Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing Another budget deal was scuttled with nine legislative days left in the year when the White House issued a veto threat over the weekend on the "split the difference" approach. It's plus ca change all over again. The only sound you hear, once again, is House Appropriations Chair David Obey, sick and tired of negotating with himself: "In my view, it's time to fish or cut bait. I'm tired of debating table scraps, and it's clear to me that the White House does not intend to compromise; they intend to sit back like Buddha and keep expecting us to compromise with ourselves. I'm done with navel-gazing. I'm not going to sit here and enable them to chisel domestic money down, down, down, down, so you wind up getting $5 billion bucks in return for $50 [billion] or $90 [billion] or whatever the hell it is they want for the war. Obey's new "strategy" is to agree to every last spending level requested by President Bush back in February. Oh, minus any earmarks. That really hurts. Democrats have vowed that if they must cut back on their spending plans, they will attempt to make the GOP pay a political price. "Actions have consequences," said a senior Democratic Senate aide, accoridng to CQ. So far, there haven't been any.