One particularly destructive amendment to the house's irresponsible budgetbill would strip the E.P.A. of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles and stationary sources.
The building was so big that the heating bill alone ate up a lot of the budget, and the growing number of elderly patients put it under increasing strain.
Partly as a consequence, the public-sector wage bill has almost doubled over the past five years and now gobbles up about a third of the national budget.