WASHINGTON — First the Republican-led House approved a federal budget that's heavy on spending cuts. Then the Democratic-controlled Senate approved one that leans more toward tax increases. Then at last, President Barack Obama put out his own budget plan, two months late, coming down someplace in between.

Sounds like progress, right? Check back on that.

The competing proposals are more likely to produce just more budget gridlock.

There are kids in preschool who hadn't been born when Obama and congressional Republicans started arguing over how to make meaty cuts in the federal budget deficit and put the country on a more sustainable fiscal track. And those kids could be well into elementary school with the two sides still in search of a "grand bargain" that cuts government spending in a big way for decades to come.

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