In the early hours of Saturday, Feb. 19, the House of Representatives passed a budget plan to continue funding the operations of the federal government for the remaining seven months of fiscal year (FY) 2011. In addition to $65.5 billion in cuts to discretionary spending, the bill (H.R.

Unless Congress comes to an agreement over current fiscal year funding soon-- and one acceptable to President Obama -- many operations of the federal government will shut down after March 4. Although what exactly will be shutdown remains uncertain, it's likely the public will notice and be inconvenienced while hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed. In short, it would be a huge mess and someone will have to take the rap.

The 2011 budget has turned into a game of hot potato. With a short-term extension of the current budget increasingly unlikely, it appears as though those holding the decisionmaking authority on March 4 at 11:59 pm, when the current continuing resolution expires, will be forced to make an unpopular decision: passing draconian Republican cuts or forcing the government to shut down.

While much of the national attention recently has been on President Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, the House of Representatives is still looking backward to FY 2011. Last Friday, House Republicans unveiled a new and improved budget plan, one containing $60.9 billion in cuts from the FY 2010 budget ($65.5 billion cut from non-security discretionary, $4.7 billion increase for security spending). The new plan is an update to one released just days earlier, one which the party’s conservative faction rejected. These conservatives pushed for a full $100 billion worth of cuts from Obama’s FY 2011 budget (which as I said last week was a terrible baseline), and in a matter of days, the conservatives got them. And the new budget is full of bad news.