While the presidential race continues to grab headlines, an equally fierce congressional race is raging on -- the race to finish up work before most of official Washington takes its second spring vacation.
In the Senate, home to likely White House rivals Barack Obama and John McCain, the two parties actually agree on something! Read on to find out more....
The rare chance for cooperation comes on the need for suspending fuel purchases for the US strategic petroleum reserve until the price of oil falls below $75 a barrel. But two further proposals to stem rising gas prices are headed for failure: a Democratic bid to tax the record profits of oil companies and a Republican bid to drill for black gold in Alaska's national wildlife refuge.
Both of these ideas have been kicking around Congress since the Iraq war first began, and even the petroleum reserve suspension would only have a short-term effect on the high cost of driving in America.
In the House of Representatives, the suspension of petroleum reserve activity is also expected to win approval this week. A far dicier proposition is the $183bn bill to keep funding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which many liberals intend to oppose on its face. Some right-leaning Democrats in the "Blue Dog" cadre may join them out of frustration at two pricey additions to the war bill: an extension of unemployment benefits for US workers hit by the slow-rolling recession and an expansion of veterans' education payments that has an unexpected fan in Republican secretary of state Colin Powell.
Whether or not the House can pass the controversial war bill, the presidential candidates are certain to jab each other on the topic.
Finally, both chambers of Congress have added a $300bn farm bill to their plates this week, giving George Bush the chance to threaten a rare veto with principle behind it. The farm plan fell short of Bush's preferred cuts to lucrative agricultural subsidies -- while managing to undercut alternative energy by requiring sugar-based ethanol to be made with American sugar beets and cutting funding for an international children's food aid programme by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately the farm bill, unlike children's healthcare and withdrawal from Iraq, may just have enough support in Congress to override a Bush veto.
