Check out Dana's latest in his TPM Cafe series on the budget process. This edition: the last few sticking points regarding the congressional budget resolution. It was over six weeks ago when the House and Senate passed their $2.9 trillion budget resolutions for the federal fiscal year starting on October 1, 2008 and projected budgets through 2012. Since then, the attention of most members of Congress has been on the war in Iraq and whether or how to end it. But a small group of budgeteers like House Budget Committee chair John Spratt (D-SC), his Senate counterpart Kent Conrad (D-ND) and other Democratic congressional leaders have been wrestling with the differences between the House and Senate resolutions, trying to arrive at compromises that the budget resolution conference committee can ratify. The conference committee finally convened yesterday, but there was no resolution, so to speak, of the main sticking points between the House and Senate.