and meredith shiner. she covers the u.s. senate for the newspaper roll call. so meredith shiner, before we get to the senate, refresh our memories on what happened in the house. why did they pass a budget that evidently doesn't have a chance of passing the senate? >> so they passed a three-month short term appropriations bill to try to avert a government shutdown, but one of the ways they were able to get their conservative members to do that was to include a pro strigs defund the president's health care law. this is the 41st time they voted to do that. if you're keeping score at home, we still haven't defunded the law yet because the senate is still controlled by democrats and the president-- whose landmark achievement this law is-- is not going to actually support that. so they sent this because they needed to actually just start the process. without them showing what they could actually pass, the senate couldn't then act. the biggest problem now is just time, because as senate majority leader harry reid said, if they eat the entire clock procedurally, they