Congress spends a good chunk of its time on Capitol Hill slogging through the year-long process of creating and passing a budget; the president kicks off the marathon with a budget proposal in early February and - on the rarest of years - a final budget is passed by October 1 when the fiscal year begins (more often, the process gets dragged out to December - or Congress gives up on the effort entirely).

For 2009's budget, hill watchers are already predicting that we may not see a budget until next January, when the Democratic leadership in Congress hopes to have a president that will sign off on its spending ideas. Their ability to do so means that they have just about zero incentive to negotiate with President Bush to compromised on budget priorities. For that reason, this year citizenJoe doesn't even bother parsing out the president's proposed budget.

Congress will reveal its first budget draft - the "budget resolution" - in March, which is used as a blue print for budget committees which write up the details for the final spending bills.