Free Republic

Congress staggered toward a fast-approaching government funding cliff on Tuesday, as leading lawmakers zeroed in on a bipartisan funding compromise but struggled to cinch a final deal. Without new legislation, government agencies will shutter at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) was widely expected to introduce a continuing resolution, or CR, over the weekend to punt that deadline into mid-March. Instead, disputes over aid for farmers and funding for Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge appeared to cloud discussions over the weekend, lawmakers said. Those projects threatened to turn what was supposed to be a routine federal funding...

George Deukmejian, the most self-effacing California governor in modern history, characteristically entered the office in 1983 with just a few modest goals - mostly balancing the budget, toughening crime laws and building new prisons for an increasing inmate population. Eventually, nearly two dozen prisons were built as the inmate population skyrocketed from about 20,000 to more than 160,000, and like all big political decisions, the massive prison construction program had unforeseen consequences. As spending on prisons ballooned from well under $1 billion to nearly $6 billion, and as prison payrolls expanded from 9,000 to 45,000 employees, membership in the California...