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DAVID BROOKS: The other thing that's happened is the Republicans keep getting pushed back into the White House by the Democrats. What the House passed, for example, this week, which was...

JIM LEHRER: Funding through July.

DAVID BROOKS: ... funding through July, the Republicans think that's just terrible policy. [House Republican] Roy Blunt told me today ...if we give like a two-month window, that just gives the insurgents an incentive to kill as many people as they can over the next two months ...as a way to chase us out. We've got to have one constant stream of policy.

So [House and Senate Republicans] don't want to be casting these votes. But the Democrats have pushed them back to the White House by adopting what is a pretty partisan way of approaching this issue.