agencies are considering furloughs, local governments are considering cuts in education, fire departments and additional critical services. Not since Herbert Hoover, if then, has there been an administration so intent on draining the treasury to help the most affluent and powerful sectors of our society at the expense of the rest of us. Carl Goldman Posted April 16, 2003 9:30 AM