I fear the Democrats are about to have another Elmer Fudd moment...

The House narrowly passed an $82 billion bill yesterday providing tax relief for 6.5 million poor families, along with tax cuts for military families and astronauts who die in shuttle missions.

The 224 to 201 vote sets up a fight with the Senate, which adopted a more modest $10 billion bill last week. The Senate version would provide a $1,000 per-child tax credit for families earning $10,500 to $26,000 a year until 2005....

The House bill would provide the same tax credit for those low-income families, but for 10 years. It would give members of the military an additional $800 million in tax breaks for housing, death benefits and dependent care....

The House's decision to broaden and extend the proposed tax cuts could doom the enhanced child credit for low-income parents altogether. The reason is that several senators are threatening to filibuster the House version because it exceeds their preset budget limits....

--Washington Post

Not long ago, the Democrats were urging Bush to establish a Department of Homeland Security. He refused, then changed his mind and made it seem like his idea -- and then the Democrats began fighting the bill that established the department because it denied collective bargaining rights to federal workers who already had them. And so the Democrats looked like bad soldiers in the war on terror -- just in time for the '02 elections. Clever Democratic plans blows up in their faces. An Elmer Fudd moment.

Now we have the Democrats shaming the Republicans for denying the child tax credit to low-income workers. But the Republicans are about to lead the Democrats to the dynamite again: the Dems can't filibuster even a budget-busting bill that provides this tax cut without looking bad.

But I bet they're going to do it.

Elmer Fudd redux.