The Medicare fight and the budget war

摘要

When House Republicans com-pleted their two-night retreat outside the beltway last week, they roared out of historic Leesburg, Va., in three chartered yellow buses. Emblazoned across the sides of each of the motor coaches was the word SPAR-TEN, the name of a local bus firm. GOP aides say they didn't have ancient Greece in mind when they chose a bus company named —loosely —for the Spartans, the warriors known for their discipline and self-sacrifice. But the metaphor may prove apt. The congressional budget war has begun in earnest, and last week President Clinton and the Democrats drew first blood.