Two years ago Medicare restrictions jettisoned thousands of chronically ill people from home-care coverage. Last year, scraping for funds and juggling books, congressional leaders proposed parceling out the earned income credit in pieces rather than in a lump sum the working poor could actually use.
Vital services are what gives.
In 1991 it took 164 days. This is due in part to attrition and budget restrictions. Two things are going on, neither of which is honest. First, assumptions about the surplus are quite phony. On-budget in this case means it does not use the surplus in the Social Security trust fund to mask the deficit as Washington has for years.