Good to Know It's Still Business As Usual

I go away for a week, and nothing much changes. Here's the NYTimes editorial from yesterday:

Members of Congress left Washington before Thanksgiving and don't plan to return until mid-December. They took off without approving any money to help poor Americans pay their heating bills this winter. They failed to pass the bill that included $2 billion in home heating subsidies that they had agreed to allocate as long ago as last spring. They also failed to come up with the additional $3 billion that is needed to cover the big price jumps in various fuels since Hurricane Katrina.

On four separate occasions, a majority of senators voted in favor of more money for heating subsidies, but under the budget rules, passage required a supermajority, which could not be mustered. The House managed to ignore the issue almost entirely, except to "add" an extra billion dollars for heating subsidies to one bill by cutting a billion from other programs that help the poor. The intended recipients of federal heating subsidies include millions of low-income Americans who are old and disabled, as well as poor families with children.